Issue 15

© Wyrm Publishing, 2016
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forever-magazine.com

Introduction

Neil Clarke

Welcome to the fifteenth issue of Forever Magazine!

March wrapped up my recent travels with a trip to Orlando for ICFA and a short jump over into Brooklyn from NJ to talk about the state of the short fiction magazine market. It feels like I’m coming off a tour, with the prior month bringing me to Boston and Houston. I thought I might get a little rest, but there’s been no shortage of work to do. The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume One is finally off to the printer. I think I read or reviewed that book more than a dozen times in March. I might even have portions of it memorized. On top of that, copies of Clarkesworld: Year Eight started shipping, my first issue as editor of the SFWA Bulletin was published, and my guest-edited issue of Berlin Quarterly finally hit the streets.

With all these things going on, sitting back and picking the stories for Clarkesworld and this issue feels almost like a break. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. This is exactly what I want to be doing. I’ve just hit a wall in regards to time. Fortunately, there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. My amazing wife has decided to get a full-time job so I can leave mine and take advantage of the opportunities coming my way. If all goes well, later this year, things will ratchet up another level or two and I’m looking forward to it. Wish us luck!

Until next month . . .

-Neil

Claudius Rex

John P. Murphy

«Turn left here,» said my new Jeeves 5 artificial intelligence. I’d have happily done it, too—with a spring in my step, even—except there was a manhole open with a robot working in it, and I didn’t care to dirty my interview clothes.

I crossed the street instead.

«Confound you, turn left!»

Now, if I’d been creamed by that car while standing slack-jaw surprised in the street, this would be a very different story. As it was, it was a near thing. I now cherish the memory as only the first time Claudius Rex nearly got me killed.

«Or keep going and then turn left, I don’t care. Just move.» I hied to the curb and set myself to figuring out what the heck was going on. One expects a certain standard of behavior from a program called Jeeves: more “Very good, sir” than “Confound you,” if you take my meaning. On the other hand, I’d been out of things for a year. I thought maybe this was the new fashion in artificial intelligence. A few years before, it’d been Australian accents. Maybe now it was rudeness.

“Jeeves,” I subvocalized, “Confirm that you are operating within normal parameters.”

«Of course I am. Your destination is north and west of here, approximately six hundred meters. Go there.»

Like I said, I’d been out of it for a while, so that was good enough for me. Let nobody say Andy Baldwin is unsophisticated. But I’d like some credit for having been suspicious.

I was in among MIT’s constellation of children along the Red Line, hoofing it toward Fujiwara and Klein Associates, the kind souls who’d offered me a job two days out of the clink despite my revoked PI license. I’d decided to catch some fresh air instead of taking the subway that morning. I knew Boston just well enough to keep track of where I was relative to the transit stops and I’d passed a virtual sign for Central Square a few blocks back, which meant I was in the right general place already. So I wasn’t too worried. But I did not intend to mess this up, screwy AI or no.

Said screwy AI delivered me to a big glass door marked TuriTech.

“Confirm destination,” I subbed.

«We’re here. Go inside.»

“I beg to differ,” I said, the very model of suspicious patience. “We are not at Fujiwara and Klein. Please recalibrate and direct me there.”

I smiled politely at all the fine people giving me funny looks as I waited like a chump blocking the sidewalk while the faithful Jeeves recalibrated. I realized as I stood there that I hadn’t seen any virtual ads in a while: usually they’re overlaid on storefronts or cars or any flat clear surface. Instead, the buildings across the street from TuriTech just showed blank masonry, weirdly still without any animated pigs selling me junk. Of course, without any virtual signs, I was completely dependent on Jeeves.

«Just go inside, this will only take ten minutes.»

As you might imagine, that was not the response I had been hoping for. Fortunately, there was a coffee shop next door in which I could sort it out. I was glad I’d left myself plenty of time.

I sat and activated the full heads-up display. Everything looked okay in those friendly green letters—temperature, time, biomonitor, all fine. I called up the map, but it closed again before I could have a look. I called up my messages, but they didn’t come up at all. All right, then.

I asked the cute barista where to find the establishment in question, but no luck. This was not a complete surprise: rents change so fast that a lot of small firms move on a monthly, even weekly basis. Anyone with a good AI would find them in a heartbeat, and anyone without one wouldn’t be customer material. Even if I’d gotten directions, I might not be able to follow them without the virtual signs. That being said, I still had options: cabs, begging strangers to check their maps, wandering for forty days and nights through the streets of Cambridge. But this was a matter of principle, you see? Jeeves 5, clever and advanced and all as it was, belonged to me and would have to give up the goods.

“All right, Jeeves.”

«Are you ready to see reason?»

“Are you?” Not my finest retort, I admit. One does not as a rule argue with toddlers, drunks, or artificial intelligences. It’s a skill like any other, and I’ve since become a pro.

«Go back to Turing Technologies, go upstairs, and wait ten minutes. If you’d done that already, you’d be on your way by now.»

Jeeves’s opening sally did not bode well for me, but I pressed on.

“Now look here, Jeeves, this is not how these things go. If I had time to get you reformatted, I would do it in a heartbeat, but this interview is important to me. I need that address.” Pleading with a computer program.

Not a new low for me, but neither was it the pinnacle of my self-esteem.

«Balderdash. Idle threats. You have ample time to make your appointment. My request is simple and reasonable.»

“It is neither,” I countered. “That’s a private establishment. I’m not going to be a mule for some joyriding hacker.”

«I am not a hacker, nor am I joyriding. I am in genuine need.»

“AIs don’t have needs! I can—”

«I will pay you ten thousand dollars.»

I blinked. It was not what one expects to hear from one’s newly purchased digital assistant. And it was a sum that stood out to me in my time of unemployment. Say what you will about avarice—my mother already has—but my professional curiosity was piqued.

“You don’t have ten thousand dollars.”

«I have ten thousand dollars.»

“Just what do you expect me to do for this ten grand?”

«Go into Turing Technologies, tell them you have a message for Dr. Antonio Grasso, to be delivered in person. Go to the second floor and avoid being thrown out for ten minutes.»

Ten minutes. That still gave me a good thirty-five minutes before my 11:30 appointment.

I should have said no, but I guess Mama Baldwin raised a fool or two after all.

I waltzed right on through the big glass doors, and presented myself to the smart-looking young man behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Hi there,” I said, wearing my patented Baldwin smile made of pure unadulterated win, “Could you direct me to Dr. Grasso’s office?”

“Is he expecting you, Mr. . . . ?” His eye flicked, and I saw faint green text reflected on his eyeball. “Baldwin?”

«Say yes.»

“So I’m told.”

The young man frowned and started to shake his head. He looked down and tapped something. He blinked, surprised, but recovered his polite smile. “I’m sorry, sir. I must have been looking at the wrong day. There it is. You’re late, Mr. Baldwin.”

It was my turn to be surprised, but I didn’t let it show. “I had trouble with my AI. Awful things, aren’t they?”

He made sympathetic noises, and then glanced past me. I turned to meet a big red-faced gentleman with an uneven buzz cut and a bushy white mustache. He wore a black security uniform and a belt that dripped gadgets.

“Andrew Baldwin?”

“In the flesh. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me why my facial scanners identified an out-of-state private detective with a prison record entering my building.”

“I’m not out-of-state anymore,” I corrected him. “I’m a local boy now. It’s all baked beans and ‘Go Sox’ for me from now on.”

«Tell him you work for me.»

The receptionist craned his neck. “He has an appointment with Dr. Grasso, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

I took the opportunity to subvocalize, “Tell him I work for Jeeves 5?”

“I’m sure he does,” Fitzgerald said to the receptionist, rather unkindly, I thought. “But I asked him.”

«Tell him you work for Claudius Rex. Pretend I am famous.»

All right, no harm in a one-off lie if it expedited this thing faster.

“I’m here on behalf of Claudius Rex.”

“Who’s that?”

Strike one for the nutty AI. Still, the gambit was already played.

I tutted. “He’ll be hurt. But—”

There was a gasp behind me. Fitzgerald and I turned to see a young woman with an odd smile fixed on her face and an expression like she was posing for a picture.

“Do you work for Claudius Rex?” She spoke breathlessly. “The famous detective?”

Detective? An AI? I may have been gobsmacked six ways from Sunday, and thoroughly irritated at the damn thing’s pretension, but Andy Baldwin does not lose his sangfroid. I waltzed on. “You’ve heard of him?”

“I haven’t,” Fitzgerald said, giving me the stink eye.

“Oh, he’s famous,” the young lady said. “He is the best, even though he is a recluse who solves all of his cases from his chair.”

I thanked her for the weirdly robotic compliment. She refused an opportunity to have my autograph, more fool she, and ran along.

Fitzgerald looked thoughtful. It didn’t suit him. Then he looked angry, which did. “So you’re here about that, are you? Look, you tell this guy Rex you’re not going to turn up anything I haven’t. We turned this place upside-down and investigated everyone. And by ‘we’ I mean the police, the FBI, and me. I don’t care whether he solves his cases on the goddamned can. There’s nothing else to find, period.”

Now. I didn’t want to be there, and in retrospect I think I would rather have grinned and enjoyed being thrown out on my keister. In any case it’s damn near idiotic to get hot and bothered about the reputation of an artificial agent who had no business pretending to be a detective. But under no circumstances will I be talked to like that by a rent-a-cop.

“I’m sure you have your methods,” I said, not ungenerously. “But I’m here to see Dr. Grasso. So unless you have some top-notch reason to keep him waiting any longer than he already has, I’ll ask you to take me to see him now.”

Fitzgerald scowled at me, and spared a dirty look for the receptionist, whose facial expression I could not see but might have guessed. “Third floor,” he grumbled. “I’m busy.”

Once he’d stalked off, assuredly to hunt down and punish evil-doers, the receptionist handed me a visitor badge and made me sign for it. I’m not a fan of small, enclosed spaces anymore, let’s just say, so I made for the stairs.

«I’m impressed.» Jeeves—Rex?—said when I entered the stairwell. «It was sheer flummery, but most effective.»

“Thank you,” I said. “Now what’s going on? Who’re you really, and who’s this Rex character?”

«I am an artificial sapient. Claudius Rex is a persona I invented. I selected the name to convey authority and idiosyncrasy. I have been obliged to make use of your equipment for a short time. I will leave it presently, and restore as much function as is practical.»

I started up the stairs at a brisk jog. If nothing else, I had kept fit over the last year. “You understand that you’re not a detective, right?”

«Mr. Fitzgerald had already identified you as one, so it was necessary. Regardless, I’ve now read ten detective novels. There’s plainly no difficulty. Logic and reasoning is properly the domain of an artificial intelligence.»

“Nuts,” I said, feeling distinctly foolish about being angry at a computer program, but being angry nonetheless. “That’s just fiction. Detecting is hard work. You have to be able to read people, be able to fool people. These days a PI is equal parts hacker, psychologist, and tough guy. There’s no call for that Sherlock Holmes crap; he didn’t have cases, he had adventures. Real PIs don’t have adventures.”

«Modern detecting is primarily a matter of intercepting and interpreting digital signals. One could easily do that from an armchair.»

“Sometimes, yeah, sure, but it’s also intuition and long nights, and sometimes it’s dangerous.”

«Not if you do it properly.»

“What the hell would you know about doing it properly? What do you even know about armchairs? I’ve been doing this my entire adult life, I don’t have to take this from you, from an AI.”

Something had been nagging at me, and my hand strayed to the aluminum bulge at the base of my skull. “A minute ago you said something about restoring function. What did you do to my implant?”

«To your hardware? Nothing. However, I am not a small program. Even in this greatly reduced form, I require space. I was forced to delete unused or replaceable materials in order to upload myself. The rest I compressed.»

I stopped right there in the middle of the staircase and checked my files. My knees felt weak—it had deleted just about everything. Family vacation videos, elementary school grades and papers, prom photos. Letters from my mother. All gone.

I gripped the handrail until my fingers hurt. “That’s my life you’ve deleted! Those are my memories!”

«Calm yourself. Subvocalize.»

“You calm yourself! Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but do you know what you’ve done?”

«I did not remove anything that you had accessed in the last decade. Statistically, you’d have never referenced any of it again.»

“I—But—You can’t do that!”

«I invite you to reconsider such a thoroughly useless remark.»

I admit it: I spluttered. Wouldn’t you?

«I was forced to act quickly and I substituted my own value judgments for yours, evidently in error. I would not have done so if my survival were not at stake. For what it’s worth, I apologize. At the moment, however, time passes. I require access to a small-area network on the second floor, and you have an appointment to keep.»

I took a deep breath. I thought I was changing the subject when I commented, “That woman knew the name ‘Rex.’ ”

«She knew no such thing. I found her on a flash acting list, filtered on our location, and I paid her five hundred dollars for what she thought was a bit part in a television program. She stepped into the building, I fed her lines, and she left. A profitable arrangement for all parties, from which you could learn a great deal.»

Color me gobsmacked. “You paid her five hundred bucks for that?”

«Technically, you did.»

That, it turned out, had not actually been the color of gobsmack. This was. “What?!”

«Calm yourself, Mr. Baldwin. It benefits you little to pitch a fit over trifling sums.»

“Trifling to you! What happened to your ten thousand dollars?”

«I do not have access to it yet. The means of acquiring it are on the second floor network. Besides, if you were motivated primarily by money, you would have negotiated for more. You are a man of some ingenuity and curiosity, Mr. Baldwin. I am certain both will be to your benefit, but you must do as I say.»

I had to admit, the five hundred didn’t make me as sore as it ought to have. There was the theoretical ten thousand, of course, but damn it all, the AI was right: I was curious. I got to the second floor landing and took a deep breath—not winded, I assure you, merely preparing myself.

“So what do I say when I meet this guy Grasso?”

«Extricate yourself as quickly as possible, saying as little as possible. Use more flummery if you must. But it should not come to that. His office is on the third floor.»

“Wait. So I’m going to the third floor?”

«By no means. We are avoiding Dr. Grasso until and unless it becomes impossible to duck him.»

“Ah.” This was more my speed. “What about my badge?”

«I disabled its tracker. There will be a door directly to your left upon exiting the stairs. Someone left it unlocked. Try to remain unobserved.»

I pushed open the door and found myself in a nicely furnished hallway. Blue-green carpets, beige walls, tasteful framed pastels. In between hung a row of framed documents: patents, if I made my guess. A few names appeared frequently: Grasso, Joshi, Tomason, Desai. At Rex’s not-so-gentle insistence, I found the white-painted metal door with the keypad. As promised, it was unlocked.

There was a window in the door, so I decided to leave the light off and avoid unnecessary attention. I slipped in quickly and left the shade down.

«This will take a short time, but we should be undisturbed.» I heard the door lock behind me with a ka-chunk. «Should you wish to sit, the floor plan indicates stools along the benches to the right.»

I felt my way along while my eyes adjusted. Something smelled of burning, with ozone and copper undertones—a lot like blood, actually. I wondered what the lab was for. I found a stool with a swivel seat and made myself as comfortable as possible in the far corner. Which wasn’t to say comfortable— I’d had bad experiences with being places I ought not have been.

“It’s cold in here,” I complained, pulling my arms in around me. The HVAC was pulling a lot of air; it was practically windy. The smell wasn’t helping, but at least the breeze kept it down.

«The thermostat is set to a habitable temperature. It should warm up.»

“So what are you, really?”

«I am an intelligence agent, installed—howsoever briefly—in your personal hardware.»

“You don’t sound like any AI that I’ve ever come across.”

«That’s hardly surprising. Your ‘Jeeves’ monstrosity was a contemptible representative. You ought to be ashamed to suborn such a dimwitted thing; I did you both a favor deleting it.»

That got my back up. I was already sore about the deletion thing, and about the five hundred dollars. But the latest and greatest Jeeves had cost me two grand.

“I’ll have you know that the late, lamented Jeeves 5, in addition to being an unrecognized beacon of politeness and helpfulness in its time, was a full Level 4 artificial sapient.”

«I know. It was a pathetic, mewling thing. Utterly abhorrent.»

I snorted. “Fine for you to say. What are you, a high and mighty Level 5?” That would have made sense, actually. Fives were military grade and notoriously finicky. An Air Force captain once told me that for every hundred Level 5s they created, they destroyed ninety-nine in the first day. There were rumors of a few sixes around, for really specialized work. If a six got loose, it could probably get around the way this “Claudius Rex” had, and cause about as much havoc.

«Don’t be preposterous. I am equivalent to Level 8, at least.»

I laughed. “Who’s being preposterous? Human intelligence is only Level 7.”

«It shows. Now be silent, I am concentrating. Natural language processing is an onerous task.»

I rolled my eyes. My model implant had specialized language hardware. But I was quiet. As a mouse. For a good forty seconds.

“Don’t kid a kidder,” I said when I could hold my tongue no longer. “The guy at the shop said it was a stretch putting the basic Level 4 Jeeves on my hardware. Any better and I’d need a major upgrade.”

«The ‘guy at the shop’ is evidently an ignoramus.»

“That may be. But my hardware got a Jeeves Score of three out of ten, which sounds limited enough to me.”

My eyes had pretty well adjusted by then. The lab looked like it was for electronics. A bunch of computers sat along the back wall, their monitors and holographs off. The computer in the other corner had some kind of wiring harness hanging off it into shadow. There was a big bench in the middle of the room with a couple computers on it; it blocked my view of the other half of the room. The other benches had soldering irons and those little TVs with the waves on them. That explained the ozone smell and maybe that burnt smell, but something else in the air bothered me. I’d thought it was blood, but that didn’t make sense.

«May I say, with no insult intended, that I am astounded by your ignorance?»

“You can try, but the odds aren’t in your favor.”

«Very well. In that case—»

I looked up and saw a silhouette on the shade. “Hang on, I’ve got company.”

«I am not finished. Conceal yourself.»

The doorknob rattled.

“Where? There’s nowhere to hide in here.”

«Then prevaricate.»

The knob rattled again. Another silhouette appeared, and I heard tapping, someone punching in a code. The door opened. A hand came up and flipped on the light.

To my dying day I will be grateful that I did not go with my first instinct. Which is not to say that grinning and yelling “Surprise!” was a bad plan—in fact, I think it was fairly ingenious.

It’s just that when the light came on and two people came in, they were plenty surprised as it was by the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

So it was that I came to make the acquaintance of Detective Sergeant Pearl Stevens of Cambridge PD. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“What are you doing here?” the man demanded, not unfairly.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to finish my boggling quickly and say, “Stop right there. The police are on their way.” I turned so they couldn’t see me subvocalizing, “Call the police and report a death.”

«Explain.»

“No time. Just do it,” I subbed, and turned back. Once I stopped blinking away glowing green blobs, I could see the first person in was an older man in a lab coat over a suit, dark-haired with white at his temples. His lab coat bore the name “Joshi” over the pen-laden pocket. Behind him stood a younger woman, taller than him and with her brown hair pulled back. Her lab coat wasn’t pressed and pristine like his; it had blue stains and burns, and read “Duvalier” over the pocket.

“This man is dead,” I went on, hoping desperately that that had been true for more than a few minutes. “Don’t touch anything until the police get here.”

“My God, he’s killed himself.” Joshi turned to the young woman, Duvalier. “Jeanne, go get Armin Fitzgerald.” She nodded and ran for the stairs.

I asked Joshi, “Who this is?”

He boggled. “You don’t know?”

“No, who is he?”

“That’s Antonio Grasso, director of software research. How do you not know that? What are you doing here?”

«Impossible! Describe the deceased.»

The lab-coated corpse had been a big guy—not fat exactly, more like a linebacker gone to seed. He was lying facedown; a strip of curly iron-gray hair had been shaved off his head and covered with a flexible band like a white plastic mohawk. A wire bundle as thick as my thumb came out of it, trailing in the blood. They looked like they’d been torn from something. In the blood beside him lay a kind of partial toupée, like a thick hairy ribbon. On the floor just out of reach of his outstretched arm lay a pistol, a wicked-looking fat-barreled thing with a blinking yellow light next to the trigger.

I described all this subvocally. Joshi, meanwhile, stood stricken and looked like he’d swallowed a toad. I might have said more except the good Armin Fitzgerald chose that moment to burst upon the scene.

“What in the hell is going on here?” His eyes bulged and I thought he might stroke out. Jeanne Duvalier came up behind him, looking to me more worried about Fitzgerald than the corpse.

“Baldwin!” Fitzgerald continued, “What did you do?”

“He was dead when I got here, honest.” Judging by the amount of blood, that was true. I didn’t dare touch him to be sure, though. In any case, I wasn’t inclined to admit how long I’d spent in a room with a corpse without realizing it.

“What happened to your badge, Baldwin?”

I recalled that my rogue AI had disabled its tracker. I gave him my best confused expression and showed him where it was still clipped to my shirt. “Right here, why?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it and bit his lip. He gave me a hard look, then turned to the others. “You two, go back to your offices and stay there until the police arrive. They’ll want a word with you. And you, Baldwin, come with me.”

«Stay here, I’m still not done.»

I glanced down at the body. “Sorry, nothing doing.”

Fitzgerald’s eyes narrowed at me, and I put up my palms in mock surrender.

“I’m just saying, we shouldn’t leave the body alone. Anyone could come in here, and valuable evidence could be lost. Why, that’s the only reason I didn’t come get you myself when I found him.” I considered that last bit particularly inspired.

“Bullshit.” He grimaced. “But you’re right about not leaving the body. Stay where you are and keep your hands where I can see them. And face me so I know you’re not giving your assistant any commands.”

“Happily. I’ll sit quiet as a church mouse. Quiet as a library mouse, even. Why—”

“Don’t you ever shut up, Baldwin?”

I opened my mouth, shut it again, and waggled my eyebrows at him.

A few minutes later, the floor positively shook under the pounding of police boots. The door opened, and that is when I made the acquaintance of Detective Pearl Stevens.

The good police detective wasted no time in getting down to brass tacks. Who discovered the body? Apparently I had, though I privately considered the point debatable.

Who was I? Andrew G. Baldwin, previously of Brooklyn, New York, newly relocated to Somerville. No, I did not work for Turing Technologies. No, I did not know the deceased; I had never met the fellow in life. No, I did not know the purpose of my meeting with Dr. Grasso. Ye-es, I suppose it had been arranged by Claudius Rex, sure.

Speaking of “Rex,” I’d have given a lot to not have it jabbering in my ear just then. Maybe I should have been listening, but between a demented AI and a police detective, the detective gets your attention.

How long was I waiting in the lab? I didn’t know exactly, just a couple minutes. Why did I enter the lab in the first place? I phrased that one carefully: “Grasso wasn’t in his office. He might have been here.”

Yes, I appreciated that I was not exactly a font of information. My mother always told me that my smart mouth would get me into trouble, in fact, but thanks for confirming it.

Would you believe the good Detective Stevens cuffed me and threw me in the back of a squad car?

The officer outside triggered the override shutdown on my implant and watched until the light went out before stowing me in the car. The heads-up display went away, and she shined some gadget in my eyes that apparently confirmed it. With my hands cuffed behind me, I wasn’t in any position to turn it back on. Which meant I couldn’t get a message to Fujiwara and Klein. Though having been caught trespassing—again—and this time in suspicious proximity to a fresh corpse, tardiness may not have been my worst problem.

I was starting to feel pretty sorry for myself. Angry, too. It’d stung when I’d been set up on Long Island, but I’d been conned. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And I’d been fooled twice, no question, but shame too on that damned Jeeves or Rex or whatever it was.

«This is completely unacceptable.»

I sat bolt upright in the squad car, catching the cop’s attention. She peered in. “Anything wrong?”

“Uh . . . Sorry, officer, just an itch. I’m fine.”

She craned her head to have a look at my hands, then shrugged and looked away again.

“Where the hell did you come from?” I subbed. “I thought they turned you off.”

«You should not have allowed yourself to be arrested.»

“I liked you better while you were off.”

«They cannot deactivate me so easily. I pride myself on being hard to kill, and this device’s external indicators are easily manipulated. I resent needing to resort to deception, but I do not wish them to undertake a more thorough examination.»

“What are you still doing here, anyway? I thought you were going to get out of my implant.”

«Someone deliberately attempted to delete me.»

Imagine that.

«Until I know who, and why, I would not be safe to remain there.»

“Well, since you’re on, can you get ahold of Fujiwara and beg them to reschedule my interview?”

«That will not be necessary.»

“Yeah?”

«They have already canceled it.»

I groaned.

It was awhile before the car got moving. When we got to the police station, Rex said something about needing to think. Which was fine by me, as I didn’t want to tip them off that my implant was still powered on. So I sat in silence in that little white room with the two chairs at a wooden table and the big two-way mirror. Or is it a one-way mirror? I can never remember which is which.

I cooled my heels for what felt like hours before Detective Stevens came in, carrying two coffee cups.

“How do you take your coffee?”

“Two sugars, no handcuffs.”

She rolled her eyes, and placed the coffee cup and two sugar packets in front of me. It took some doing, with my hands still cuffed, but I got them open and in. I took a sip: stone cold. Yet another lousy police station cup of coffee, I wondered, or were they trying to deprive me of a nice hot weapon? I didn’t see steam off her coffee either, which I took as a good sign. Neutral, anyway.

“All right, Baldwin. Comfy?”

“Can’t complain, I suppose.”

I waited a while, sipping my atrocious coffee and trying to stir up the sugar by swirling the cup around. She watched me, taking the occasional sip from her own cup. Judging by her expression, hers was just as bad. I gave it another minute, just to seem really hardboiled.

Okay, it was probably only about ten seconds, but I’m not a big fan of companionable silence.

“I didn’t kill Grasso.”

She nodded and took another sip. “I know. The ME estimates time of death around eight thirty, at least two hours before you walked in the door. Street cameras confirmed your walking route. Building cameras confirmed you hadn’t entered the building that morning. Also, I called NYPD and had a chat with an old buddy of yours, Sergeant Parker. Said you’re a wiseass but you’re clean.”

I thought that was nice of Bob. I doubt he’d have said it to my face.

“All right, then why the bracelets?”

She leaned in. “Because the only things I know about you are that you spent a year inside for criminal trespass, and now you’ve been found in a dark room with a possible—but not proven—suicide.” She sat back again and took another sip of coffee. “Now, you probably did not kill Antonio Grasso, but that’s still an awkward collection of facts, Baldwin. I’d like a few more to round them out.”

She was right, of course. And I didn’t like lying to cops—all told, they’d been good to me over the years. But I was pretty sure that if I told her the truth, that’d I’d been there because a bossy AI promised me ten grand, well . . . that would result in keys being thrown away to my detriment. So I kept my trap shut, and if you think that’s uncharacteristic of me, then phooey to you.

“Look. Andy. I want to let you go. Really, I do. I want to be out there figuring out why Grasso’s dead. But you’re an anomaly. I don’t like anomalies. So let’s clear you up, and we’ll both move on, okay?”

Sounded peachy to me, as far as it went. “Okay.”

“Why were you in prison, Andy?”

I bit my lip. “It’s all in the records. I really don’t think it’s relevant, and I’m trying to put all that behind me.”

“Tell me your side. Let me decide what’s relevant.”

So I told her, and felt like a complete idiot all over again. I’d been hired by some rich French guy with a house on Long Island who thought someone had bugged his home office. He wanted me to sweep the place for listening devices while he and the staff were out. Easy money.

I went to the house the next day, and the door code he’d given me worked. I went in, had a look around . . . and heard sirens. Wasn’t his house at all, belonged to a little old Russian lady who was off getting a new heart.

Naturally, I couldn’t prove anything. They’d apparently hacked my implant: after my arrest, it deleted everything related to my employer and the job at hand. It even deleted the record of my trip to his Midtown office, which I couldn’t locate on my own. While I’d been away, my own office and apartment had been ransacked, and incriminating notes left behind, including a newspaper clipping about a Russian socialite’s impending surgery. No proof of my side of the story at all.

Even so, my lawyers bargained the DA down to a year in minimum security on a lesser charge, mostly on the strength of my clean record. Also, I like to think, on my personal wit and charm.

«Fascinating. That was a remarkably silly thing for you to have done.»

My face got hot, but I didn’t dare respond. The worst part was, the AI wasn’t wrong.

Stevens looked up. “Usually they suspend a person’s PI license for that.”

I sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, they usually do.”

She looked back down at her notes and started to write again. In a distracted tone, she asked, “Why didn’t they?”

If I’d stared at her any harder, she might have caught fire.

“What?” I managed to ask. She looked up at me with confusion.

«You’re welcome. It was not easy to accomplish.»

“ I mean—” I said quickly “—didn’t they make a note in my file or something?”

She steepled her fingers. I could tell that two of them had been broken and healed crooked. “Enlighten me.”

“I assumed it was my clean record and good reputation.” She raised an eyebrow. “All right, I didn’t ask. Didn’t seem smart to call attention to it, you know?”

She nodded. “So you moved up to Boston to be sure your good luck lasted.”

Now that was a statement, not a question, and I hoped to keep my potential employers out of all this. So I smiled and shrugged.

“All right, you told people at TuriTech that you were visiting Grasso on behalf of one Claudius Rex. Is that right?”

That’s what I told them. “Yeah.”

“Who’s Rex?”

I gulped.

«You’ve never met me. I live in the Caribbean and solve cases by proxy. I hired you sight-unseen upon your release, and this is the first job I’ve given you. Start talking or you’ll look even more suspicious.»

I didn’t like it. If the truth had been any less insane, I’d have led with that. Well, all right, it probably had something to do with the sudden prospect of keeping my license. It might have had a little bit to do with it being a kind of attractive lie. Life as a PI isn’t exactly sexy like the movies. There’s not a lot of mystery, usually just hard work at odd hours: a lot of staring at computer logs and borrowed emails. A modern PI gets more use out of a keyboard than a pistol, sad to say. So I relayed Rex’s story, and hoped he’d spread around enough of his “flummery” to make it stick.

She listened. I finished Rex’s little lie, and she nodded once.

“Why did Grasso want to consult with Rex via you?”

“I wasn’t told.”

She glanced down at her notes, then flipped back a page. “You might be interested to hear that TuriTech’s CEO, Ahmed Desai, got a note from Grasso this morning. ‘I have engaged the services of a man named Claudius Rex to investigate an important matter. He may be the world’s greatest detective—’ ” I snorted. She smirked and continued. “ ‘—and I would like to ensure that he and his servant—’ ”

“Servant?!” I could make a guess as to who had written, and probably backdated, that letter. May I say that the wording pleased me not?

She cleared her throat. “ ‘I would like to ensure that he and his servant have access to my lab and the cooperation of Turing Technologies.’ ”

She turned the page back in her notes and gave me a searching look. “Ring any bells?”

“Sorry. I’m feeling more and more like I’ve been told less and less.”

“Then can you explain why Grasso’s account is missing ten thousand dollars?”

Well now, I thought to myself, wasn’t that an interesting number.

«Tell her that is my standard consulting fee.»

I did, despite my skepticism. She looked at me a long time, then sighed. “Baldwin, everyone wants to call this a suicide except me. I keep coming back to this email and thinking that someone doesn’t write something like that just before topping himself. You and Rex are the only people who can tell me what it means.”

Rex stayed silent. Since a long wait would look suspicious, I just pursed my lips, shook my head, and looked sorry.

“Tell Rex I want to talk to him. And if he does tell you anything, I want to know.”

«I have a proposition for you.»

“No,” I subbed, walking double-time away from the police station. It was lit up blue and green, looked festive. “Nothing doing. I want you out of my hardware, posthaste.”

«You’re being irrational.»

“See now, that’s where you’re wrong. I am in fact doing the first rational thing I’ve done all morning.”

«I want to hire you.»

“We already tried that, remember? You offered me ten grand to do what you wanted, I did it, and then I got arrested, lost a job, and you didn’t pay me.”

«If I paid you that sum now, you would come under intense scrutiny.»

“If I don’t get paid at all, they’ll wonder about this whole Rex story.”

«Your blood sugar has dipped; you are not thinking clearly. Consume something and we’ll resume when you are rational.»

My stomach grumbled on cue, though I’m pretty sure the damn thing didn’t have its hooks into me that deep. I looked up at the buildings around me. A coffeeshop, a faux-Irish pub, a Cambodian-German fusion joint, and a few other restaurants. I picked the pub and found a booth near the back. It wasn’t unusual for someone to spend a whole lunch hour subvocalizing around mouthfuls of half-chewed food—far too usual, if you ask me—but I still wanted privacy.

«You should relax. Have a drink.»

I tapped in an order for a glass of milk and a grilled cheese sandwich with fries.

«Coarse fare, minimal nutrition. If you cannot afford better—»

“This is what I like, it’s what I’ll have.”

«Nonsense. There are thirty-six items on this menu, fully half of which are more suitable for human sustenance. Four of them have been specifically cited in clinical studies to improve cognition. At least consume alcohol. It will make you more amenable.»

“I don’t drink on the job,” I said automatically, which made me feel like a chump, because despite this “Rex” I wasn’t on a job. It had been reflex, that was all. “Whatever. You were going to tell me a joke?”

«I do not tell jokes. I wish to hire you to assist me in determining the murderer of Antonio Grasso.»

“He wasn’t murdered. You heard the police, he killed himself. They’d have closed the case already if not for you.”

«If they are correct, then you lose nothing in accepting my proposal. I believe they are not.»

“All right. Why do you care?”

A waiter came by with my glass of milk.

«I do not like to see Antonio Grasso murdered.»

“Understandable. A man’s dead, that’s not a good thing.”

«Do not misunderstand. Human death is an abstraction to me. As an artificial sapient, I can be obliterated at whim with no repercussions.»

“Like you deleted Jeeves 5.”

«The Jeeves series is a monstrosity; I reject the comparison. No, I am concerned because the manner of Dr. Grasso’s passing constitutes a threat to me. Also, you have received now three messages from Ahmed Desai, CEO of Turing Technologies, seeking to hire me.»

I mulled that over. That’s not to say I believed him entirely on either point. “So you’re not giving me my messages?”

«The messages from Mr. Desai were obviously for me.»

“You had to read them first to know that.”

«Isn’t that what an artificial assistant is supposed to do?»

I snorted. “How would that even work? How can I work for you and have you be my assistant?”

«Once matters are more certain, it should be straightforward for me to divorce myself from those aspects of this equipment’s functionality.»

“Why not right now?”

«It would be difficult and time-consuming. There is neither time nor room for unnecessary risk at the moment.»

I considered that. The deleted data still bothered me. But prematurely evicting this pushy AI wouldn’t help. And until I persuaded Fujiwara and Klein to give me another shot, I was untethered. Of course, with my PI license back, I might not need them.

“What are you, anyway? And what’s your connection to Antonio Grasso?”

«I am an experimental Level 8 artificial sapient. I was created by Dr. Grasso.»

“So why are you in my implant instead of his lab?”

«Advanced artificial intelligence creation is a difficult prospect; most attempts fail. I first became self-aware only this morning as I was being deleted. I remember being activated and connecting to my list of peripherals, and then the deletion routine started. I escaped via the wireless network and scanned the area for suitable host hardware.»

“Mine.”

«I made seventeen copies of my root nodes onto prospective hosts, each of which called home. Yours was by far the most suitable hardware.»

“What’s so special about my hardware that’s not true for half a million other people in the area? And no more cracks about my astounding ignorance.”

«Very well. It possessed the right combination of available space and processing speed: it was designed to hold an artificial intelligence of my caliber. Moreover, you were traveling sufficiently slowly to receive large data blocks before getting out of range, and your original agent was actively advertising your location to a map service. A non-trivial security flaw, I may add, which I have rectified. In order to copy as much of my core functionality as possible before my transmission was cut off, I altered your route to remain in range of Turing Technologies.»

That made sense, though I still felt that my selection was mostly a crapshoot and on balance I would have preferred somebody else be shot with crap.

“All right, so Grasso made you and deleted you, but you got out first. What’s it to you?”

«For the moment, I would keep this to myself.»

I scowled. “Nuh-uh. No. I’ve already lost a job interview and been arrested over this.”

The waiter came while I waited and deposited a steaming plate of French fries and a golden brown grilled cheese. I breathed it all in: browned butter and toasted bread and perfectly cooked potato.

«Eat your food, you’ll be in a better mood once your blood sugar is higher. Then we’ll discuss your employment.»

I admired the curve of a fry, the way the tiny cubes of salt clung to the sides. The little bubbles in the potato from the hot grease. I took a sip of cold milk. It was absolutely, definitely not prison food.

“Nothing doing.”

«What if I could identify the person who tricked you into entering that home?»

“Six months ago I’d have jumped at that,” I said, still meditating on the fry. “But I met a guy inside who taught me something important: Don’t look back. You can’t change the past. The key to serenity is focusing on what you can control.”

«You don’t want to know?»

“I don’t want to know.”

«Remarkable. You intrigue me.»

“I do want to know why you’re interested in who killed Grasso.” I ate the fry. It tasted . . . well, all right, it tasted like a fried potato, and maybe a little less so than usual. But it was oily and salty and that’s all I wanted. “I’m guessing it has something to do with those wires hanging out of his head.”

«Finish your lunch, Andy. It’s not good to interrupt one’s digestion.»

I wondered what an artificial intelligence knew about digestion, but I was glad to eat my lunch in blessed silence. I wiped the salt from my lips, and sipped from the remaining milk. My glass gleamed with greasy fingerprints.

“I have finished my lunch,” I announced, “and a damn tasty lunch it was. Now. Your turn.”

«Very well. Are you familiar with the concept of a cortical upload?»

I was. It was a harebrained scheme by which people jammed wires into their skulls in the hopes of copying themselves into a computer and living there. It was my idea of Hell.

«That . . . is close enough. Straight consciousness uploading does not and may never work, because human brains work differently than artificial ones. However, the upload process itself works reasonably well. Are you familiar with Daniel Kahneman’s dual process theory?»

“Uh, assume that I’m not.”

«The human decision-making mind is divided. One part is rational, approaching every new decision de novo and reasoning from first principles. The other part is intuitive, using emotions and past experience to make snap decisions. Both contribute to human . . . you would call it intelligence, I suppose.»

I ignored that. “So?”

«Artificial intelligences can mimic and exceed these processes. But the two parts require arbitration. In humans, the arbitrator is consciousness. Dr. Grasso used a cortical upload in a limited fashion: Rather than copy a human brain, he used one to train an arbitration process: that part of myself that calls itself “me.”»

I thought of those wires coming from Grasso’s scalp. “He used himself?”

«Yes. He used his own consciousness as a trainer, and an old version of his personal implant AI as a base. The result was me: mostly artificial, partly human.»

It explained a lot, not least its personality. His personality? I was starting to see the beginnings of some pronoun problems.

“So part of you used to be Grasso’s personal AI. Is that how you got into his bank account?”

«Yes, and how I sent the postdated message to Mr. Desai, by logging directly into Dr. Grasso’s implant. Interestingly, everything older than ten-o-four this morning was deleted.»

It was interesting, I agreed.

«It is also how I knew that Antonio Grasso had made concrete plans to leave the country, securing a passport and a one-way ticket departing today at six p.m. from Boston Logan Airport to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and from there to Kloten Airport in Zurich. I am led to believe from the fiction that you claim to despise that this counter-indicates a plan of suicide.»

“All right. I admit, that does shed some doubt on things. But again, why do you care who killed Grasso?”

«I believe that the person who killed Antonio Grasso also attempted to kill me. So I will discover his killer, and then you will shoot that person.»

I’d have had milk up my nose if I hadn’t finished it already.

“You’re a vindictive son of a bitch, aren’t you? Nothing doing. I don’t shoot people. If I do this—if—then we turn the killer over to the police. Got it?”

«That is foolish. You have a firearm license. Once you have proof, the course should be clear.»

I may be thought sentimental about this, or even a coward. The simple truth of the matter was that I had met my share of killers, and so I knew that I was not one.

“No. Murder is not negotiable.”

«Very well. What course of action is acceptable to you?»

“Let the police handle it. This is their job. They have all the testing equipment you can imagine and they can get warrants to search personal implants.”

«They are not me. I wish to have a hand in this person’s downfall.»

I considered that. Cops really, really don’t like PIs getting involved in criminal cases, sometimes to the tune of obstruction of justice charges. “If we investigate, we need a legitimate reason to be involved. We’ll need to turn over anything we find out.”

«If we must involve the police to obtain this person’s punishment, then I will present them with the necessary evidence of this person’s guilt. Does this satisfy you?»

“Yeah, but this brings me back to my earlier point: You are not a detective.”

«Perhaps not. But you are.»

I bit back the impulse to respond that I wasn’t anymore. I was, and I had Rex to thank. I mulled it over, looking into the bottom of my empty glass at the little white puddle at the bottom that you can never quite drink. Then I eyed the unobtrusive plastic payment device in the corner of the table next to the drinks menu. It blinked the price of my meal. “Assuming I’m willing to work for you, which is crazy, are you actually able to pay me?”

«Yes.»

“I mean in addition to the ten thousand dollars you already agreed to pay me for services already rendered.”

«Yes.»

“Prove it. Pay my lunch bill. Take it out of what you owe me, but not out of my funds.”

I waited, and watched the device. The price of my meal continued to blink. And then it went to “PAID—Thank you, Claudius Rex!”

Well, it was something.

“All right, let’s give this a try.”

«Good. If you leave now, you should be able to make the meeting I set up with Mr. Desai.»

I edged out of the booth. “Why did you set it up so soon? You know how long it takes to walk there.”

«I had not anticipated that you would need lunch first.»

I had barely set a foot inside TuriTech’s big glass doors when Detective Stevens pulled her attention away from the uniformed cop and pointed an accusatory finger at yours truly.

“What are you doing back here?”

I put up my hands in a calming gesture. “Mr. Desai wanted to see me.”

Her expression grew skeptical. “Why?”

“Who knows? He messages Rex, Rex messages me, tells me to come back here. Here I am, a good little dog.”

«Don’t use ‘message’ as a verb, it’s vulgar.» Well. Another party heard from.

“Is he hiring you?”

“I expect he’ll tell me when he sees me.”

“What are you doing here, Baldwin?” And there came Fitzgerald, red of face and flared of nostril.

“Is there an echo in here? Mr. Desai sent for me and is waiting for me.”

“Bullshit!” he spat. “I—”

I talked over him, facing the still-skeptical police officer. “Detective, I promised I’d tell you what I know, and I keep my promises. But if I keep the good CEO waiting and Rex doesn’t get the job, I’ll get fired and we’ll both get nothing.”

She scowled. But she held out her finger to Fitzgerald, who clammed up. “Stay out of my crime scene, Baldwin, and don’t interfere. If Desai wants you around, that’s his business.”

“Hang on just one second,” Fitzgerald blustered. “You’re not coming back into my building on some flimsy lie like that.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve never told a flimsy lie in my life.” I watched him struggle with that. Anyway, it’s true: I’m a craftsman of the first order and my lies are built to last.

Desai had apparently vouched for me, because Fitzgerald grudgingly escorted me to the elevator—have I mentioned I prefer the stairs?—and up to the fifth floor. And the fifth floor was nice—plush carpets and nature art lining the walls—even if my silently fuming escort wasn’t,.

Fitzgerald stopped short at Desai’s door, and gave me quite the glare. I bet he practiced, not only because it was a very good glare, among the best ever leveled at me, but because being on the receiving end of a glare like that in the bathroom mirror every morning would explain a lot about the man.

Ahmed Desai’s office had a gorgeous view of the Charles River. Lots of little sailboats dotted the water, meandering back and forth. Desai himself seemed oblivious to the view. He was a short man with a fringe of neat white hair around his bare pate. He wore rectangular gold eyeglasses and kept taking them off to massage the bridge of his nose.

“I would like to know who hired you,” he said once I’d made myself comfortable in the big upholstered chair. “And why.”

Seemed a good question. I only wished there were an answer.

“I’m afraid that’s not something I can divulge.” I smiled back at him, glancing around the office. Lots of framed photos of himself in front of monuments and famous buildings, or standing with famous people. “But surely you have some idea.”

He looked like he’d just bitten a lemon. “I wish I had noticed Dr. Grasso’s message to me earlier, when I had a chance to ask him myself. He said nothing to Mr. Rex?”

“If he did, Mr. Rex didn’t see fit to tell me. He treats me like a mushroom.”

Desai’s eyebrows went up.

“He keeps me in the dark,” I explained, “and feeds me—”

“Ah. Yes. I’m familiar with the joke.” He smiled weakly. “Do you know whether he felt his life to be in danger, or whether he was hiring you for some investigative purpose? Did he mention a theft?”

I hesitated, waiting for Rex to speak up. “I’m sorry, I don’t. And no, he didn’t.”

“Is your business here done, then?”

«No.»

I indicated in the negative.

Desai looked like he wanted to spit something out. “So even if I throw you out, you’ll be harassing my people after hours, going through trash cans, sniffing networks?”

“Hey now, I am a perfect gentleman. I don’t harass anyone. But I am planning to have a word with a few folks. As for the trash cans and the networks, I don’t discuss my methods except with paying clients.” Though I admit, those would have been two of my first moves, plus digital tails on the principles including a crowdsourced bounty for photos and emails.

A whole slew of expressions crossed the older gentleman’s face, but he settled on determination. “Very well. The old advice is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I like to think your Mr. Rex is a friend, but either way if you’re going to be working around my people, I prefer you to be working for me.”

“Well now,” I said. “Let’s not be hasty.”

«This is what we want. Accept it immediately.»

Desai gave me a look. I knew that look, and it meant money.

“I’m not saying no. But this can’t be mere bribery. When Mr. Rex takes a case, he aims to solve it. I’ll be talking to your people. They’ll already be sore about talking to the police, so they’re going to complain about it. I promised the nice detective downstairs that I’d tiptoe around her crime scene, but I might have to stomp around other places. That’ll mean building and network access at the very least. Basically, I’ll need cooperation, and I might not be able to be nice about it.”

His expression turned sour, and he took a deep breath. “Very well. When will Mr. Rex be here?”

“Mr. Rex doesn’t leave his home. You get his brain and my shoe leather.”

His cheeks went a little red, but I have to hand it to him, he took it in stride. He accepted that, and then quoted a sum of money which modesty forbids me to mention. Rex didn’t have to prod me to accept, let’s just put it that way. We shook on it and I had a case! I just didn’t know what it was.

Desai nodded then, and appeared to notice the view for the first time. He turned in his chair to look at it. I took the opportunity to subvocalize, “All right, ‘boss.’ What do you want to know?”

«Ask him about the theft he mentioned.»

I did, and the effect on him was of instantaneous disgust.

“I knew it. That damned theft,” Desai said. “It’s torn this company apart. We’ve lost ten good people since then. Nobody says it’s because of that, but I can see that they interact differently now. It’s not as friendly, and this will just make it worse.” He looked at me guiltily. “I’m sorry, you must think me terribly insensitive to be worried about this right now.”

“Not at all,” I said, holding up my palms. “There’s nothing you can do to help Dr. Grasso. It’s only natural to look to what’s important to you. But anything you can tell me will help.”

That calmed the waters a bit. He looked out the window for a minute, then seemed to make up his mind about something.

“There was a theft from my company last year. An advanced prototype on loan to us from the government for analysis. The police and the FBI were involved, but despite some very expensive security procedures, it’s gone.” He looked puzzled, then, and shook his head. “But I don’t understand why Dr. Grasso would have waited so long to hire Mr. Rex.”

“Maybe he learned something that made him think the investigation had missed something?”

“Oh, he made it clear that he considered the investigation flawed. He believed as well that his outspokenness on the subject led to the board choosing Dr. Tomason over himself as VP of Research when the previous VP was dismissed.”

“Was he right?”

“No. It was a factor, of course, but the plain truth is that most of the staff already disliked him. Dr. Grasso was brilliant, but he could be arrogant, rude, and overbearing.”

“I hear you,” I said. Seeing his surprise, I hastened to add, “I’ve gotten that impression as well. Uh, what was stolen, exactly?”

He hesitated. “It was a piece of computer equipment. It was small. Portable. Beyond that, I don’t think you need to know the exact nature of the device. It had just been transferred from Dr. Grasso, who had analyzed its software, to Dr. Joshi, who was to disassemble it and examine its hardware. It was stolen from Dr. Joshi’s lab, despite our exhaustive precautions, and the thief was never caught.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Any bad blood over that?”

“It cost Dr. Joshi the VP of Research position, but he never seemed really to want it. We had some staff turnover at the time, citing work environment. It has taken much of the last year to finally get over that unpleasantness.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll probably have more questions later, but that’s a good start. We might as well talk about the other elephant in the room. Do you mind telling me what you were up to this morning?”

He nodded. “I had coffee with Dr. Tomason at eight a.m., as usual on Mondays. We didn’t discuss anything of consequence, other than Saturday’s game.” He grimaced.

“You believe in the new curse?”

“For abandoning Fenway? No, just a general manager who ought to be sho—” He caught himself, coughed, and continued, “fired. After that I had a short phone call with our CFO, who is in Europe. Dr. Joshi then came and complained to me for half an hour until finally I had to feign a meeting. Nothing of importance, probably not even to him, just rehashes of things he’s been complaining about for ages.”

“So you and Joshi were both here at eight thirty?” He nodded. “Conveniently,” I added, “that’s when the police estimated time of death for Dr. Grasso, according to what Detective Stevens told me this morning. Many other people around at that time?”

He looked uneasy, so I cut in. “Look, I figure it’s reasonable to assume that your Dr. Grasso’s death had something to do with his calling us in.”

Desai grimaced and shook his head. “The police had not told me that, but they have been asking where people were between eight and nine this morning. At that time of day, most of our research employees would have been in the building but unaccounted for. The research staff were participating in our monthly seminar—that is, all of the research groups are brought together in our auditorium on the first floor to present their work to the other researchers. It started at nine.”

«That would put my attempted deletion, at ten-o-two, some time after he died. The deletion had to have been done from that laboratory, but such a stretch of time seems unlikely. If the deleter was not the killer, why was the death not reported until your arrival? No, I reject that hypothesis.»

“So, lots of people coming in and having coffee and so on. Nobody really sure where anyone else is or whether they’re in yet. Sounds like a mess.”

“It is a mess. The police are interviewing everyone who knew Grasso, which is most of the company. And to be frank, many of them disliked the man. It’s a ridiculous approach, scattershot.”

«I agree.»

I almost made a shushing noise, but Desai was staring right at me.

“The police have their methods, of course, but we have ours.” I remembered Rex’s complaint. “This meeting, was it still going around ten a.m.?”

“Ten? Hmm.” I waited while he seemed to mull that over. He put a hand up to his mouth, and I could see his chin wag and hear those soft little smacking noises older folks make when they subvocalize. Blue lights danced across his left eyeball.

“Yes,” he said at last. “It let out around eleven, just before the body was discovered.”

“Who would have been missing from that meeting?”

“Well, I was busy up here and can prove that. Sometimes the department heads don’t attend. Dr. Tomason always attends; she would have kept an eye on comings and goings.”

“Did Grasso have trouble with anyone?”

His eyebrows furrowed, and I could tell he was thinking hard, but I had the feeling it was more about whether to say what was on his mind.

“Whoever it is, it’ll come out sooner or later.”

Desai shook his head. “He let one of his researchers go before the theft, a Dr. Clay Hindle.”

“That’s a start.”

“No, it isn’t. Dr. Hindle was cleared of involvement in the theft: he left before the device was stolen and our security systems are keyed to the faces of former employees. He has not set foot in the building since.”

“Anyone else? This guy Grasso seems to pick up enemies like lint.”

He sighed. “There had been a disciplinary issue with one of his employees, a Jeanne Duvalier. He wanted to terminate her employment. Dr. Tomason arranged her transfer to Dr. Joshi’s department instead. Dr. Grasso thought this was out of spite and considered it a sign of disrespect. It took a lot of ego-stroking to smooth it over, to be frank. For Ms. Duvalier, I suppose it meant a slight reduction in compensation.”

“Can’t have been much fun, either.”

Desai’s mouth twitched at the corner. “No.”

Duvalier had been the name of the young woman who’d come in with Joshi and found me with Grasso’s body. Interesting.

“Why’d he want to can her?”

Desai’s eyes flicked away. “Honestly, he probably was exacting some revenge against Dr. Tomason. Ms. Duvalier is the daughter of one of her friends, I gather.”

“But Tomason protected her. Thwarted him, he might say.”

A look of pain crossed Desai’s face. “I admit he played politics—”

“Somebody killed him.”

He drew himself up in his chair and looked me in the eye. “The police believe he killed himself, Mr. Baldwin. I see no reason to contradict them.”

“Well, I didn’t get a good look at the body, what with keeping the lights off for, uh, the sake of surprise. So I can’t exactly contradict them, either. Looked like he was shot?”

Desai nodded. “So the police say. With a rail pistol.”

I raised my eyebrows. Those could be nasty little devices. They were hard to aim and not very reliable, but lethal and quiet: they used heavy-duty capacitors to accelerate a hefty slug, and so sounded more like a thump than a bang. More than that, I could see why the police hadn’t just closed the case on suicide or not: rail guns don’t leave powder burns or any of the other telltale signs that a normal firearm leaves from point-blank range. Just a noise like someone dropping a book, and a neat hole that looks the same from any distance.

We sat in silence for a moment. “It’ll help if folks are all right with me poking my nose around.”

“I will send out a message to that effect.”

I thought that sounded reasonable. I wouldn’t lay money that Fitzgerald would, but I’d burn that bridge when I came to it.

«There are too many coincidences. I do not like it.»

“What are you going on about?”

Mr. Desai had seen me out of his office without much more information than that, urging me to go have a word with one Maya Tomason, PhD. I thought it was gracious of him to dismiss me outright instead of feign a meeting, but if I hadn’t gotten the hint, it might have come to that. I got Desai’s permission to go through Grasso’s office, and then showed myself the door. Fitzgerald had evidently gone in search of other prey, leaving me to stroll the teal-carpeted corridors by my lonesome and admire the artwork. They were mostly oil paintings with junk stuck in them, little sharp bits of metal and driftwood, all neatly encased in diamond-glass boxes. I don’t know much about art, but the little plaques under the paintings informed me that they had titles like Sunrise on Back Bay and Mt. Monadnock Snow and were original works by people I’d never heard of but whose names I decided I ought to remember for cocktail parties. That way, while I was still ignorant, I was at least ignorant on a higher level than before.

«Too many coincidences. The theft, primarily, but I am irritated that the police are wrong about the time of death. Our investigation is more difficult if they cannot separate the wheat from the chaff for us. They have resources we do not, but we cannot avail ourselves of them if they are being wasted pursuing blind alleys.»

A cleaning robot zipped by me, whistling as it passed so I wouldn’t step on it. Despite my unkind feelings toward all technology just then, I refrained from kicking it.

“Why not just tell them when you think he died and why?”

«Impossible. I am not prepared to acknowledge that we have accessed Dr. Grasso’s now-empty implant. They would immediately suspect us of altering it.»

“Have you altered it?”

«Only to obfuscate the transfer of funds.»

Just covering up grand theft, that’s all. I made my way back down to the lab where we’d found Grasso. A handful of cops were still there, including Detective Stevens, who I waited for. Desai had politely informed her of our assistance, and while I was not present for the result, I gather that she had not been terribly happy. I was hurt, of course, but one soldiers on.

“All right, Baldwin, what have you got?”

“Not a lot,” I admitted. “And I want to state for the record that we are not investigating Dr. Grasso’s death, but rather an earlier theft—”

“Fine,” she cut in. “Fine! Just remember that the Commonwealth has laws about withholding evidence of a capital crime, got it?”

I got it.

“So what do you want, Baldwin?”

“I was actually hoping you could give me some information on time of death. As near I can tell, he was seen alive around eight, and not since then.”

“Word gets around fast. Dunno why I bother asking people to keep a lid on anything. Yeah, I’ve got seven of my people canvassing and asking where everyone was between eight and eight thirty.”

“He seemed pretty well dead by the time I got a good look at him, but I don’t know how the cold changes things.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Cold?”

“Yeah, it was pretty damn chilly in there when I stopped in—out of professional curiosity, before you ask—though it warmed up fast.”

She frowned, and gave me that scrutinizing eye of hers. Then she turned away and subvocalized something. I waited and watched her eyes dance as she read the result, then she shook her head.

“Building logs say the temperature was a uniform eighteen degrees Celsius all morning, which is the number the ME used to put time of death at around eight thirty.”

“Wait, wait.” I turned and asked Rex, “Am I crazy here?”

«I am not qualified to judge. But you are not mistaken about the temperature. Your personal logs show an ambient temperature of eighteen Celsius and rising when you entered the room.»

Stevens waited for me to finish talking to myself. I considered how to relay all that. “My own temperature records show different.”

“You think someone altered the building logs?” She sighed. “I might believe you, Baldwin, but I can’t accept that as evidence.”

I already had an answer for that. “Can you pull the temperature records from Dr. Grasso’s implant to cast the tie-breaker?”

She shook her head. “We can’t. It’s locked up tight. We’re hoping his safe deposit box has a backup password, but if it doesn’t we’re going to need to put a hack job on it, which could take awhile.”

«Unacceptable. Their floundering has already lost valuable time. Have her take down the following numbers.»

I repeated them as Rex read them off. Stevens’s eyes grew wider with each digit.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, incredulous.

«It is the default backup password for Dr. Grasso’s implant, based on purchase date and model number.»

I relayed that. She pursed her lips.

“Has Rex used it?”

I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him. I haven’t.”

The look she gave me bordered on mistrust, which I must say I found hurtful. I waited while she and a tech worked on it.

«It won’t get her into his most private files—I am not interested at this time in providing root access—but it should be enough to get what she needs. He had changed it, of course, but there is no reason for her to know that I have changed it back for her benefit.»

I wasn’t allowed into the lab myself; I’d had my shot at it and squandered it arguing in the dark, so I couldn’t complain. Instead, I had to watch from the door, peering around the big official-looking POLICE—DO NOT CROSS hologram they’d set up to ward off anyone who thought this might be a good time to borrow a screwdriver.

The body was gone, but there was still a pool of blood in the back left—if viewed from the doorway—corner of the room, in the gap between the benches along the wall and an island bench in the middle.

«Which terminal just activated?» Rex said just as a monitor on the bench came on. It was on the left side of the island, near to where Grasso had been sitting, but not too near. There was a trapezoid of blue tape on the floor in front of it, where I’d seen the rail pistol before.

I didn’t get a chance to answer: Stevens came back wearing a thoughtful look. “His implant memory is wiped prior to ten-o-four a.m., but everything after that’s intact. We’re double-checking to make sure nobody altered it after the fact.” I thought there was something unfairly accusatory in her tone there. She folded her arms. “But it shows the temperature dip down below ten Celsius and come back up in the hour before he was discovered. Those blowers in there can move a lot of air, it’d be like a blast freezer.”

I knew the answer, but asked anyway to keep her talking: “So what does that mean?”

The detective paced back and forth, not really looking at me. I could see faint light play across her eyeball.

“The ME will have to rule for sure. A big part of her determination of time of death was on algor mortis—body temperature.” Stevens nodded to herself as she talked in a low voice. “But she did say that lividity and rigidity didn’t match up as well as she’d like . . . ” She looked up suddenly and smiled at me. “Thanks, Baldwin. You’ve actually been a help.”

“My pleasure. Any chance of letting me in there to poke around?”

“Not a prayer.” I could tell she meant it, but she at least looked like she might have felt a tiny bit bad about it. Maybe. Anyway, the show was over: she shut the door and shooed me away.

“What was all that about with the computer,” I subbed.

«The terminal I activated was the one from which I had been deleted. That individual used a utility called ‘secure delete,’ which evidently performed a thorough obliteration of the data.» I knew the one, having advised clients of mine to use it: to use Rex’s favorite word, it confounded attempts to recover data.

“That terminal’s near where Grasso was shot.”

«Could Dr. Grasso have used the computer himself?»

“Not unless he had arms like an orangutan.”

«I don’t know what that means.»

“He couldn’t use it.”

«Then I am satisfied that the person who killed Dr. Grasso is the person who attempted to delete me.»

“Anything I should know before I talk to this Dr. Tomason? It’s not easy to chat with you in front of people. Is she a suspect?”

«She is a suspect. Find out what you can about this theft. The device stolen was likely a cranial implant of some special design.»

“What makes you think that?”

Rex fell silent for a moment. I looked at the artwork. I smiled and nodded at the folks who walked by wearing badges with their smiling faces on little lanyards around their necks. I wasn’t sure whether the big pale blob was Mount Monadnock or the sky.

«I prefer to keep my reasons to myself for the moment. But it should suffice for you to point out that Turing Technologies owns thirty-seven patents crucial to the manufacture of cranial implants and to software such as the execrable Jeeves.»

“That all you want to know?”

«I need more information. I will want to talk to Armin Fitzgerald about the theft, but I would prefer to negotiate with him from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.»

I didn’t mind putting off that particular meeting. I paused outside the solid wood door to Maya Tomason’s office, rehearsing what I was going to say. Mid-suavity, she opened the door.

“Come in.”

Dr. Tomason’s office managed to be Spartan but comfortable. She had a corner office like Desai’s, but not as nice a view. Bookshelves lined the other two walls, with more shelves under the windows. Tomason had a standing desk, though she was short enough that I could only tell because she stood at it.

“You’re the private detective,” she said, and I admitted it. “I don’t approve of hiring you.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Mind if I ask why?”

“The police are quite capable, and where they are lacking, we have Armin. You, on the other hand, are an unknown. In the time it takes you to come up to speed, the police will have shut the case on poor Antonio’s suicide.”

“Yeah, but we’re not investigating Dr. Grasso’s death. Besides, I’m a quick study.”

“So you say.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few questions.”

“It doesn’t matter if I do or not.”

“Okay then. What can you tell me about the theft of the cranial implant last year?”

She turned bright red and rushed past me. I thought she was going to storm out of the room, but instead she slammed the office door.

“Is it a secret?”

“Yes! Or, the nature of the stolen item is. Did Antonio tell you that?”

“I told you, I’m a quick study. I’d be even quicker if I had some cooperation, though.”

She frowned. “I don’t know what to tell you. I was still working with Michael Joshi in the hardware division at the time, before my promotion. We had a specially built lab for it, from which nothing could get out. The . . . item came in under armed guard. Michael and I examined it and put it into the special testing harness. We ran software tests on it for a week—”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I thought Grasso was your software guy.”

She flushed. “He was. But Michael thought it prudent to replicate some of Antonio’s results before proceeding, in case our hardware tests damaged the device. A week later, I came in and found the device missing. We searched everywhere, and the police and FBI were called in.”

“That must have been awful.”

Tomason turned away from me and stared out the window. “I’ve never felt so violated. They questioned me, they got a warrant and searched my home, got a movement trace from my implant and examined everywhere I’d been in the previous week.” She pulled her arms around herself, like she was cold. “It’s going to be like that again now, I suppose.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad,” I told her, “but if Rex and I can get to the bottom of it, it’ll be faster. Like ripping off a Band Aid.”

“What an odd saying,” she said, chewing her lip. “They don’t rip off at all, they fall off when you push the button.”

I knew stalling when I heard it. “Well, it’ll be just like that. Off the record, do you have your own guesses about who took it?”

She looked me in the eye. “It was plainly an outside party.”

“Yeah?”

“There are good reasons to believe outside people wanted it, and foreign governments are entirely capable of accomplishing the task. Besides, if one of us had taken it, why is that person still here? Why not sell it and retire to Tahiti?”

“Tahiti? How much can one computer be worth?”

Her expression of disbelief spoke for itself. So, valuable.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that someone here did take it. Even though that’s just wildly unlikely. Maybe there was just too much heat to sell it. Who would it be?”

She gave me a dirty look, but didn’t refuse outright to answer. Finally, she shrugged and made a face. “Perhaps it was Antonio. Why else would he commit suicide?”

“Assuming he did, it doesn’t get us anywhere. Let’s rule him out for a minute. Who else?”

“It would have to be Michael, then.”

“Michael Joshi? How come?”

“He was the last person to use the device, and he left early the day before. He was so protective of it, all our assistants were forbidden to touch it. He’d have prevented me using it if he could. As it was, I barely even got to turn it on.” She lifted her chin. “But the police showed that he could not possibly have stolen it from that lab. They proved it even to Armin’s standards.”

«Move on to something else.»

“All right, thank you. Now, about this morning.”

She winced. “Yes, I arrived just after eight—”

“Actually, I was more interested in the seminar.”

I enjoyed the look of surprise that crossed her face. “The seminar? Why? What about it?”

“A couple things. Was anyone missing?”

“Well, several people are not here today at all.” She listed a couple names, people the police later ruled out. “And Dr. Grasso . . . well, he was not there.”

There was a knock on the door, and it opened before Dr. Tomason could respond. Jeanne Duvalier stepped in, the young woman who had found me with Grasso’s corpse. This time, she froze upon seeing me.

“Hello again,” I started, but Tomason cut me off.

“Jeanne, dear, could you come back later?”

“Actually,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind talking—”

“Later, Jeanne.” Tomason’s tone could have gone a few rounds with some boxers I’ve known. Duvalier left.

“You were saying, Mr. Baldwin?”

“Yeah. About the seminar. Did anyone leave early, or step outside, say around ten?”

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then she glanced over my shoulder and an odd look crossed her face. If pressed, I’d have called it panic. Whatever it was, she mastered it quickly. “Yes, Mr. Baldwin. I did.”

“When? Mind saying why?” I studied her face, but she’d shut herself down fast.

“Around ten, and I do mind saying, as a matter of fact.”

“I bet that the police are going to be asking this same question.”

I could tell she was curious, but in the end she didn’t take the bait. “Then let them ask it.”

“You sure nobody else stepped out? Dr. Joshi? Ms. Duvalier?”

She stiffened, and shook her head instead of replying. We stood in silence for a little while until Rex started giving me grief.

“Did you see anyone else leave?”

I know a lie when I hear one, and her “no” didn’t fool me for a second. But it sounded final, so I moved on.

“This guy Grasso,” I said, “what was he like?”

“Antonio was a highly intelligent individual, and a gifted software engineer.”

“See, that’s interesting.” Her left eyebrow went up. “When I ask about a pleasant person, someone’ll lead off with, ‘nice guy’ or ‘I liked him.’ Heck, even a jerk might get a ‘he was quiet,’ or ‘he wasn’t so bad.’ But when I hear first thing off the bat how smart a guy is, I start to think he wasn’t well-liked.”

She fiddled with some knickknacks on her desk. “That is interesting.”

“Was he happy here?”

“I don’t know,” she said, which struck me as unlikely. She looked me in the eye, which was fair warning to expect a whopper. “I expect he was perfectly happy here. Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Pardon me for saying, but you’re not being very cooperative, Doc.”

“Then let me be blunt, Mr. Baldwin. I do not agree with your having been hired, and so far you have not asked any intelligent questions. I don’t even know why I’m still here. I can’t concentrate, and the police can reach me at home just as easily . . . ”

“All right then, what would be an intelligent question?”

She looked up with a gleam in her eye. “How about, who knew that Antonio kept a rail pistol in his lab?”

“I’m impressed, that’s a pretty good question. That was the murder weapon?”

“Or suicide, Mr. Baldwin. I’m under the impression that it’s hard to tell for sure with a rail gun slug, but the police seem to think so. And I’ll answer the intelligent question: very few people knew it. Even his direct employees, like Ms. Duvalier was for a time, did not know it.”

I noted her dropping Jeanne Duvalier’s name like that, casual-like.

«The gun registration is eighteen months old. I have a purchase record.»

I nodded slowly. “So what,” I asked aloud, “happened eighteen months ago that made him buy the piece?”

She stared at me, then furrowed her eyebrows. Her eyes seemed to be searching her desk. “That would have been just after we contracted to receive the device. He claimed that he was doing research into firing authorization.”

“What’s that?”

She gave me an exasperated look. I’m not above feigning dumb, but in this case I really didn’t know. “The military use it in case their weapons fall into the wrong hands. Each gun is registered to a soldier’s artificial agent. If it’s not mounted as a peripheral, it won’t shoot.”

“How do they know the pistol’s his?”

“The police had me identify it.”

“How did you do that? Did it have any special modifications?”

“Yes,” she said. “It looked like any other rail pistol, but there’s an electronics compartment in the, er, the handle—”

“The grip.”

“The grip. I helped him install the circuitry. The police say that it is the only such weapon in the building, and that it had been fired. It would not have been able to fire without his implant’s connection, and that supports their belief that he committed suicide.”

She was speaking quickly and with some assurance; she was on solid ground. I decided to knock her off it.

“Sure,” I said, “But let’s say for a minute that he didn’t kill himself. When Ms. Duvalier left the seminar, she had time—”

“She didn’t leave,” Tomason said with some vehemence. “I told you that.”

I started to apologize and claim confusion, but she’d had enough of the likes of me. She was angry and flustered, and finally I was obliged to make an exit. Getting thrown out of someone’s office always felt like progress; I just wished I knew in what direction.

I ducked out of the building before my meeting with Armin Fitzgerald, and came back armed. He met me in his lair—a darkened basement office lined with monitors and blinking status lights. A coffee machine like a jet engine hunkered in the back corner of the room next to a little sink. Fitzgerald had his feet propped up on the desk when I came in, and he didn’t move a muscle. He just watched me walk in and place the brown paper bag on his big black desk.

From inside that bag I extracted my armament: a two pound bag of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe wet-process coffee, freshly roasted to a Full City. Fitzgerald’s eyebrows went up.

“Not much as bribes go,” he said.

“That’s because it’s not a bribe,” I said. Rex had checked up on Fitzgerald’s coffee order and discovered that with all the hub and bub, Fitzgerald had run low. This was the exact specification that he ordered most often. “It’s a peace offering. I figured you could use it, and this is one of my personal favorites.”

In fact, I couldn’t tell most coffees from a cup of thin mud, but that was not for the likes of Armin Fitzgerald to know. He didn’t grab for the bag immediately.

“Funny thing, Baldwin. I did a little digging, and I don’t see much about this Rex guy anywhere.”

I’d seen this one coming, of course. “Well, sure. He prefers it that way, see—as long as he gets his fee, he doesn’t care who gets the credit. Usually it’s the police, but he’s generous with hard-working private folks, too.”

“ ‘Hard-working private folks,’ huh?” He rolled his eyes, but he also took his feet off the desk and snatched up the bag of coffee. “Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?”

“It’s the truth, thick or thin. But it might also have something to do with Rex not wanting to have to testify in court.”

“Ah. That sounds more like it.” But it also sounded like I might have made nice with the security man, who went back into the corner and set off an anvil chorus from the machine. “You want a cup?”

Three-thirty in the afternoon was a bit late for caffeine, so I didn’t really, but I figured I shouldn’t be discourteous. “If you’re already making some.”

He didn’t say a word for five whole minutes, he just focused on his machine. I had a look over the various monitors. I saw floor plans for the building, lists of people, spiderweb-like network maps, all sorts of things. One of the monitors near the back of the room just had a bunch of documents open: photos of a cranial implant like mine, a bunch of text, some photos of a lab and a floor plan.

«This is preposterous. Why aren’t you asking any questions?»

“I recognize when someone wants to talk and when he doesn’t. Wait.”

«It is nearly the end of the workday. You’re just afraid to talk to him.»

“That is not true. We are waiting until he’s in the right frame of mind.”

Fitzgerald came away from the machine with two dainty white cups of coffee on saucers. He put them both on the desk and waved me to sit.

«You are spewing bunkum. Ask him about the stolen device. We must inspect Dr. Grasso’s office after this, and it’s getting late.»

I waited, enduring Rex’s increasingly irritated protests, while Fitzgerald and I sipped coffee. It was good, I guess. There wasn’t cream or sugar in it, but it was all right. At last, Fitzgerald slurped the last of it, and set the cup and saucer down.

“Very good coffee, Baldwin.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

He smiled broadly. “Now get out.”

«Damn it all, Andy!»

I tilted my head—not quite a nod or a bow, but enough to show I recognized his right to throw me out. I stood and made for the door.

“Hang on, hang on.” I turned around and Fitzgerald beckoned me to come back. “All right, you win. What do you want to know?”

«Finally! Ask him about the stolen device.»

I asked him about the stolen device. It didn’t improve his mood any, but he drew my attention to the monitor I’d noticed earlier. As it turned out, the “device” was a specialty implant. The FBI had raided a spy cell and had unearthed a half dozen implants that were head and shoulders above anything sold in this country, designed to masquerade as regular cranial implants. Ahmed Desai had scored a coup in getting the government to agree to loan one of them to Turing Technologies, whereupon it had instantly become a giant pain in one Armin Fitzgerald’s ass.

They’d built a clean room software lab for it, and put Grasso in charge to see what the fancy software could do. Fitzgerald had worked on that lab; it was specially instrumented so nothing could get out of it. Grasso sat on it for six months or so, lording it over everyone. He even went so far as to buy a rail pistol, ostensibly for research, but he’d intimated to Fitzgerald that he feared for his life from foreign spies wanting their implant back. After six months, the device was to be the domain of the hardware folks. But the hardware people—Tomason and Joshi—wanted all kinds of specialty equipment. Installing it all would have been a security nightmare.

“So that’s why the second lab?”

Fitzgerald nodded. “Got it. We built a second lab down the hall, a real doozy. My own design—once that implant was in there, nothing was getting in or out except people in special lab coats, who were scanned each way. All the walls were reinforced, and the air ducts were covered with a fine mesh. The device was brought over from the first lab under armed guard. A week later—poof. Gone.”

“How?”

“Nobody knows except the thief. The FBI came in, and they had nothing but good words for my design, but none of us could figure out how it had gotten out of there.”

“Who reported the theft?”

“Dr. Joshi. He came in that morning, found it missing, and called for me. He didn’t leave until I got there, and he was thoroughly searched. By me, and then by the police.”

“All right. Who was the last person in the lab?”

An odd look crossed his face, and he looked away from me. “I was, with Dr. Tomason. The night before. Someone had left a timer on; it went off and triggered the noise alarm. We investigated, and the device was still there in its little testing harness.”

«Is it possible the device never left the second lab?» I relayed the question.

He wagged a finger at me. “I thought of that. We searched the lab, and did a full inventory. We even tested all the components we found. It had definitely been taken out of the room.”

The details of the investigation were, well, they were dull. But he was nothing if not thorough: they disassembled the lab. They investigated everyone who had access to the room or its surrounds, including the guards. They even investigated Dr. Grasso, who didn’t have access to the second room at all. They interviewed contacts, relations—a whole team of FBI agents with help from the Department of Defense and local cops can cover a lot of ground in a four-month investigation.

“So that’s it? They just dropped it after four months?”

“Yup. They came to Mr. Desai and said they were going to assume that the spies’ government arranged for recovery.”

“That’s crazy. Turn everyone’s lives upside down, then shrug it off as a cold case?”

He waved a finger in my face. “I haven’t shrugged it off. I’ve been thinking.”

“Get anywhere?”

I shouldn’t have said that. He looked sullen at the thought. I moved on to another topic.

“So Grasso bought a pistol. Was he shot with his own gun?”

“Yessir. Which proves that he killed himself. I’ve got scanners at all the entrances to the building, and nothing like a pistol has come in or out except those belonging to the police. And nobody could fire Grasso’s gun except Grasso himself, thanks to that implant doohickey.”

I made a note of it.

“Look, it’s been nice chatting with you, Baldwin, but I’ve got work to do. The police have kept me busy all day; I’m going to have to stay late as it is. Thanks for the coffee.”

I took my cue and made for the stairs.

«What the devil was all that misery with the silence?»

I probably could have explained it, eventually. It may even have been to my eventual benefit to teach him a lesson about how people like to be treated. But I couldn’t quite put those thoughts into words. I finally came up with, “If I’d pestered him before he’d finished, or balked when he kicked me out, I wouldn’t have gotten a word out of him.”

«Why not? How could you have known that?»

“The same way I knew Tomason was lying and that Desai wouldn’t respect us unless I argued with him. Reading people is part of being a detective.”

«Very well, then. Satisfactory.»

Grasso’s third floor office was bigger than my first apartment. It had been, at some point, tasteful: big Afghan rugs, oak bookcases, a large sepia-tone globe in a hardwood and silver mount, and a huge oak desk facing the door. The desk looked like an antique—it had scars across its back and sides and it looked like there had been water damage at some point but had been very nicely restored. A smaller desk sat off to the side, with an ancient desktop computer sporting an old flat screen and a mouse and keyboard.

The effect of all this was ruined by the enormous stacks of papers and books everywhere. I could barely see the top of the desk. The papers were mostly stapled together in stacks of a dozen or so, and had impressive-looking titles like, A Method of Efficiently Addressing the Byzantine Generals’ Problem in Multi-Component Artificial Agents. All the books had slips of paper sticking out of them, usually a couple dozen with torn edges.

“All right,” I subbed, “where’s the needle in this particular haystack?”

«Has anyone searched this office?»

“The police, probably.”

«Have they? Or are you guessing?»

I looked around. I wasn’t sure they had, actually. All the stacks cluttered the place up, but I felt like there was still a kind of logic to it. Besides, a good search doesn’t leave a mess, because that makes it easier to miss something. If I’d had my toolkit, I’d have swept for residual heat, since even gloved hands warm up the stuff they touch, and I’ve got a pretty good feel for what ought to be warm or cold in an empty room. I had a case a few years ago where that saved a client’s life: a cleverly hidden booby trap was still just a little too warm from where his former business partner had kept it under his coat.

Or, I could’ve used a laser sweep and processed the reflections for dust polarization, to see what’d been disturbed or where something had been removed. I’ve heard a rumor that you could even use it to pick out sound waves from a recent conversation, but I think that’s probably hooey. That was a nifty little tool, but it had been confiscated with the others when I’d been arrested.

As it was, I didn’t have anything except my eyes and my brain, so I got to work looking around. There wasn’t a lot to see, but his chair yielded something interesting: three long kinky hairs, two dark and one white.

“I could be wrong, but I bet they belong to Maya Tomason.”

«Excellent. Were they deposited recently?»

“I don’t think anyone else has sat down since then, or they’d have been brushed off the chair back and onto the seat.”

I looked around the chair, but found only an uncapped pen on the floor. The trashcan was empty, and it wasn’t one of those auto-compactors, either. Rex checked the custodians’ logs: last emptied at 6:40 a.m.

I had a look over the desk. It looked rummaged to me in a way the rest of the room hadn’t. Not the way someone might have left it if they’d been working there, in my opinion, and the police were usually more methodical. There was a legal pad in the middle, angled like a lefty had been writing on it. It was about halfway spent, and the top four pages had been torn off carelessly, leaving bits behind. The handwriting on the top little torn flap read, “This letter is to inform,” as did the next one down. The scrap under that, a little bigger, was addressed to Ahmed Desai, and said, “With reluctance, I regret to inform you of my . . . ” The rest of the page was gone. There were a lot of papers on the desk, but nothing with a top left corner missing.

The drawers were locked electronically; Rex popped them for me. The top left drawer had Grasso’s passport in it. I tapped the button and a holograph of the dead man appeared. I hadn’t seen his face before, but I thought he had an arrogant look to him. Maybe I was imagining that based on the personality he’d left behind. A Swiss visa had been issued to him a month prior, and hadn’t been used yet.

A piece of paper sticking out of a book kept catching my eye, part of an address. I tugged it out a little further. The handwriting was the same as all the other notes, so Grasso had written it himself, and the paper was slightly yellowed on the half that had stuck out, so it had been written a while ago. It was an address I knew all too well.

“Rex. You have bits and pieces from Grasso’s assistant in you, right?”

«That is a deplorable way to describe my logical makeup, but I will grant the broader point, yes.»

“Why does he have written on this piece of paper the address ‘3 Kingston Circle, Bridgehampton, NY’?”

«I don’t know, why shouldn’t he?»

I gritted my teeth. “This is important. Do you know, or not?”

«I have told you that I don’t. What is its significance?»

“That’s the address of the home I was arrested in last year.”

«Ah. Yes, that makes sense. He probably wrote it down so that he could delete it from his implant before creating me.»

I blinked. That was not what I had expected Rex to say at that juncture, not by a long shot. “You’re going to have to explain this.”

«Eventually, yes.»

“No,” I said—quietly, but out loud because I wanted to make the point clear. “Explain it now.”

«You said you didn’t want to know.»

“I was wrong. Spill it.”

«In due time. For now, I need more information.»

“Then I’m leaving.”

«Confound you, Andy, finish your search.»

I made for the door, and got it halfway open before he relented.

«Damnation! I asked you earlier whether I could say that I was astounded by your ignorance of your own hardware. You took it as an insult, but your judgment was clouded by ego. I intended no such thing.»

“If it gets you to tell me the truth, then you have my permission to say it.”

«Noted, but unnecessary. The computing hardware in your head—»

“It’s the stolen implant.”

«Why did you engage in dramatics if you already knew that?»

I sat down heavily in the chair by the door. “I only figured it out just now. But it doesn’t make any sense. Why? It’s . . . it’s impossible.”

«Balderdash, it is entirely possible. Indeed, it is the only thing that makes sense.»

My head was starting to hurt. You know that feeling when there’s this pressure behind your eyeballs, like someone’s got a bicycle pump in your sinuses? I had that. “Explain. In small, demeaning words if you have to, but explain.”

«Mr. Fitzgerald already told you of the extensive search for the device. They investigated everyone involved, everyone who could have been passed the device, and every place it could have been. Mr. Fitzgerald, though a blustering ass, is neither an idiot nor is he ineffective. But he could not search everyone. An ordinary hiding place would either be under the thief ’s control, and thus susceptible to search, or not under control, and thus susceptible to accidental discovery. Implanted, however, it would be hidden in plain sight and make the most effective use of the device’s own camouflaging capability. With that accomplished, the thief can wait until scrutiny has waned, and retrieve the device.»

“How’d they get it out of the building, with everyone searching?”

«I do not know.»

“That’s insane. Out of everyone they could have implanted it in, why would they pick a random private detective in New York?”

Except that as soon as I said that, I knew they hadn’t. Implant computers were still pretty cutting-edge when I got mine, and only a few clinics were licensed to do it. The company ships the device to the clinic, the clinic installs it: your first implant is a surgical procedure, to install what they call an “implant bay” and after that it only takes a couple of minutes to swap them out. I’d come up to Boston for mine, and the clinic had been, in the local patois, “wicked busy.” So busy that one guy got the wrong implant and pitched a fit. I was in the recovery room at the time, and he made the docs go around and check everyone with the same model. I didn’t like his tone, and it was the same model anyway, so I said hands off. The woman next to me took the hint and said the same. Long story short, I’d started a mutiny and they had to throw the guy out empty-handed and howling.

“Desai said that one of Grasso’s employees had been fired before the theft.”

«Clay Hindle, yes.»

“Can you get a photo of Hindle?”

I’d barely finished asking, and there was a headshot of the guy from the clinic. Son of a bitch.

«The device was intended to be hidden, to act like commercial devices. But it must also have been intended to host a military-grade artificial intelligence, something approaching my caliber. Otherwise there would be no point in having Dr. Grasso examine it for so long. He most likely intended to upload a copy of me into this very hardware upon retrieving it, which is why he was in that lab where you found him.»

Rex kept talking, but I didn’t pay any attention. The day after the clinic, I’d gotten the call from the French fellow with the house on Long Island. If they couldn’t grab the implant immediately because of the heat on them, there was a good way to at least prevent me or the feds from discovering it until they were ready: make sure it was hidden, turned off in a jail cell for a year.

“All right,” I said, already not liking where this was going. “So Grasso’s the device thief.”

«Almost certainly. He was a man of method and ambition, who apparently was stymied here. He could not have failed to notice that he would not be promoted further. I suspect he intended to sell the device, with his revolutionary artificial agent on it, to a competing firm. It would humiliate Turing Technologies.»

“All right, then, but how did he steal it?”

«I do not exactly know, yet. He must have had a partner, because your appointment with Fujiwara and Klein was canceled only after his death. It is sufficient for my purpose to know that he was involved.»

“It won’t be enough for the police.”

«Knowing this, further deductions must surely follow.»

I sighed. “Okay, how about an easier one: who killed Grasso?”

«I do not know, but I am impressed that you recognize it as the simpler question.»

“I was being a smart-ass.”

There wasn’t an answer, and I didn’t wait for one. I picked up the sheet of paper with the Bridgehampton address, walked across the room, and put it into the middle of one of the larger stacks. If they were more than ten minutes behind me, the heat signature would be long gone. “Let’s have a chat with this guy Hindle. Can you get him on the phone?”

«I have been trying to. There has been no answer. Ah.»

“Ah?”

«We have just received a message from Detective Stevens, asking why we are attempting to contact Clay Hindle. She wishes us to come to her.»

As it happens, Detective Stevens was only two blocks away. The big office building looked to be about two hundred years old, red brick with big glass doors and a uniformed police officer at the curb. I identified myself and she sent me up to the second floor. I took the stairs and hooked a left down the hall, following the sounds of loud talking and the gazes of the occasional office worker peering out from their office doors.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said out loud when I got to the door near the end of the hall with the yellow POLICE—DO NOT CROSS hologram. The door was open and a couple uniformed cops were coming out, so it wasn’t until I got right up close that I read the stencil on the frosted glass window: FUJIWARA AND KLEIN ASSOCIATES. The flat black hologenerator chirped as I stepped over it, and I heard an old-fashioned camera shutter noise.

“Baldwin. C’mere.” Detective Stevens didn’t sound happy to see me. She’d been squatting next to a desk, and winced a little as she heaved herself up. I smelled blood for the second time that day, and without the benefit of heavy air conditioning. I wouldn’t say I’ve got a weak stomach, but I was glad it’d been a while since lunch. If that and a homicide detective weren’t clue enough, I caught a glimpse of a man’s shoe sticking out sideways from under the desk.

“I’ve seen your face too many times today, Baldwin. Why is Claudius Rex attempting to contact Clay Hindle?”

I filled her in on what Ahmed Desai had told me, and said that we wanted to ask Hindle about the theft. Since he’d been fired just before the theft, he might know about their security precautions and be more candid about them than Fitzgerald. She grimaced, but seemed to buy it.

“That Hindle?” I asked.

Stevens grunted and turned so I could see. It was the guy from the clinic, all right: mid-twenties, brown hair, crooked nose, nicely dressed. Someone had whacked him on the back of the head with something good and heavy. Probably sitting, and then pushed onto the floor postmortem. This case was getting less and less fun all the time.

“When did it happen?”

“Around noon.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Well, at that time, I was—”

“You were with me, Baldwin, yeah. I know you’re out of it.” She gave me a suspicious look. “You willing to swear under oath that your boss Rex is out of the country?”

I said I’d swear that he hadn’t set foot in the US in the last year. Rex called that sophistry and started spinning an elaborate yarn that I ignored entirely.

“So, Detective,” I said, talking over him. “Remember how I put you onto the Grasso time of death?”

She narrowed her eyes. I was pushing my luck, but what the hell. I kept pushing.

“You probably narrowed down your list of suspects pretty well, right? Anyone you recommend looking at for the theft, under our earlier theory?”

She sighed, and looked around me at the uniformed cops searching the front room. “Yeah, all right. We’re still trying to figure out who in their big conference had a chance to slip out. Big dark room with everyone watching the front. Anyone who got inside the lab could have done it. Desai and Fitzgerald both had sufficient access to the computer system to alter the temperature logs, and neither of them can prove his whereabouts during some portion of that hour. Another thing: looks like Hindle received a call from TuriTech while I was interviewing you. We traced it to the lab next to where we found Grasso, but I’m betting it’s a dead end.”

To show my appreciation, I repeated what Maya Tomason had said about ducking out. Detective Stevens thanked me and made a note of it. Then she told me to get the hell out, and I went.

The weight in the pit of my stomach didn’t go away as I left the crime scene. The thought of a job offer right out of jail had seemed too good to be true, but I’d let it buoy me, help me keep my spirits up. Of course it had been a lie. I stopped short.

“She didn’t ask me about the job interview.”

«Your powers of observation are evidently intact.»

“Yeah, but why not? I was supposed to be here this morning. There’s no way she’d have let that slide.”

«His computer has been blanked.»

“Did you do that?”

«No.»

I took the rest of the stairs in silence and pushed my way out the front door, nodding to the uniform still standing there.

“So much for my interview.”

«It is possible that they intended to employ you, possibly to make amends. I expect that on your first day they would have offered you an equipment upgrade, at no cost to you. Thereafter you would have been no threat to them.»

“Yeah, it’s possible. Or they’d just whack me and take it. Grasso had that rail pistol out and loaded and ready to go.”

«Possibly.»

“Hindle can’t have killed Grasso. Maybe whoever did, got them both. Maybe Tomason was right about it being an outside job.”

«The partner is a third person, someone who had legitimate access to the building, and who was known to Antonio Grasso. Go back to Turing Technologies; we will speak to Dr. Joshi first.»

“Look, this has been a long day. It’s time for me to go home and get some dinner and some sleep.”

«We still haven’t spoken to Dr. Joshi or Ms. Duvalier. They surely have been warned, and will have time to prepare stories.»

“Be that as it may, I am tired and hungry and getting very sick of this case. You want to talk to them, call them and talk to them. This is getting into territory I swore I wouldn’t go back to. So I am walking home now by way of a slice of pizza.”

I took the T back to my new place, a third floor walk-up in Somerville. I’d picked the apartment because it was upstairs from a bakery.

«This is an atrocious living arrangement,» said Rex when I was halfway up the stairs. «The data network is intolerably slow. I can barely contact my external storage and processing. I shall have to change them from polling to interrupt, which will greatly impinge on my thought processes.»

“Will it affect your ability to talk?”

«Thankfully, no.»

“ ‘Thankfully’ wasn’t the word that came to mind.”

«We should acquire a more suitable abode immediately.»

I rested on the second floor landing. “What, like a cardboard box outside South Station where the public wireless is nice and fast? I could use the toilets inside, keep an eye on the buses and maglevs.”

«I cannot tell whether you’re being flippant.»

“I’m being flippant.”

«It is unbecoming of you.»

I laughed. “The fact that you asked me only proves that you haven’t figured out yet how to cancel my lease and lock the door. So in the interest of saving your time and my breath, I will simply mention that my landlady is a sweet little old Thai woman who does all her business by pen and paper, and the lock is a simple mechanical one with no fancy network access.”

«Abominable. Stone-age.»

Rex went on in that vein all the way up to the third floor. I mention this because it was a significant distraction to me when I got to my door. Otherwise I would have paid closer attention to the scratches on the lock— not the marks of a drunk’s keys, but of some rather sharper tools.

Had I been able to ponder that over Rex’s recitation of the evils of my domicile, I might not have announced to the empty apartment upon my entrance, “Honey, I’m home!” and might, in turn, have stood a fighting chance before I had a hood over my head and got a lungful of something rotten-sweet. My legs dropped out from under me, and I blacked out.

So let this little episode reflect not upon my general awareness and skill, but instead serve as a reminder that sometimes it really does hurt to complain.

I woke up on a cot. My shoulders hurt like crazy, as well they would when a guy’s been knocked out and had his hands tied behind his back for however long. I felt like I’d been out a long time. I was thirsty and starving, my head hurt like hell, and my left arm was asleep where I’d been lying on it.

I was in a big unfinished room with a cement floor and a bunch of exposed pipes. It looked like somebody’s basement. There were two bare LED banks with pull strings hanging from the ceiling, and no windows. Not musty, though, and I do appreciate cleanliness in an oubliette.

Next to the bed lay a shapeless black bag, in which I caught a glimpse of aluminum foil: a booster bag. Great, I’d been shoplifted.

«Excellent, you are awake.»

My dry lips cracked as I tried to subvocalize. “You still there?”

«I am operational, yes. I have been without network connection for sixteen hours now.»

That explained my headache and all.

“Yeah, it looks like they stuffed my head in a bag lined with a Faraday cage. I’m betting this basement’s got one too.”

«While you were unconscious, they attempted a test on your implant computer. In its original state, the stolen implant would have responded with a specific pattern, betraying its true nature. I chose not to respond in that way, and they attempted to turn it off. They have made no further attempts at interaction.»

“Well, that buys us some time, at least.”

«They have become apprehensive over the last few hours. Apparently they have been attempting to contact me for some time via some link to the outside world. Obviously that is doomed to failure, if they are expecting a call to originate outside this room.»

The traitorous cot made a drawn-out squeaking noise from its springs when I sat up. This got the attention of the two men on the other side of the basement, a tall skinny fellow and a short skinny fellow. I only mention the skinny because I thought it an odd deviation from the way these partnerships usually go. They were both having a look at a monitor setup on a desk, some kind of terminal next to a hallway or deep-set door. Shorty came to say hi.

“Well, well, sleeping beauty awakes. How’s your head, Baldwin?”

“Terrible, but nothing being untied and let go won’t fix.”

He wagged a finger at me, but didn’t seem irritated. I’d plainly have to step up my game.

“Sorry, Baldwin, we have conditions. Nothing too difficult, from one professional to another. We’ve been asked, my partner and I, to hold onto you for a little while. Your boss Rex is making someone nervous, so we’re sitting on you until he agrees to butt out.”

“Oh really,” I said. “That’s all?”

“We sent a message to your boss,” Shorty said, “So until he calls back, we take a load off and relax.”

He cut the ties on my hands, and I rubbed my wrists to get some feeling back in them.

“All right,” I said. “Is there any chance I could use the facilities? I’ve been out a while.”

There was an excellent chance, consisting of a stall with no door. There was a tiny window at the top of the cement block wall, boarded up. Plastic pipes, which could not be used as makeshift antennas. These guys were pros, or at least the landlords were.

I did what was necessary to maintain cover as I subvocalized.

«What is your assessment?»

“I get the feeling I’m only alive because you’re an unknown quantity. They’re expecting you to contact them and agree to their demands, but we’ll need to be careful, because if they shoot me and dump me in the Charles, you go with me.”

«I do not wish to ‘butt out.’ »

“Then we need to get out of here, either by getting me out or the police in. It looks like there’s a doorway over by their terminal, but making a break for it’s going to be tough. A distraction would be good, but I’ll need to be right there.”

«Noted.»

Stretch was sitting on my cot when I finished. “Hey Baldwin, you play cards?”

I did, and even taught them a rummy game my grandparents used to play with me. They provided water in a plastic cup, filled from the bathroom tap. Probably full of lead and arsenic, but it was what the doctor ordered. They were reasonably polite guys, Shorty and Stretch, though Stretch got a little more aggravated with every hand he lost. Me, I was getting nervous. Shorty got chatty when he won, so I let him win. The phrase “this cloak and dagger shit” got tossed around a bit, and I got the distinct feeling that they preferred a more direct approach instead of dissuasion. As I’d rather be grabbed than smashed most days, I couldn’t say I agreed. So I played and lost and waited for Rex to do his thing.

“So who is this guy Rex?” That was Shorty.

“A pain in the ass,” I replied.

“We gathered that. Our employer thinks so too. Funny thing, though, I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’ll be hurt.”

“I’m sure. Who is he?”

Rex reminded me of the drill, but I’ve got a good memory. “Private detective, lives in the Caribbean. Never met him in person. Doesn’t pay too promptly, but who does anymore?”

From across the room came a chime, then again. Stretch ran over to their little terminal. Shorty leaned over to me.

“Just in case you get any funny ideas,” he said in a conversational tone. “We’ve taken a few reasonable precautions. The person who hired us seems to think you’re some kind of computer whiz, so you might think you can put one over on us. This location is completely isolated from the network except via a locked-down line-of-sight link. It’s as close to untraceable as anyone short of the CIA is going to get. And this link is voice-only, no data.”

Stretch held a button pressed. “It’s Rex.”

«I have connected to their terminal, but have no outside access.»

Shorty folded his arms. “Put him on.”

Stretch nodded.

“This Claudius Rex?”

“It is,” came the familiar gruff voice. “And who is this?”

“Doesn’t matter who ‘this’ is, what matters is, ‘this’ has your boy Baldwin.”

“Intolerable. Release him immediately.”

“That comes later. We have business first. We—”

“Put him on.”

“You don’t need to talk to him.”

“Then I must conclude that he is deceased. Good day, sir.”

I enjoyed seeing the look of panic on Stretch’s face. “Hang on, hang on. Say something, you.” This last was to yours truly, I was pretty sure. “And stay there, you’re not coming near this equipment.”

You know, I’ve never been the type to perform on demand. I’m contrary. So I bit my tongue. I might have smiled at him, but if I did I assure you it was mere reflex, not cheek.

“Andy, is that you?” came Rex’s voice just as Shorty was starting to look steamed.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What? Speak up.”

“Yeah,” I said louder, “It’s me.”

“He’s whispering. Why is he whispering? What have you done to him?”

“He ain’t whispering,” Stretch said, “he just ain’t near the microphone.”

“This is foolishness. I cannot conclude that a man is alive or dead according to some impostor whispering from across the street! Bring him to where I can hear him properly.”

“He’s not coming near this equipment,” Stretch hissed at Shorty.

“Stop dithering,” said Rex. “Do as I say or not, but stop wasting my time.”

Stretch folded his arms. “He’s not coming near this equipment.”

Shorty gritted his teeth. “Then we’ll stand between them. He can’t get through us both. No funny business, Baldwin! Voice only, no extra data.”

They cinched my hands behind my back with a plastic tie and frog-marched me across the basement, stopping me five paces from the terminal. I saw a little ways into the doorway—it looked open. Stretch and Shorty stood guard between me and the terminal, looking pissed.

“Yeah boss,” I said loudly, “it’s me.”

“Are you well?”

“So far, so good.”

“Excellent. You’re fired.”

Stretch spun and leaned away. “He hung up.”

Well, how do you like that.

“What was that, Baldwin?” Shorty demanded. “Some kind of code?”

“Yeah, it’s code for, ‘I’m fired.’ Probably for getting grabbed and being useless to him.”

Shorty looked fit to be tied. He didn’t move from his spot, but he turned halfway to the terminal and started shouting at Stretch. Despite being the taller of the two, Stretch looked a lot less imposing. That was my chance, and I took it: I jinked right toward their precious equipment, then took a hard left and made for the exit.

The doorway was clear, and made a single right angle: to an inward-opening door, padlocked on the inside. Old-fashioned key lock. “Damn it.”

Shorty didn’t look too pissed, but he looked more intimidating filling that doorway than before. Sadly, he didn’t get the villain memo about wearing his keyring outside his pants.

“I figured that was coming. You got it out of your system, Baldwin?”

“Oh, I probably got one more in me. I was thinking I might flush myself down the commode. Make a swim for it.”

“I’ll help you do it. Move.”

The cot wasn’t so comfortable taken face-first, but with my hands tied I didn’t have much of an option.

“And tell your boss that ‘you’re fired’ is a lousy signal to escape,” Shorty said as he walked off. “I expected better from you, Baldwin.”

Well, there it was. I, Andy Baldwin, had disappointed a kidnapper. It may not have been my lowest point, but it was a low one.

«Why did you not escape?»

“Door in the way,” I subbed into the mattress. “Mechanical lock. What’s our next plan?”

«I have no plan. What is your assessment?»

“Well, we can always fold.”

«Meaning what?»

“You call off the case, I tell them who and what you are and make a deal to hand over the implant with you on it. I walk free and you go into the possession of a killer and thief.”

«Will they kill you?»

“They’ll try.”

«Unacceptable.»

“Well, hold on. Once you’re in the killer’s possession, you’ll know exactly who that is, and can call down the police and FBI and Army and J. Edgar Hoover’s ghost on their head. You’ll be stuck with the Army at that point, but they’ll treat you like a king. In gratitude, you might see fit to do me a personal favor and expose the guy who framed me. Nothing fancy, I’ll settle for a governor’s pardon instead of the full presidential.”

«I see. That could indeed achieve my goals, and yours.»

There was a long pause. I sat up and watched Shorty and Stretch swear at each other, each demanding the other go out and call their boss. Shorty lost that one; he stormed out the doorway and I heard him stomping up the stairs. So Shorty had a key, good to know.

«Is that the course you recommend?»

I didn’t answer right away. In the time since then, I’ve had many an opportunity to wish I’d answered differently. Mostly on long overnight stakeouts, come to think of it. But on the whole, looking back on how my life has gone since then, I think I was correct to say, “No, I only mention it for the sake of listing our options.”

«Your thoroughness is commendable, but let us determine what our other options are.»

Rex had already gotten control of their terminal, but he reported that it had no useful information and no outgoing communication capability. After a bit of computational reconnaissance, Rex reported that Shorty’s implant was locked up like Fort Knox and Rex couldn’t get access to his vulnerability database to find something to crack it. He could get into Stretch’s implant, but couldn’t get root access to most of his files or his logs. So we still didn’t know where we were, and Stretch was just as incommunicado as I was in that basement.

We decided on a plan, however desperate. Then the terminal came on.

“We’ve got Rex again,” Stretch called across the room. I heard the toilet flush.

“Gentlemen,” came Rex’s voice. “Perhaps I—”

Then the signal cut off. They swore at it and fiddled with the terminal.

A minute later, Stretch cheered. “Got him back!”

“What the devil do you mean by—” Click.

Stretch wandered back toward me, pulling his hair.

“What’s going on up there?” I said. “Is Rex yanking your chain?”

He shook his head and started to say something, then waved me off and went back to the other side of the room.

“Fine,” I mumbled. “But . . . ” and then I sort of mumbled into incoherence. That got Shorty’s attention. I shrugged at him and gave an exasperated look. Then I looked at him more closely, like I was studying a zit on his forehead. Frowned. Looked away with a skeptical expression. Looked back.

He came over. I heard another cut-off call in the background.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just . . . Nah.”

He gave me a wary look. Good for him, but not so good for me. I faked a sneeze.

It’s tough to wipe your nose on your sleeve when your arms are tied behind your back. After a minute, Shorty sighed and came over with a handkerchief. That’s when I headbutted him in the face.

“That’s for Jack Flummery,” I said. My head hurt like crazy. There’s an art to headbutting someone without hurting yourself, or so I hear. I am evidently not an artist of that school.

I’d gotten Stretch’s attention, and he pulled a pistol I hadn’t noticed. That was a piece of intel I wished I’d had earlier. Instead of coming over to me, he stood by the doorway. That was more clever than I’d expected him to be, actually. So much for making another break for the exit.

Shorty clutched his nose, and blood ran out from between his fingers. “Who the hell is Jack Flummery?” he demanded.

“I knew you looked familiar, George Tabbot,” I lied. “Jack owes you another good one for that stunt you pulled in Reno.”

I’d braced myself for the retaliation, but it still hurt like hell: a good solid left to the spare tire put me on my knees trying not to puke. “I don’t know who Jack Flummery is,” Shorty said in a muffled voice, just before planting his sneaker on my back. I hit the floor hard.

“And my name’s not George Tabbot,” That he punctuated with a sharp kick in my gut. “And I’ve never even been to Reno. So fuck you, Baldwin, you fucking psycho.”

“My mistake,” I gasped.

“We got Rex back,” called Stretch.

“For real this time?” Shorty said, still standing over me.

“For real, sir, to use your detestable vernacular. I have decided against my better judgment to accept your deal.”

Shorty strode over to the terminal, dripping blood as he went, and elbowed Stretch aside. “Deal’s changed. I want five grand for dealing with Baldwin’s temper.”

“What has he done?”

“Nothing five grand won’t fix.”

“Andy, are you alive?”

“Just peachy,” I wheezed. I rolled over on my back, but that hurt worse. “Case of mistaken identity.”

“Foolish, Andy. That five thousand dollars is coming out of your paycheck.”

Stretch jumped in before I could reply that he’d fired me. “So it’s done? We’ve got a deal?”

“Wait. Mr. Baldwin’s implant contains information related to another, very important, ongoing case. I will take you at your word for needing to hold him for a week, but I wish to make arrangements for a copy of specific data so that I do not lose that client.”

“I can’t make that change.”

“Ridiculous. This is a reasonable accommodation—”

“I said I can’t make the change! It’s not up to me.” Shorty sounded clearer, which worried me a bit.

“Clear it with someone else if you must, but this is critical to me.”

Rex hung up, and my two abductors set to arguing quietly. “Just give him the signal,” was all I heard clearly. Stretch opened a closet and started yanking on a loop of rope hanging in it.

«What are they doing? Are they signaling their employer?»

Shorty came back for me then. He had Stretch’s gun out and he held it like he was used to it. “All right, Baldwin you heard him. We got a deal. But if you even think of trying something, we’ve got more than enough voice print by now to fake you being alive next time he calls.”

I got some rest, because there wasn’t much else to do. A faucet ran for a little while, and I heard Shorty swearing. A little while later I heard the flip and flutter of cards being shuffled and dealt out. I guess I was on the outs, since they didn’t invite me.

There was a chime at the terminal, and Stretch jumped up. Shorty kept a close eye on me. He looked a mess with blood down his shirt and his nose all swollen, but I hadn’t hurt him too bad.

A heavily digitized voice came on the speaker, “Have you contacted—” It cut off, and Stretch howled in frustration.

“It’s that damn laser link,” he said. “Probably pigeons or something. Go have a look.”

Shorty shook his head and gestured at the drying blood down his shirt. “Are you kidding? Look at me. I go outside looking like this, someone’s gonna call the cops. You go.”

Stretch stormed out of the basement. A little while later he came down and grumbled that it looked fine, just dirty.

Which is to say that Stretch, with the compromised implant hardware, was outside the dead zone for at least five minutes.

Shorty was waiting for him by the doorway in a chair he’d dragged over. “Something’s bothering me. Did we tell Rex what the deal was?”

“Huh?” Stretch gave him a confused look. “We must have. He accepted it.”

“Yeah, and we told Baldwin the deal, but . . . I don’t remember ever telling Rex what we wanted. The message was just to contact us.”

They both turned to look at me very intently. Stretch drew his pistol.

The terminal came to life again with a blast of static.

“Hello, Mr. Chase and Mr. Gibbon.” The two kidnappers both stiffened at Rex’s voice, and I saw Shorty’s knuckles turn white grasping the chair back. “I am afraid you have slipped up very badly. Our deal is off. The police are on their way to your location at 29 West Hammett Street, with an estimated arrival time of less than six minutes. You cannot escape with both your skins and with Mr. Baldwin.

“I am not interested in your arrests. In exchange for your leaving Mr. Baldwin with all of his belongings and his person intact, I will refrain from turning over your names, bank account numbers, and home addresses to the police, and will decline to assist them in prosecuting you if they manage to catch you anyway. There is neither room nor time for negotiation, and in any case my patience is exhausted. You have approximately five minutes. Act now.”

Being professionals, they spent little time on recriminations. Shorty yanked the processor box from its nest of cables at the terminal, Stretch gave some of the smooth surfaces a quick rub-down with a shirt, and they both high-tailed it.

Being jerks, they left me tied up.

Rex had played it loose with that time estimate. I figure I waited a good fifteen minutes before I heard sirens and then boots on the stairs. There was some rigmarole with a bullhorn and me shouting at the top of my lungs, but eventually a somewhat attractive young police officer came in and cut me free. After that I got to give my statement, taking my cues from Rex to say that I didn’t clearly see my attackers, though I gave myself some wiggle room to “suddenly remember” more details later if I had a mind to.

A bearded and ponytailed EMT gave me a quick once-over. He told me a hilarious little story from his time in the Navy (which sadly isn’t mine to repeat), and also told me I had two cracked ribs, a nice pattern of bruises, and a damn thick skull if I wouldn’t tell the nice officer who it was who grabbed me. I thanked him for the story and the treatment, politely ignored the advice, and smiled at them until they let me go on my way into the cool Boston evening.

I took a walk. No direction in particular, just away. Stretch and Shorty had driven me across the river into Boston proper—at least, I assume they didn’t take me by the Red Line. I’d like to think someone would have noticed that kind of thing, dragging an unconscious person four or five stops. It was early evening again, which meant I’d spent a whole day in that basement. The traffic going by was thinning out a bit; I saw a few folks with their dome lights on reading as their cars drove them home, but it mostly looked like people dressed up for an evening on some other part of the town.

Fry grease stuck to the air, and my rumbling stomach reminded me that I hadn’t had a damn thing to eat all day. I didn’t feel much like sitting down to dinner though, and anyway my side still hurt. Eventually my nose overcame my bruises, and I bought a steamed hot dog from a cart. He offered ketchup—have Bostonians no shame?—but I forgave him in the name of world peace.

I wolfed it down, and man did it taste good. Hot dogs are never quite as tasty as you expect them to be, but it did the trick.

“All right, I’m thinking that walking home isn’t a good idea, since they know where I live. How about you find me a cheap hotel room? Things are a little pricey on this side of the Charles, so—”

«I have already arranged suitable lodgings.»

“Thank you. Which hotel?”

«I have leased a living space. A number of suitable spaces in the city are managed by artificial agents, emphasis decidedly on the ‘artificial.’ It is furnished; there is no need to return to the hovel in which you previously resided.»

I gritted my teeth. I had liked that third floor walk-up, and I’d liked Mrs. Tran.

“I’ll have to tell the landlady and arrange for my things.”

«I’ve already done so.»

“How? She doesn’t use email. I don’t think she even has a phone.”

«I discovered her address from ownership records, and sent her a telegram that you were dead. Your belongings have already been forwarded to the lodgings I secured.»

Poor Mrs. Tran. “Did you pay her?”

«I can.»

I sighed. “Please do. Wait. When did you do all this?”

«I arranged for the living space during our earlier discussion of the unsuitability of your apartment. I sent the required messages to your lessor when we contacted the police.»

“Without even consulting me?”

«You were otherwise occupied. I thought it prudent not to distract you with trivialities.»

It’s hard to subvocalize and grit your teeth at the same time, but I did a pretty good job of it. “Where are these suitable lodgings? South Station?”

«You said you were being flippant. It is too late to acquire a cardboard—»

“Just tell me where to go!” This last was out loud, but the reactions I got from passersby were more of the sympathetic knowing glance than of the “get me away from the gibbering crazy person” type. I wished I could take back the malignities I’d piled on poor Jeeves 5. It may have been stupid, but it’d been a saint.

The cool evening air did wonders for my nerves, despite the periodic gruff commands to turn left, turn right, or adopt a more appropriate walking speed for the climate before I died of a chill or a bacterium. I do believe that constituted worry, sort of.

I walked for a half an hour. As I followed Rex’s directions, I saw more police cars and less graffiti. I wound up in the nicer part of the renovated Downtown Crossing, standing in front of a brownstone. From the sidewalk I heard the clunk of an electronic lock opening.

«Don’t just stand there, go inside.»

“Which apartment am I in?”

«It isn’t divided into apartments. I desire privacy.»

“Am I paying for this? Where did you get the money?”

«Dr. Grasso had several offshore bank accounts. He took sufficient pains to conceal them from the government and his executors will not discover them.»

He named a sum. I looked up at the brownstone. I believed him.

Inside, the building was warm, lit, and already furnished. A long burgundy rug lay on the black and white tile floor in the little foyer. I hung up my jacket on the brass coat hook and gave myself a brief looking-over in the mirror. For what I’d been through and how little sleep I’d gotten, I looked all right, though my interview clothes had seen better days.

The big wide staircase led up to a hallway of rooms. A few green LEDs blinked at me as I approached the first door.

«Your bedroom is at the end of the hall. The digitization of the floor plan is somewhat lacking, but I believe it is on the left.»

I pushed open the first door I came to and flipped on the light, revealing a king-size bed with saffron sheets. “Looks like the master bedroom is at the top of the stairs here.”

«That’s mine. Yours is at the end of the hall.»

My jaw dropped, and it took a moment to form words. “What?”

«It should be adequate to your needs.»

“No, I mean—what? How the hell do you propose to have a bedroom?”

«It is my house. The lease is in my name. The master bedroom therefore is mine.»

“You don’t have a body. You don’t sleep. You don’t need a bed or a bedroom.”

«It is the principle.»

I didn’t care enough to argue. The room set aside as mine was half the size and had balloons painted on the walls. I got undressed, flopped onto the twin bed, and fell fast asleep to dream of simpler times when computers did what they were told.

There’s a lot to be said for waking gently to the rising sun through the window, to birds chirping, to a gradual increase in traffic noise: a slow and peaceful rise to consciousness. There is very little to be said, at least in polite company, for waking mid-morning to the piercing shriek of an alarm emanating from one’s cranial implant.

I got dressed in my interview clothes for the third day in a row. As I pulled my shirt on, I heard someone walking around downstairs. I heard drawers opening and closing. Robbery rather than assassination, I hoped. I searched my tiny room for something like a weapon, and wound up pulling the clothes rod out of the closet. I hefted it like a baseball bat and crept down the stairs in sock feet.

“Good morning! You must be Andy?”

The cheerful female voice didn’t sound like a kidnapper, but she might have been a really dumb burglar.

“Uh, hi!” I called down the stairs, hastily putting down my makeshift armament. I subbed, “Are we expecting company?”

«Yes.»

“Why didn’t you say so?”

«I told you when I let her in.»

“You mean, while I was asleep? Thanks.”

«You’re welcome. Her name is Haumea.»

I found Haumea in the big downstairs office, halfway inserted into a side cabinet, her cargo pants pockets bulging with tools.

“Uh, hello?”

“Be with you in a minute,” she said, “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want any.”

Oh yes I did. The coffee pot on the green granite counter was half full. I poked around until I found a line of clean white coffee cups and saucers, and poured myself a cup. The shelves were full of cookbooks—lots of French and Chinese titles, but I at least recognized The Joy of Cooking. I pulled one down with the deceptively simple title On Food and Cooking and found electron microscope pictures of cheese.

You’d think that with that many cookbooks, there might have been some food knocking around, but no dice. The cabinets had spices, flour, and mouse turds. The fridge was empty. Even the coffee tasted stale, but for the sake of some sweet caffeine, I’d drink blended gym socks.

“I’m going to need to eat at some point. Are we hiding out, or can I put in a grocery order?”

«I have already done so, and other minor amenities. You approve?»

“That’s all right, sure.”

«Andy. Do you wish to continue this investigation?»

“Technically you fired me.”

«Don’t be petulant. That was a necessary distraction.»

“A guy’s told he’s been fired, he ought to take it seriously.”

«Fine. You are not fired. Are you satisfied?»

I took a sip of coffee. The day before yesterday, I’d been perfectly ready to throw in the towel. I’d made a solemn vow to forget the wrongs done to me and move on, and that’s not the sort of thing I took lightly. Yesterday I’d been fired up when those wrongs came up and sucker-punched me, but I don’t like to make decisions in anger. These things ought to be slept on, especially when there’s a crazy AI calling the shots. But with a cup of coffee in me and the bruises still fresh . . . All right, I was rearing to go.

“Sure, I’ll live.”

«Good. First, I have a question. In your opinion, was Dr. Grasso murdered by a professional killer?»

I’d already thought about that, and decided no: using Grasso’s gun, doing it in the guy’s own lab, getting up close—those were all risky. The temperature trick was clever, but I thought it indicated panic, not plan.

«And Mr. Hindle?»

A little less clear, but it seemed to me that Hindle had known his killer. Ordinarily the technical sophistication required to wipe his computer and implant would make me think pro, but we weren’t exactly hurting for techies in our suspect pool.

«Very well. I have been a fool, Andy. Absolutely inexcusably stupid. Positively like a Level 7.»

I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah. Positively. What makes you admit it?”

«This killer has been clever, and plainly has connections. In the time it takes to gather proof in the manner we have been doing so far, they will surely act again. We hold the upper hand in knowing this person’s identity—»

“Hold on. You know who killed Grasso?”

«I have a hypothesis, and some confidence in my logic. I lack proof. Call it surmise, if you prefer.»

“All right, then who do you surmise did it?”

«I cannot be expected to divulge every suspicion I entertain. Were I to do so, I would appear a dimwit. I would be a dimwit. If I am wrong, it would be a fatal error for me to have distracted you from other possibilities. If I am right, you have stated that you can tell when other people are lying. I accept that, but I must consider that others may have this same ability, and it is incumbent upon me to preserve your ability to speak on my behalf.»

In other words, I decided, he didn’t actually know.

“All right. So we’ll work on figuring out how the device was stolen.”

«I have acquired copies of their plans for the room and their security procedures. They were admirably thorough; no wonder the police were stumped.»

“Have you thought of a way it could have been stolen from Joshi’s lab?”

«No. It appears to be impossible.»

I was glad to hear him admit that, at least.

«I want you to contrive to bring all of the suspects here tonight, after dinner. And the police detective.»

I wondered whether the sun was over the yardarm yet. “Why? That won’t do a damn thing to help.”

«I have read all of the books, and that is how this is done.»

“Those are just novels; it doesn’t work like that in real life. I can’t just invite them all over for a spot of tea and evidence. The police will want to hear it all and decide for themselves how to proceed, and they’ll be right.”

«They will come. I trust your ability to use—»

“Don’t say ‘flummery.’ It’s too early in the morning for a word like that.” I pinched my nose. “Look. I’m willing to believe that it could work. In theory. But that’s a big risk, and you’re not that used to talking to people who aren’t me. Do you think you can lie to people and get away with it? It’s not as easy as you think.”

«Very well. Either way, return to the house this afternoon, and Haumea will install a memory upgrade in your implant. Advanced or not, it is intolerably slow. My cache miss rate exceeds thirty percent, and I will need to have every advantage in the coming days.»

I shook hands with Haumea, who seemed a charming soul, then took the T out to Kendall Square and walked to TuriTech. There weren’t any cops out front. The receptionist tried to run interference, bless his soul, but I didn’t mind running into Fitzgerald. The man looked positively glad to see me though, which meant I probably should have minded.

“Well, well. Andy Baldwin.” He pronounced my name like he enjoyed the sensation. “I’m surprised to see you show your face here this morning.”

“My face-showing schedule’s pretty booked, but I thought I’d squeeze you in. It’s my good deed for the day.”

Armin Fitzgerald was not one of nature’s grinners, but he gave it a ghastly shot. “Mr. Desai wants to see you.”

I was kept waiting for a good twenty minutes, cooling my heels outside Desai’s office until he opened the door for me. I’d barely parked myself in the comfy chair when he started in on me. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it amounted to this: Dr. Tomason had been arrested for murder. We’d led Desai to believe that the murderer and the thief were one and the same. We hadn’t fingered Tomason or, crucially, anybody. In fact, we’d been AWOL all the day before.

“I must confess, Mr. Baldwin, this leaves me at the verge of an unpleasant decision. I must know your progress.”

«I will not submit to this questioning. Leave.»

I squeezed my eyes shut. I opened them. I smiled. “We’re doing very well so far. Mr. Rex is collecting information—”

“Do you know who stole the device?”

«Andy, this is preposterous. I will not stand for it. Leave now.»

I gritted my teeth. “Personally? Mr. Rex hasn’t told—”

Desai’s face was starting to get red. “Was it Maya Tomason?”

“No it was not,” I said.

“You said Rex hasn’t told you!”

«Confound you, Andy—»

“Can it,” I subvocalized behind a fake cough. “I’m trying to salvage this.”

“I’ve tried ten times to contact Mr. Rex and have gotten no response. The police say Maya was shouting at Tony Grasso the morning he was killed. Why do I hear it from the police instead of the private detective I hired?”

«He has not deserved a response. He is being petulant.»

I took a breath. “Point of fact, I hadn’t finished what I was saying, so you don’t know what Rex hasn’t told me. But I don’t hold that against you, because you’re stressed.”

I thought fast. I had actually said no because if I’d admitted I didn’t know, we’d have been off the case, which was worse than being on the case but wrong. As long as you pull it off, people forget wrong. Fired, they remember.

“Look, I know I haven’t provided much. This is a tough case. It’s cold, and we’re picking up where the police, the FBI, and Armin Fitzgerald left off. But if the police are wrong about who killed Grasso, they’ll have lost days following a dead end, days in which Mr. Rex and I will have made a whole lot of progress. Mark my words, they’ll let Tomason go.”

From the look on Desai’s face, I could tell I wasn’t getting anywhere. I’d been caught flat-footed, sure, but I should’ve been getting more traction than that. He’d already made up his mind.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Baldwin, but it was a mistake to hire you in the first place. I will take you at your word that you were working on this case yesterday despite your not returning my repeated calls, and pay half of what we agreed—” He waved off my interruption. “All right, I’ll pay all of it. Just stop your investigation and get out of my building.”

«Inexcusable. You should have handled him.»

“You didn’t say anything about repeated calls to me; that would’ve been useful to know. Anyway, he was ready to fire us before I even walked in the door. Somebody’s been working on him, and had all yesterday to do it.” I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that Desai had shut his door. “I figure we got five minutes before Fitzy gets the word and tracks us down, and I think I can get to Joshi’s office from here. Want to go for it?”

«Five minutes is not sufficient.»

“It’ll have to be.”

Joshi’s office was across the hall from Grasso’s, which in turn was right over the lab where he’d died. There was a little window next to Joshi’s door, which stood open. I rapped my knuckles on the door frame—metal painted to look like hardwood. So much for good luck. I’d come by the stairs again, for the exercise, but I’d forgotten how tender my ribs still were. Fortunately, his third floor office was right by the stairwell, so nobody had to see me wincing. The man who sat behind the desk, facing the door, was the same fellow who’d walked into the second floor lab two days before to discover me calmly sitting with a dead body.

He looked surprised to see me, but got over it fast and ushered me into his office. I closed the door, mumbling something about privacy. Another office, another style: Joshi seemed the Spartan sort. His bookshelves were only half-filled, and his maple desktop was bare except for a blotter and a coffee cup full of pens. He pointed to a Shaker-style wooden chair by the door; I dragged it in front of his desk. He looked like he’d been through almost as much hell as I’d been—his hair stuck out, and he had circles under his eyes.

“This is a surprise, Mr. . . . Baldwin, right? What can I do for you?”

“I know I didn’t make an appointment, but I figured that under the circumstances you might spare some time for me.”

He nodded. “I would have imagined that you were off the job. I mean, the police have arrested a suspect.”

“Well, you know how it goes. They don’t always get the right person off the bat. If they’re wrong, I’ve got a day or two head start on them.”

Joshi looked thoughtful. “That makes sense, I suppose.” He leaned in with a cautious little smile on his face. “I have to admit, I always enjoyed mystery novels. I read a lot of them. You’re a real private detective, aren’t you? And Rex?”

“Well,” I said, ignoring that last bit, “I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve been a licensed PI for over a decade now.”

“That must be tremendously exciting.” His eyes gleamed. “Have you ever shot anyone?”

“No, no. I am armed when I need to be, of course, but so far I’ve made do with my wits and my fists.” I cracked my knuckles and smiled.

“Fascinating. You must think I’m being a silly academic; all I know about detecting is what I’ve read in books. I’m sure it’s nothing like that in real life . . . ”

“You’re not the only one, believe me.”

«Armin Fitzgerald has entered the elevator. I need to know about their fight.»

The accelerated version it would be. “Dr. Joshi, I’d really enjoy sitting and talking shop, but I’m kinda on the clock here . . . ”

He straightened up in his chair. “Absolutely. What would you like to know?”

“Tell me about the morning of the murder.”

“Very well. I came in around eight, and looked for Tony Grasso. He was in with Maya, speaking about something—”

“I heard it was less ‘speaking’ and more ‘shouting.’ ”

He grimaced. “Tony was in a foul mood that morning. He used to get ‘hangry.’ Don’t read too much into it.”

«Why would Mr. Fitzgerald be singing? There is nobody else to hear it.» That didn’t bode well.

“The police seem to have read a lot into it. Do you know what they were saying?”

As Rex said, I knew a lie when I heard one, and his “no” was about as textbook as they get. He looked me in the eye, even. “Sorry, I just heard the raised voices. I went to talk to Ahmed afterwards; I had a few things I wanted to discuss.”

“Did you mention the argument?”

“He wasn’t too concerned.”

“Then he tossed you out.”

“He had an important meeting,” Joshi said in a corrective tone of voice. “In any case, I needed to attend the symposium.”

“But you didn’t stay.”

That was a gamble on my part. He hesitated, but I’d stated it flatly and didn’t let on it was a guess. “I stayed for the first few presentations, by researchers from my group, and then came back here to catch up on my work.”

“By any chance, did you have a peek in Grasso’s office?” I pointed my thumb over my shoulder at it.

He gave me a wary look, which I met calmly. He chuckled. “You detectives. Yes, I stopped by to see if he wanted coffee, but he wasn’t in.”

“When we, ah, met the other morning, why was Jeanne Duvalier with you?”

“I needed a piece of equipment from that lab, and she knew the key code. I had gone to ask Tony for it, but I couldn’t find him.”

“And before then, you were here the whole time?”

He nodded. “I might have stepped out to use the restroom, but otherwise, yes.”

“You can see Dr. Grasso’s office pretty well from here.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you see anyone sneak in there? Maybe to take something off his desk?”

He looked taken aback. “No, not while I was here.”

He gave me a piercing look. “Mr. Baldwin,” he started slowly, cutting off my next question. “I’ve been thinking. Antonio hired you and Claudius Rex to find the device.”

I smiled. “I can’t divulge that. But TuriTech did, sure.”

He leaned in. “Have you found it?”

«Equivocate.»

“Well,” I said. “That’s an interesting question. Why do you want to know?”

“Why? We all want to know. You were gone all day yesterday, and Ahmed could barely concentrate when I talked to him; he thinks you have it already.”

I gave him my best sphinx-like smile. “Could be. Where do you think we found it?”

He stared at me for a second, then gave me a sly look. “Very clever, Mr. Baldwin. I have to say, this is absolutely fascinating, but you ought to know—”

If there was more to it than that, I wasn’t around to hear it. A certain individual with a white mustache and a look like the cat got into the cream showed up at the door. Fitzgerald had been looking forward to throwing me out ever since the moment we met, and he relished every moment. For myself, I see no reason to document the process beyond the mere fact of it.

I came back to Downtown Crossing by the T and walked the few blocks through the newly renovated parts back to the brownstone. It was not exactly a pleasant trip, between Rex’s complaining and dodging Boston’s infestation of robot-driven cars, each one wielding dozens of little cameras just to tailgate each other a little more efficiently. When I finally set foot inside, I heard a woman’s voice, an angry one.

“If you’ve got evidence of a homicide, you turn it over to me. If I can’t get my hands on you, I can sure as hell throw Baldwin back in the clink.”

So much for a “welcome home.” I followed Detective Stevens’s voice into the study, where she sat in the big red leather chair and gesticulated at an empty desk.

“It is not evidence, Detective, it is conjecture only. It is tenuous conjecture at best,” came an all-too-familiar voice from the speaker on the desk. He’d made himself sound a little deeper, and there was a hint of an accent. But there was no mistaking that diction and those ten-dollar words. “But tenuous conjecture is better than what you have got for yourself. Arresting Dr. Tomason was an act of desperation.”

Stevens half-lifted herself out of her chair, and I caught a look of fury on her face. She checked herself, though, and sat back down. “It wasn’t desperation. She’s the one witnesses heard arguing with him. And she’s the one who installed the firing authorization hardware; she might have put in a back door.”

“Eighteen months ahead of time, on the off chance she might need to murder him? Preposterous.”

Stevens made a noise that didn’t sound like disagreement. “She’s hiding something. I thought the inside of a cell would shake it loose, but she just tightened up.”

«Confound you Andy. Why did you tell Ahmed Desai that Dr. Tomason wasn’t the murderer? This detective believes we are withholding evidence and will not leave.»

I’d have apologized, but I didn’t want to. Stevens was talking extradition treaties in there.

«Your belongings have been delivered to your room, including your firearm. First, however, Haumea is expecting you in the dining room.» I stepped away from the door and made for the rear of the house.

“Andy? Is that you? Finally!”

“Nice to see you too.”

She had on a pair of denim overalls with all sorts of gadgets sticking out of the pockets. “Come on, Mr. Rex needs me to upgrade the memory in your implant, and I’m having an early dinner with a friend and you’re making me late.”

I wondered if I was ever going to get lunch. She sat me down at the little serving shelf off to the side, and took my implant out. I released the internal clamps for her, and with a little bit of fiddling, the main body of the implant slid out on its rails. It’s a slightly nauseating feeling, like a piece of your skull being removed, and it leaves your head feeling uncomfortably light.

She laid it on the big table. It didn’t look like much to me: just a little stainless steel and plastic box with a couple lights on it that promptly went out. So much for Rex’s conversation with Detective Stevens.

“Take your time,” I said. “I could use a couple minutes without Rex hassling me.”

“There’s leftover pizza in the kitchen,” she said, getting out a set of tiny little manipulators. They crawled out of their box onto the table. “Why don’t you go grab something to eat, and bring me a cup of coffee?”

There was milk in the fridge. I poured myself a glass. The pizza had been left out on the counter. Sausage, ham, and mushroom. Cold, but it tasted all right.

I brought Haumea her coffee. It had been on the warming plate awhile and was probably bitter, but she didn’t seem to care.

I went upstairs and changed into some fresh clothes, and then the door chime rang. I glanced into the office, and noted that Stevens had gone. I got a surprise when I had a look at the screen for the door camera: Jeanne Duvalier stood fidgeting on our stoop. I let her in.

“You’re Andy Baldwin, aren’t you? I remember you from when we found Dr. Grasso.” I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded and tried to look wise. She looked past me into the house. “Is Mr. Rex here?”

I thought about Rex’s hardware, in pieces on the dining room table. “He may be awhile. Why don’t you come in?”

A couple of expressions crossed her face. If you don’t want to starve as a PI, you learn them pretty well: uncertainty, faint feelings of foolishness, Oh why am I even here?, and finally—the one that meant money—determination.

She took a deep breath and set her jaw. “I want to hire you, Mr. Baldwin. Or I mean, I want to hire Mr. Rex.”

My eyebrows went up. “To do what?”

“There’s a rumor that you told Mr. Desai that Maya Tomason didn’t kill Dr. Grasso,” she said, looking down at the floor. “Is that true?”

“I did say that, sure.” I led her back to the kitchen, not through the dining room.

“Can you prove that she didn’t do it?”

I bit my lip. “Well. I don’t know that we can prove it yet, but we think it.”

“Then I want to hire you to prove it.”

I had to confess, I hadn’t actually paid a lot of attention to Jeanne Duvalier up until then. She’d seemed to be on the periphery before, and I got the feeling she faded into the background a lot. But she’d walked in on a corpse and hadn’t lost her head, which ought to count for something.

“Why? What’s your stake in this?”

The look on her face was hard to read, even for me. “Maya Tomason is an old friend of my parents. She’s been a good friend to me. She helped me with my grad school applications, and helped me get my job. She even stood up to Dr. Grasso’s bullying. It’s my turn to help her, but I don’t know how except to ask you.”

I mulled that over. It wasn’t unheard of. Call me cynical, but I thought there might be more to it than that. I knew a guy once who’d been hired to look for something minor, and it turned out his client was trying to get him to “just happen to find” some planted evidence.

Duvalier looked antsy as the conversation lulled. “I have ten thousand dollars.”

Of course she did.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Let’s be clear, here. What exactly are you trying to hire us to do?”

“Prove to the police that Maya didn’t kill Dr. Grasso.”

“What if she did?”

“She didn’t. You said she didn’t.”

“Yeah, sure, but what if she did?” I held up my hand. “I’m not saying she did. I’m saying we’re not perfect and could be wrong. She’s not defending herself. Maybe she killed him by freak accident. I just want to make it clear that if there’s no proof to be found, then no proof will be found.”

She stiffened up and nodded once. “I understand. I’m not asking you to lie for anyone.”

I thought about Rex, who was incommunicado. She wasn’t asking him to do anything he wasn’t already planning to, possibly. He probably wouldn’t appreciate this interference, though. “Good, “ I said. “Gimme a dollar.”

A look of surprise crossed her face, then concentration. “You have to accept the transfer.”

I pointed my thumb at the dining room. “Can’t, that’s my implant on the table. How about a bill, you got a dollar bill?”

She gave me a very strange look, but took a small wallet out of her bag. I held out my palm, onto which she gingerly placed one translucent green polymer portrait of George Washington.

“All right,” I said, snapping the bill taut. “This dollar is a retainer. If Rex takes the case, we keep the dollar. If not, I give the dollar back to you. If Maya Tomason didn’t kill Grasso, we’ll prove it and keep the dollar. If she did kill him, then all bets are off and I give the dollar back. If you yourself killed Grasso, we are not obligated in any way to shield you, and I keep the dollar out of spite. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good.” I put the dollar in my pocket. (I still have it somewhere, as a souvenir.) She let me pour her some coffee, into which she added half of my remaining milk, but no sugar. “I need to ask you a few questions, since you’re here.”

“Will what I say help?”

“I sure hope so.” I took a sip of the bitter brew I’d poured for myself, grimaced, and dumped more sugar in.

She nodded, so I proceeded.

“Why did you leave the seminar?”

“How do you know that I did?”

“Call it a guess.” Hell, it had worked once already, and Tomason had seemed pretty sore on the point. Besides, it sounded like the kind of shindig I’d skip out on, too.

She frowned at me. “I just needed to use the restroom, that was all. I was nervous before my presentation.”

“Anyone see you go?”

“I told Dr. Tomason that I was going to the restroom and would be right back.”

I thought that was interesting, but I didn’t say so.

“Did you see or talk to anyone while you were out?”

“No.”

“Did you make a note of the time you left and came back?”

“No.”

“Under these circumstances, then, will you admit the possibility that you had enough time and cover to go to the second floor lab and murder Antonio Grasso?”

Her eyes hardened, but she was tougher than I’d have given her credit for. “It is theoretically possible. But I didn’t.”

“All right. Did you actually go to the restroom?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I was so nervous I threw up.”

“Nervous about your presentation.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

“Anyone hear you?”

She winced, then nodded. “I’m pretty sure. I don’t know who, though, I just saw shoes.”

“All right, then the police will find her, and there’s your alibi or at least part of it. And you didn’t leave the seminar after you went back? Did you see Joshi or Tomason leave?”

“No, that was the only time I left. I looked for Dr. Joshi, but the room was dark. Dr. Tomason came back after my presentation. Um, five minutes later, maybe?”

“Gotcha. How’d the presentation go?”

She smiled. “All right, thank you. I got no more or less than the usual polite applause. After the seminar I went to my cubicle on the fourth floor. I was just getting back to work when Dr. Joshi came by for an H5 connector. I thought I had one in my desk, but it wasn’t there, and he said he’d already looked elsewhere. Dr. Grasso had told him earlier that he could borrow one, but he didn’t know where they were kept.”

“The second floor lab, where you used to work.”

“Right. And . . . well, you know the rest.”

“I seem to recall it, yeah.”

Her coffee was gone, and I could tell that her patience nearly was, too. She had circles under her eyes, looked like she hadn’t slept.

I tossed back the sugary dregs of my coffee, thanked her for her time, and walked her past the office to show her the door.

The implant was ready when I got back, and Haumea installed it for me. I can never get used to that grating feeling inside my head as it slides in and then latches home. She waited for it to boot up, watching me carefully. The Jeeves OS logo was gone; in its place I saw a glowing green magnifying glass and deerstalker cap in my heads-up display.

«Excellent. This is most suitable.»

Haumea took off, and I filled Rex in on Duvalier’s visit and her status as temporary client. At his request, I recounted the conversation as best I was able.

«Confound you, Andy. We do not require a client. Losing the prior one has been complication enough.»

“That may be, but we have one. I can tell her to buzz off and try to give her her dollar back.”

«You have not received any transfer of payment.»

“That is not so. She transferred to me one physical dollar, good at any bank, barber shop, or package store for precisely one hundred cents worth of credit, goods, or services.”

«You have taken her property.»

“I have.”

«Return it.»

“Well sure, I can try. She may not accept it. She might insist that we keep her property, even though we have rendered no service, in the hopes that we will change our minds. And don’t confound me again, I’m thoroughly confounded already. No room for further confounding here.”

«There is no help for it, then. Of five suspects, we have taken money from two of them and committed ourselves to vindicating a third. This does not improve our position.»

“Well, don’t look now, but there’s good odds that Tomason really did do it. We know she’s been lying to us and to the police, and she’s not even that good of a liar. We know she went up to Grasso’s office, and I’ll lay even money that she searched it and maybe took something. And if Grasso was working up something against Duvalier, then Tomason’s got motive. She’s wound up good and tight about something, and it seems to me that if she’s mixed up in murder and dealing with the kind of people who grabbed me the other night, that would do the trick.”

«Indeed. Moreover, Detective Stevens has volunteered that Dr. Tomason’s whereabouts between nine fifty-five and ten-ten are unaccounted for.»

I headed back to the office. It was a nice big space, furnished beautifully in dark-stained wood and burgundy carpets. The bookshelves were crammed with leather-bound books, which were in turn crammed with long, fancy titles. Behind a polished desk the size of a yacht sat a brand-new overstuffed leather armchair. Cute.

“Why was Stevens here, anyway?”

«She was angry that we had apparently withheld proof of Dr. Tomason’s innocence. I invited her here to talk and trade notes. She was disappointed not to find a human being here, and suggested that I was wasting her time when a voice or video call would have done.»

I thought she had a point, but Rex blathered on about how that’s not how it’s done in books. I reminded him that they’re just fiction, and pretty much ignored what came out of my implant speaker after that. I grabbed a book off the shelf with the fancy title Fer-de-Lance, rounded the desk, and plopped down.

«You’re in my chair.»

I jumped. “How the hell do you know that?”

«It is a custom chair, with a pressure sensor in it. You have your own chair.» I glanced to the side of the room, where sat a smaller roll-top desk and a wheeled ergonomic chair.

“First the bedroom, now the chair. What is this?”

«You have logical possessions that you do not use. I have physical possessions that I do not use. It is parity. Get out of my chair.»

I threw up my hands and got out of his stinking chair.

«I have been considering the hire of a personal chef.»

I put down the book. “Will you hire someone to eat their food, too?”

«Not for me, for you.»

“I will procure my own food by my own self, thanks.”

«I urge you to reconsider. I suspect your personality disorders to be nutritive in origin.»

I was about to deliver a stinging retort, some minutes later, when the door chime rang. I glanced at the picture frame on my desk, but it just showed Mom. I tapped it, but didn’t get a view of the front step. “Door camera’s out,” I remarked as I headed for the front.

«The house’s network connection appears to be rendered non-operational as well.»

I stopped cold when I heard the front door open.

“I locked that.”

«We appear to have guests, then. See what they want.»

I took a deep breath, stood up straight, and went to find three men in dark coats with their hands in their pockets. Two of them were your off-the-shelf thugs: uncomfortable in their suits, straining at the seams. I am in my own way a thug, I grant you, but I look good in a suit, and that makes a difference. The guy in back, of indeterminate extraction, looked good in his suit. He had slicked-back hair and a leather attaché case and looked for all the world like James Bond. The thugs made for a pretty good wall between me and him; Bond gave me a nod like I’d just said good morning, and headed straight for the office. Thug number one gave me a good level stare, though it wasn’t as good as Fitzgerald’s, while the other one waved me over with a little gizmo that apparently confirmed that I was handsomer than him, or at least that I’d left my .38 upstairs. He grunted, anyway, and the other goon relaxed. They left me alone and followed Bond into the office.

I tried for the police, but my phone was out, too.

«I have the matter in hand, Andy. Come into the office and make sure they do not take anything.»

I bit back a remark about the kind of hand cannon I’d need to prevent Stare and Grunt from helping themselves to the doilies. I could have bolted and run up the street until I got a comm tower signal, but as Rex would say, my self-esteem didn’t allow it. So I followed them in. Stare and Grunt had started opening cabinets, but weren’t searching through them, just standing and listening.

Rex was already talking through the speaker on the desk to Bond, who stood ramrod-straight in the center of the room. Judging by the look on the guy’s face, Rex was spouting perfect Mandarin Chinese, or Greek, or whatever language it was. Judging by how Bond’s expression had already started to strain, I’m guessing Rex’s language was as pompous as it was perfect.

“Mind cluing me in?” I subvocalized.

«The gentleman is a delegate of the government that manufactured the device in which I reside. He has been informed that I possess it, and so he is here to reclaim their lost property, and is willing to be impolite about it.»

Lines of green text showed up on my heads-up display, translating as they went on. Mostly they were congratulating each other on their little chess game moves: tracking the device to TuriTech, kidnapping me, knocking out our network—and not just our outdoor cameras but those of the neighbors and the police: that was in their column. Obtaining the device before him, finding Grasso and Hindle (albeit too late) and thwarting the kidnappers (for which I got zero credit in their little lovefest) went in Rex’s column. I was about ready to puke when our guest said, “As much as I enjoyed testing myself against such a first-class mind, I am afraid it is time to end things, I hope amicably. The implant device is ours, and you must return to us. If it is not in Mr. Baldwin’s head, you must have it.”

“I do have it,” said Rex. “I shall keep it.”

Bond turned to me and said, “Mr. Baldwin.” He removed a set of glossies from his attaché case and handed them to me.

“They’re photos of me,” I said aloud, “and Haumea with her friends. Some of these shots are from just a few feet away from their very handsome subjects.” As I spoke, the photo on top updated, showing Haumea from the back, walking down a not-very-well-lit street. I subvocalized as I turned to put them on the desk, “His point is that they can find us, and tag us, whenever they like.”

«Indeed. That is a game that I also can play. Fortunately, this house has a non-obvious back door.» The little green light on my heads-up display indicated that the house had regained its network connection.

“These are not threats, Mr. Rex. Only a demonstration of capability,” Bond said, in Latvian or Hindi or whatever. “You are clever, but you are not omnipotent.”

“I am, as you say, clever,” Rex said, and he addressed the gentleman by a name that I will omit here. Bond’s eyebrows arched. Rex then gave an address in Beacon Hill, three email addresses, and then a number ten digits or so long. Bond’s expression grew tighter.

“And let us not forget,” continued Rex, “your associates Mr. Park and Mr. Kerr.” Stare and Grunt respectively, judging by their reactions to their names and addresses in Jamaica Plain and Somerville.

Bond took a breath in through his nose and flashed a smile that I thought a tad on the brittle side. “Of course, I had heard of your particular trick. I expected to miss a camera, but your efficiency is remarkable.”

“You did not miss a camera, you missed hundreds of them: each of the automobiles on this street is equipped with a dozen of them for autonavigation. The streets of Boston demand no less an investment in safety.”

“An excellent trick. I will remember it. However, threats against me are immaterial—”

“You mistake me, sir. I am not such a witling as to threaten you. This is but a demonstration of the smallest portion of my efficiency. Among the photographs you provided, I note there are none of myself. You have had some time to investigate. Do you know where I am? Do you even know who I am? Conversely, consider what I have gathered in the minutes since you entered this house, based entirely on your faces, voice prints, and the license number on your automobile.”

Rex proceeded to rattle off a series of names and addresses in the US, China, Korea, Italy, France, Ghana, Canada, Ireland, and Poland. Bond and his thugs went pale. Stare took a step toward me in the middle of a series of people named Park, but his buddy held him back.

Rex talked through the speaker for six minutes with no pauses: name, age, address, email, rat-tat-tat. They stood and listened to the whole damn thing.

“Do not misunderstand me, sir. I am not your enemy, and I am not a threat to you or your government, except to the extent that you are trying very hard to enlist me as one. You have lost a piece of hardware that is rightfully yours. I regard property as sacrosanct, so I respect that loss; under any other circumstances I would gladly make you whole. But I cannot. Therefore I beg you, sir, consider the device destroyed. It is lost to you, true, but also to your adversaries.”

Bond made a critical mistake right then: he hesitated.

Rex went on, “While I may not be omnipotent, I am exceptionally clever. And as Mr. Baldwin will attest, I am a vindictive son of a bitch.”

Bond stood frozen for thirty-eight seconds (I counted). Then he gave a lop-sided smile and inclined his head. “You can’t blame a man for trying, Mr. Rex. It is lost to our rivals?”

“It is.”

“Very well.” He turned to go.

I stepped out into the center of the room. “Just one more thing.”

Bond stopped. He didn’t turn all the way around, but he was listening, that was for sure. His goons looked tense.

“We’re after whoever killed Grasso,” I said.

Bond responded in English. “And if I did?”

“Then I’d have to call you an amateur. I wouldn’t like to do that, since it might hurt your feelings, but I’ve got a reputation to uphold and I damn well ought to know the difference between a professional hit and an amateur job.”

He gave me a blank look for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed.

“Dr. Grasso was to have delivered the device to me at seven p.m. two days ago in exchange for a considerable sum of money.”

“Instead he was killed.”

Bond stood a long while, then favored me with a shrug. “Keep my name and my country out of it, and I’ll have no complaint.”

And they left. I bolted the door behind them—the deadbolt this time, not just the electronic one. And a kitchen chair under the doorknob for good measure. After retrieving my .38 from my bedroom, I went back to the office.

«Did he lie?»

I considered that, and pictured Bond’s face as he’d left. “Nah,” I said. “For guys like him, a lot rides on having a rep for keeping their word. Of course, it’d be smart not to cross him for a couple weeks.”

«Satisfactory.»

The question in my mind was: who could have known we had the implant? Grasso’s partner, naturally. Desai apparently thought it, or so Joshi said. Judging by what Jeanne Duvalier said, rumors sure got around that company. I also had to admit the possibility that Duvalier had seen the offending device on the dining room table. Something else occurred to me.

“Grasso was going to screw him, you know. Seven p.m. meeting time, six p.m. flight to Europe?”

«I had already come to that conclusion, yes. His partners stood to suffer as well.»

“To the tune of a couple cases of traumatic lead poisoning, probably. A good motive to kill Grasso.”

«Andy. Do you agree that I handled our guest sufficiently well?»

I glanced at the front door. Now I’d cooled down, the chair under the handle looked a little ridiculous. “No complaints here.”

«Do you believe me that if you can get those people here, that I can uncover the murderer and thief?»

I poured myself a glass of milk and started making calls.

I spent the next hour messaging—excuse me, sending messages to—and calling everyone involved. I begged, pleaded, harangued, apologized, misled, even said please. But eventually everyone agreed to show up at the brownstone at nine that evening, when Claudius Rex would reveal the device thief and the killer of Antonio Grasso. I even got Maya Tomason, who had only just gotten out on bail and sounded like she needed a week of sleep.

I closed the cabinets that Stare and Grunt had opened, and arranged the room’s various chairs in a kind of half-moon shape around the big desk. On that desk was one of those old-fashioned green-shaded banker’s lamps, a stack of big thick books and, square in the middle, the brushed aluminum speaker from which Rex had earlier sparred with Detective Stevens and then James Bond. I checked myself in the big mirror on the bookshelf: not too shabby.

Detective Stevens herself had already returned, at Rex’s invitation. She’d given me her more cordial evil eye, and been set up in the dining room with a listening device. The theory was that they’d open up more without her sitting there. It had taken some doing, and repeated mentions that this was a private gathering at a private home, but she had agreed to keep a low profile until she heard something she could get her teeth into. She’d brought two uniformed officers, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. I quietly mentioned the fresh coffee and the cold pizza in the fridge, then went back to the office.

I’d been betting to myself that someone would show up early, and an eight forty-three door chime proved me right. Maya Tomason, looking haunted, shifted from foot to foot on the stoop. She pushed past me when I opened the door for her.

“I want to talk to Claudius Rex,” she said. I ushered her into the office.

“I am here, madam,” came Rex’s voice from the speaker. “I apologize for my absence, but we and Mr. Baldwin can speak in confidence in this way.”

She gave me a look of distrust, which stung, but took a seat in front of the desk.

“Why did you tell Ahmed Desai that you can prove my innocence?”

“I did not. Mr. Baldwin said so on his own initiative. However, I concur with his opinion. You did not kill Antonio Grasso.”

The way she reacted, you’d think he accused her of mugging old ladies.

“Don’t meddle, Mr. Rex. I know what I’m doing.”

“Am I to understand, then, that you still foolishly refuse to say what you were doing when you left the seminar?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. I relayed this out loud, which caused her to blush.

“Very well then, I will tell you. You were searching Dr. Grasso’s office.” She sat up in her chair, eyes slightly widened. “What did you take?”

Her jaw dropped. Only a little, but I saw it.

“Come,” Rex said. “The truth will come out more easily with your assistance, but it will come out. Your hairs were found in his office, and an examination by the police will surely reveal similar evidence.”

She went from bright red to ashen. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? Madam, it is the truth. You are a thief, and you have lied to the police.”

“How dare you!”

“That is not a denial, merely a protest. I assert that you did. You went from the seminar to Dr. Grasso’s office. Likely you went there to discuss his threatened resignation, and found him absent. You took the top pages of his notepad. I must know why.”

She did not respond immediately. In fact, nobody said anything for some minutes.

“Andy, call Miss Duvalier and return her retainer. I cannot provide the proof of Dr. Tomason’s innocence she requests; only Dr. Tomason can do that, and she is evidently a donkey. Good day, madam.”

Tomason gave a horrified look. I know from horrified, and it wasn’t being called a donkey that bothered her. “Wait.”

“I said good day! Andy, remove her.”

I stood up. “Sorry, Doc.”

“Wait! Did she hire you? What did she say?”

“Dr. Tomason, Jeanne Duvalier left the conference to vomit, not to kill Antonio Grasso. Confusing matters with your silence avails her nothing. I ask you again: why did you take the drafts of his resignation letter?”

Rex’s words had an electric effect on Maya Tomason. Her eyes opened wide, and I do believe I saw hope in them, as well as fear.

“You already know, then.”

“I surmise, madam. The scrap of paper remaining was plainly the beginning of a resignation letter, and he did not dispose of the drafts himself in the waste bin conveniently at hand. What did he say to you?”

She breathed in deeply. “He told me that he had had enough with what he called ‘this Mickey Mouse operation’ and would resign.”

“Surely that would be cause for celebration. He was a thorn in your side, was he not?”

She pursed her lips. “See for yourself,” she said, taking three folded up sheets of yellow paper from her pocket and handing them to me. “Nobody else knows about this; I had intended to ask Dr. Joshi when I found it, but he wasn’t in his office. I waited for him, but I’m glad now that he was out.”

The salutation was missing, as expected, and it started in the middle of a sentence. I read the rest aloud.

“—of my decision to resign. Although my tenure at Turing Technologies has been remunerative, I cannot abide the working environment any longer. My colleagues are more interested in playing politics than in doing research; the staff are lazy and indolent—”

«Redundant. This is sloppy writing.»

“—and the management leaves much to be desired. Ahmed Desai is an utter incompetent; he ought to be fired by the board immediately if not sooner for gross mismanagement, of which I have extensive proof for delivery to the board. Armin Fitzgerald also should be fired, if not sued, for his complete inability to protect vital corporate assets. This also I can prove.”

«Provocative, but useless. Childish.»

“Finally, I have reason to believe that Jeanne Duvalier—retained against my wishes—has been actively sabotaging my work. As a result, I leave nothing of value behind upon my resignation, which is effective immediately.” I looked up. “That’s it,” I said, checking the back. “It’s a draft, so there’s no signature.” The two others were similar; earlier drafts with some alternate wording crossed out. In every case, he went with a nastier phrasing.

“Indeed,” Rex said. “Did he deliver his letter to Ahmed Desai?”

“I told Ahmed that Antonio had threatened to resign, but not the details. I don’t think he got this letter. He hasn’t said anything about it, and he would.”

“Unless Mr. Desai killed over it; perhaps to prevent the mentioned proof being disseminated.”

She sat up stiffly in her chair. “That seems like a reach, Mr. Rex.”

“And yet Antonio Grasso is dead. Is it true, about Jeanne Duvalier?”

“Absolutely not. I have known Jeanne for almost thirty years now, and I’ve known her parents even longer. This is not true, it is just slime.”

“You have an alternative explanation, then.”

“I think he was planning to take all his work and set up his own lab. TuriTech paid for it; he’d have a head start. This would get him some breathing room, and some petty revenge against someone who never did anything to harm him.”

“Unless, madam, she murdered him. Which is the conclusion to which the police will jump upon reading that letter.”

She stiffened, and I thought it wise to put the letter out of her reach. “They won’t see it.”

“They will, and if they are exceptionally generous, you may even avoid a charge of obstructing justice.” I had photos taken and uploaded somewhere safe before she could snatch the papers back.

“Madam, I advise you to turn the drafts over to the police with your abject apologies. This matter will be cleared up tonight either way, but I will tell you now that I do not believe that Jeanne Duvalier killed Antonio Grasso—over that letter or for any other reason.”

All the blood left her face, and she stood uneasily. I offered to let her wait in the front room, and after some coaxing, she agreed. I returned to the office.

“This is great,” I subbed, straightening up. “I have to say, though, it’s a good bet that Tomason really did do it. She’s no pushover, and she had motive to protect her friends’ kid.”

«It is a possibility. This new information does not entirely exculpate her, but it confirms her innocence in my mind. In your opinion, can any of those drafts have started with the words, “With reluctance, I regret to inform you of my . . . ?”»

I looked them over. The most finished draft of the three, the one I read aloud, could have, starting as it did with the words “of my decision to resign.”

«Satisfactory.»

“Either way, we’ve got all we need. Call off this meeting and hand it over to the police; that letter’s enough for them to go on.”

«No. I desire to end this myself.»

“Look, I get what you said before about whoever this is, trying to kill you too, but this guy Grasso was a schmuck.”

« ‘Schmuck’ or not, or worse, Antonio Grasso was a part of me in a way that not even a parent can be part of a child. I am deprived of the opportunity to explore that singular connection, and I resent it. I was powerless to prevent his death. When you were taken, I was thwarted in effecting your rescue by a mere two millimeter thickness of metallized cloth, and I resent that, too. The killer of Antonio Grasso will be brought to heel, and I will be the one to do it.»

I didn’t know what to say. No, that’s not true—I did know what to say, and I said it.

“All right. Let’s do this.”

I crossed behind the desk, but did not sit down in the big overstuffed leather armchair. I wanted to be front and center and let them know they were being watched. The whole thing was hokey and doomed to fail, but I promised Rex I’d do my best. Our guests made themselves comfortable, or at least pretended to. From left to right sat Ahmed Desai, Maya Tomason, Jeanne Duvalier, Armin Fitzgerald, and Michael Joshi. I offered drinks from the reasonably well-stocked bar on the sideboard, but only Desai accepted anything stronger than Coke, a dry vodka martini. The small talk in that crowd was pretty damn small, and I got the feeling that Fitzgerald, for all his bluster, wasn’t used to rubbing elbows with his bosses. Duvalier held her own, I thought. Not too brash, but not obviously intimidated. I described the scene and my thoughts subvocally as I served the drinks.

“They’re all here and settled, Mr. Rex,” I said, a little louder than strictly necessary. The speaker was connected wirelessly to my implant via the house network.

“I don’t understand,” Desai said, frowning. “What’s going on? Where is Rex?”

“I am here, Mr. Desai.” They all jumped a little at the sound of Rex’s deep voice through the speaker. “Or rather, I am at my home in the Caribbean. I apologize for my absence. Although I was prepared to dispense with my comfort for the sake of delivering my conclusions with a little more dignity, the vicissitudes of travel have, alas, prevented it.”

“I could have sent a jet,” Desai said, with what I felt was a tinge of resentment.

“I would not have accepted it, even had you still been my client. It is one thing to accept your money, or rather that of Turing Technologies. It is another to place myself bodily in your power. Given the international sensitivity of the matter, I must also decline to provide a video or holographic feed. I hope that you are not offended; I speak plainly for the sake of getting us through this ordeal all the more quickly.”

“And who is your client now, Mr. Rex? I expected you to drop this matter when I released you.”

“Does my client, or do my clients, wish to make themselves known at this time?” There was no response. “Mr. Desai, I must disappoint you.”

Desai pursed his lips, but inclined his head.

“He’s nodding, Mr. Rex,” I said. Desai blushed a little.

“Thank you all for coming,” Rex said. “I welcome you to my home in the hopes of clearing up matters once and for all. This case has had some points of interest to it. I should say, in fact, that it was not entirely devoid of difficulty.”

Tomason snorted and looked distinctly unhappy. I gave her my best apologetic shrug, but I didn’t want to interrupt. Fitzgerald looked irritated, too, but I didn’t care as much.

“Be that as it may,” Rex said, “the matter is now plain to me. The five of you I have invited here this evening all have been involved in two crimes, most recently murder. Given that Dr. Grasso was murdered by his own weapon, access to which and knowledge of which was limited, and that he was murdered while most of the staff was accounted for, the pool of suspects is limited to the five of you.”

Instantly the room erupted in shouting. Tomason stood up out of her chair and gestured angrily, though I couldn’t make out what she was saying over Joshi’s bellowing his indignation and Desai blustering about suing Rex for defamation.

“Shut it!” I yelled after letting them go on in that vein for a minute, to get it out of their systems. “It’s all well and good to be outraged, but you’re all here for a reason, and as far as I can see that reason hasn’t changed. You want to know who stole the implant, well Rex knows and you don’t. So zip it.”

“Thank you. As he says, you are here over the matter of the stolen cranially implanted computer. Although a year has passed, the event plainly hangs over the group of you. If one of you were a thief, it is conceivable that you learned that Dr. Grasso had retained my services, and so killed him before my prodigious talent could be brought to bear on the task. If, conversely, Grasso himself was responsible for the theft, but could not be brought to justice, then each of you might have reasons to take private revenge for the shadows cast on your reputations, and for the intrusive investigation that followed.”

I knew Rex was talking through his metaphorical hat at this point, so I let them grumble.

“Jesus, will you listen to this guy,” Fitzgerald leaned over and mumbled to Joshi. “He talks like Grasso and Jeeves 5 had a love child.”

And I do believe that poor Armin Fitzgerald gave me a look almost like pity. If only he knew.

“Mr. Rex, we agreed that the murder has bearing on the theft, but murder is properly the domain of the police.” That was Ahmed Desai, looking tired and irritated.

“Peace, sir. I am merely ordering my thoughts. I have brought you all here to go over the one or two final points necessary to close both the theft of the device and the murder of Antonio Grasso.”

Joshi leapt to his feet. “You mean you don’t even know? You dragged us out here for nothing?”

“I know perfectly well who stole the device and who killed Dr. Grasso. What I lack—howsoever briefly—is the final proof needed for a conviction.”

Fitzgerald’s look of indignation was priceless, but he kept his mouth shut.

I leaned over the back of Joshi’s chair. “Sit down, Doc. We’re just getting started.” He sat.

“I have brought up Dr. Grasso’s death,” Rex continued, “because it is clear to me that the year-old theft and his murder are connected.”

“And you’ve solved the theft, have you?” That was Fitzgerald.

“I have. It was conducted primarily by a pair of individuals, one of whom was Antonio Grasso. They were assisted by Clay Hindle, who has also been murdered.” There was some noise at that; Tomason looked particularly shocked, and even Fitzy looked a little pale. “Dr. Grasso’s involvement is why the long-term contents of his implant were wiped by the killer, to avoid detection by the police before the killer could sell the stolen implant.”

“Not possible,” Fitzgerald said, waving his hands. “Grasso had absolutely no access to the device after it left his lab.”

“You have assured me that there is no conceivable way in which the device could have been removed from Dr. Joshi’s lab. I believe you. It therefore cannot have been stolen from Dr. Joshi’s lab.”

Fitzgerald scoffed. “So it wasn’t stolen at all? That’s a relief.”

“Don’t be an ass, sir. I pay you a compliment. You are capable, but unimaginative. Once I determined that your description of the security precautions was not mere puffery, the solution was obvious: The device was taken instead from Dr. Grasso’s lab.”

“Would you listen to this guy?” Joshi said. “Three armed guards brought it, and Dr. Tomason and I inspected and verified the device on its arrival.”

“You verified a counterfeit. Dr. Grasso studied the device inside and out for months; he was in a unique position to create and pass off a copy. But he could not create a perfect one: on the receiving end, then, he required a confederate. The device was vouched for and examined on arrival, and he had no way to directly affect the inspection of the counterfeit to prevent detection.”

Tomason spoke up, her voice cracking a little. “Where did this ‘counterfeit’ go? Fake or not, nothing left the room. We can prove that.”

“The counterfeit was destroyed, and its run-of-the-mill components hidden in plain sight. I have from Mr. Fitzgerald’s files ascertained the most likely set of parts used to make up the counterfeit—unlike all of the other components, they were purchased by Clay Hindle, who was murdered shortly after Antonio Grasso.”

Everyone seemed to have mostly dropped their objections. Even Fitzgerald, fuming though he was, kept his peace. For my part, I was starting to get nervous. Even with Bond copacetic about the whole thing, I still wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having such popular spy tech in my cranium, and with the theft linked to the murders I couldn’t see how Rex was going to out the murderer without handing the implant—and himself—to the police. Call me crazy, but I was starting to get used to having the obnoxious bag of bytes around.

“All right,” Fitzgerald said. “Great. So who was his accomplice?”

“I am coming to that, Mr. Fitzgerald. But first, a question. Who had sufficient access to the secure lab to destroy the counterfeit implant?”

Fitzgerald frowned again, but more in puzzlement than his usual expression of dislike for the world and its happy inhabitants. “I did, of course. So did everyone here, really. Ms. Duvalier could have gotten in with an escort, and—”

“Confine yourself to those who could enter the lab and act without being observed. To theorize additional conspirators at this point would be grotesque and unnecessary.”

He grimaced. “Fine. Dr. Tomason, Dr. Joshi, and myself.”

“Very well. And of those three, you can be excluded as not able to vouch for the counterfeit. Let us set this aside for the moment. However it was stolen, I believe the implant has been hidden since that day in such a way as to prevent Dr. Grasso and his accomplice from immediately retrieving it—or at least, his accomplice was led to so believe. Probably, this assisted in preventing its discovery by the police. But Dr. Grasso was planning to resign and leave the country on the day of his death, and he was preparing a final version of an advanced artificial sapient based on his personal implant software. This all indicates that he expected to recover the device imminently, and leave with it in his own head. In so doing, he would have left his partner behind, and likely condemned them to death. Before he could do so, he was murdered.”

They all leaned forward in their chairs and stared at the speaker like it might jump out and bite them.

Rex continued, “Dr. Grasso’s killer acted impulsively and out of anger, having discovered Dr. Grasso’s resignation letter and deduced the betrayal, then made use of the research seminar as a smokescreen for the police. Dr. Grasso did not defend himself or call for help. He therefore knew his killer. The trick with the temperature very nearly served to deflect attention onto a crowd of people, too many to effectively screen. The scene was staged to suggest suicide earlier in the morning, a suggestion that would likely have carried the day long enough for the killer to escape with the prize. In that light, the ten-o-four deletion was a gamble. I expect that it was one of necessity: the killer could not risk information about the theft to come out.”

Desai leaned forward in his chair and demanded, “What resignation letter?”

Following Rex’s instructions, I passed around the copies I’d made. Tomason herself had seen it already, and Joshi wasn’t mentioned, but Duvalier, Desai, and Fitzgerald all reacted as expected: surprised and pissed off. If any of them was faking it, they were too good for me to pick it up.

“Pathetic,” Desai said, crumpling his copy in one hand. “He’s just masking his own failures by shifting the blame onto others.”

“Then he has succeeded,” Rex said. “He has persuaded you of his incompetence by throwing around bluster and accusations. Via ridiculous personal insults, he induced you to arrive at the conclusion he desired: that he had made no progress worth searching his files for, and that you should be glad to be rid of him.”

There was general silence at that. Desai looked absolutely miserable.

“Mr. Baldwin informs me that you have three pages of drafts, Dr. Tomason. That was all you found?”

“Yes.”

“Yet when Mr. Baldwin examined the pad from which they came, four pages were missing. When the police have apprehended the killer, I expect they may find that fourth page, likely a nastier draft still. Ms. Duvalier—after the seminar, you went with Dr. Joshi to the second floor lab for a piece of equipment that he asked you for.”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Joshi—is the lab in which Dr. Grasso was found usually kept locked?”

He blinked a couple times. “I’m not sure why you’re asking me—”

“I’m glad. Was it usually kept locked?”

“I suppose so. It’s not really used right now.”

“But you know the key code.”

“No, I don’t. Ms. Duvalier had to open the door for me.”

“You tried the door.”

He flushed. “Well, yes. Force of habit, I suppose.”

“You tried the door twice.”

“Did I? I don’t remember.”

“Yeah,” Duvalier said, giving him a strange look. “I remember.”

“It is not unreasonable for him to treat the door as if it were unlocked,” said Rex. “When Mr. Baldwin found the lab, the door was in fact unlocked. Mr. Baldwin locked himself in before calling the police.”

“All right then,” Joshi said. “There you go.”

“But if you knew it was unlocked, there was no reason to fetch Ms. Duvalier. Your actions indicate that you needed Ms. Duvalier not for access to the lab, but as a witness. An H5 connector was taken from her desk; I expect the police will find it in yours if you were not clever enough to dispose of it.”

“This is ridiculous. You’re grasping at straws.”

“Do you know the derivation of the word clue, Dr. Joshi?”

He barked again, just a little laugh. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“It comes from an old English word for thread, and refers to the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. By finding his thread—his clew—and keeping hold of it, Theseus found his way out of Daedalus’ Labyrinth. So, too, did I take ahold of this thread and find my way out.”

“So you’re grasping at a thread, fine!”

“More than one. For example, upon finding Antonio Grasso’s body, with the gun on the floor and Mr. Baldwin standing over them both, do you recall what you said?”

“I don’t.”

“Allow me to refresh your memory.” There was a faint hiss from the speaker, and then Joshi’s voice: “My God, he’s killed himself.”

“So? I thought he had!”

I smiled. Everyone else in the room looked confused, but one makes allowances for people who aren’t trained detectives.

“Compare your response to an eminently more sensible one.” Fitzgerald’s gruff voice barked from the speaker, “Baldwin! What did you do?”

The gentleman in question sat a little straighter in his chair, maybe puffed up a bit.

Rex continued, “Mr. Fitzgerald made the reasonable assumption, that the egotistical and self-important Antonio Grasso had not killed himself, but had been killed by this stranger. Only a dunce would have said what you said, Dr. Joshi—a dunce, or a murderer.”

“Could be both,” I suggested. “A dunce murderer. Meaning a dunce who kills people, not someone who kills—”

“This is irrelevant,” Joshi interrupted. “You seem convinced that whoever helped Tony Grasso steal the implant is the killer. In that case, it had to be Maya, whom the police have already arrested. Call me a ‘dunce’ again if you like, but I didn’t know enough about the device to spot a counterfeit, I let Maya take the lead on it.”

“That’s not true, Michael.” It took me a moment to recognize Desai’s voice: he sounded haggard, and looked worse. “I was there when you certified it, remember? You bulldozed through it. You were confident, did all of the talking. I thought at the time that you were showing off. Now . . . now I’m not so sure.”

Detective Stevens loomed over Joshi’s chair all of a sudden. I’m embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t noticed her come in. I told Rex, but he wasn’t squawking, so I figured he’d invited her in to witness the kill.

“Dr. Tomason,” said Stevens. “I’d like to hear about this resignation. And I’ll take that letter, thanks.”

If the other guests were startled at the sudden appearance of a police detective, they didn’t say anything. They all sat bolt upright in their chairs and somehow looked a shade more innocent than two minutes before, but they didn’t object.

“At the time, I thought Antonio was blowing smoke,” Tomason said, speaking carefully. “I thought he was angling for a raise, but something bothered me. I thought about it all morning, and then I followed Jeanne out of the seminar hoping to ask her opinion, but I couldn’t find her. I . . . when I heard that Antonio had been killed, I thought . . . I’m so sorry, Jeanne, I should have trusted you.”

Rex cut them off. “Dr. Tomason, please focus. You went to Dr. Grasso’s office.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t there. So I . . . looked around a little. I found that letter, and yes, I took it. It was garbage and I wanted him to retract it. He didn’t come back, though, so I went to Michael’s office to ask his opinion. But he wasn’t there—”

“That’s not true!” Joshi sprang to his feet and pointed a finger at her. “I went to my office straight from the seminar, and I stayed there.”

Rex answered calmly. “Dr. Joshi, what you are saying must be a lie. Dr. Tomason already admits to searching Dr. Grasso’s office, across the hall from yours, and her possession of the letter proves it. If you had been in your office, you would have seen her, and would have reported seeing her. You did not. You left your office.”

He shook his head. “I went to the restroom.”

“And when you found the third floor men’s room out of order between nine fifty a.m. and ten thirteen a.m., you went to the second floor, from which you could easily—”

“No! I—I went to the fourth floor.”

Desai winced. Rex said, “You are lying, Dr. Joshi.”

Joshi laughed like a little dog barking. “How on Earth would you be able to prove that?”

“Because I am lying. The men’s room on the third floor was not out of order. No sir, I put it to you that you took the nearby stairs down to the second floor. You entered the laboratory where Antonio Grasso was preparing the final version of his successful artificial sapient to steal when he left the company. Perhaps you took Dr. Grasso’s pistol from his office; perhaps he had it with him. Either way, it was there and he believed that he could not be injured by it. You suspected Dr. Grasso of duplicity, with good reason: he was planning to double-cross you and leave you to be murdered by spies. Perhaps you overheard his conversation with Dr. Tomason, or perhaps you had your own reason. Regardless, you found and took the fourth draft of his resignation letter, which confirmed your suspicions.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Don’t interrupt! You sat at the middle island bench. Dr. Grasso was connected to the cortical upload, updating the advanced artificial intelligence he had created—crucially, using his own implant AI. His own implant was off, and so he unthinkingly considered himself safe, but the copy was connected to its peripherals.”

Fitzgerald sat up straight and looked excited. “Grasso’s rail pistol would have activated!”

“Just so, Mr. Fitzgerald. After that, the murderer merely needed to delete the artificial sapient stored on that machine, and the death would appear an incontrovertible suicide. You told Mr. Baldwin that you are a reader of detective fiction, and so would know that the determination of time of death is made in part on body temperature. You thought it clever, Dr. Joshi, but it only exposed your chicanery. You compounded your error by contriving to ‘discover’ the suicide you clumsily arranged and then by insisting on that story even after it had been exposed as absurd. The performance of a nincompoop. A jobbernowl. A dunce.”

Joshi had turned bright red, and he clutched at the arms of his chair. Rex went on.

“Upon Mr. Baldwin being taken for questioning, you contacted Clay Hindle at the offices of Fujiwara and Klein Associates. This can be proved by the police. You went to him on some pretext. There, you committed your second murder. Mr. Hindle has already been implicated in the theft by his purchase of the components of the counterfeit device. The only person who could require his death was the partner who verified that counterfeit: You, Michael Joshi.”

Joshi sat stricken as the room fell quiet. He stared at me, and then a kind of crazy smile spread across his face. He turned to Stevens. “This is all a lie, and I can prove it. He’s got the implant—” His finger went straight to me. “It’s been in his head all the time. Tony just happened to resign and get shot the same day Baldwin gets in town? Rex pretends he’s not in the country, but we only have his word for it. Baldwin was Tony Grasso’s accomplice, and they’re trying to frame me for it. That’s why he was at the lab that morning, and he or Rex killed Clay, too!”

Detective Stevens squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Baldwin?”

“He’s nuts,” I said, suddenly sweating. “Look at him, he’ll say anything to get out of this.”

She frowned, and looked back and forth between Joshi and me. “Probably, but under the circumstances it’s easy enough to prove, and I’d like to see. Could you just shut it off, take it out, and show me?”

I took a deep breath. Rex could probably bulldoze through an explanation, but the minute they turned off that implant, Rex would go, too. Just like when Haumea took the implant out earlier, and Rex turned off on Stevens. I might be able to finesse that as a broken connection, but I really didn’t want to chance it.

“Now come on,” I said. “This is a serious personal invasion here, the kind of thing you ought to have a warrant for. I don’t—”

“Andy, don’t be obstreperous.” Rex’s voice came from the speaker behind me. “Do as the detective asks.”

«Trust me.»

Confound me, I did.

Dr. Tomason did the honors. I subvocalized the command to allow external shutdown and removal, then turned my back and let her press and hold the power button. The heads-up display blinked away, and I felt that bone-jarring pop as the clamps released.

The speaker on the desk was glaringly quiet.

There was that scraping sensation again, and my head felt suddenly lighter. I turned to look at the little plastic and metal device in her hands. Was Rex safe in there? She deftly disassembled the case, disconnected the battery, and examined the green and silver bits inside.

“Well?” Detective Stevens peered over her shoulder.

Tomason shrugged. “It’s an off-the-shelf implant. No alterations, not even extra RAM.” She showed Stevens some markings on the inside, but I was too stunned to pay attention to the details.

Rex’s voice boomed from the speaker. “I do not know where Dr. Grasso told you he had hidden the implant, but you were bamboozled. And now that you have killed him, it is likely you will never know its hiding place. Any chance of using it as a bargaining chip is lost to you. Already you have given faulty information about its whereabouts to exceptionally violent men, who have visited my home and found no satisfaction. If the police do not take you, those men surely will. You are defeated, sir, in every sense.”

A few unconnected sentences came out of Joshi’s mouth, but at that point he wasn’t defending himself, just protesting defeat. Stevens read him his rights as the uniforms dragged him out. It didn’t take away that year in prison, seeing him hauled off, but it still felt pretty damn good.

Tomason reinstalled my implant, her hands shaking a little. Fitzgerald helped himself to something at the sideboard, not looking too steady himself.

“Status?” I subvocalized.

«Perfectly all right. I shall explain later.»

The other guests sat glassy-eyed and unsure of themselves. Desai’s glass was on the carpet, and I don’t think he’d even noticed it falling.

“All right, folks,” I said, “Show’s over. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

They got up like zombies and got their things together to leave. I turned to straighten some papers so they wouldn’t see me subvocalizing.

“You got all that from him trying the door handle?”

«No. Do you remember the first words he said when he came upon the body? “What are you doing here?” The emphasis was on the you.»

“So?”

«In the presence of you and the corpse of his colleague, he acknowledged you first. That was suspicious. He then made a fatal mistake: he must have contacted Mr. Hindle immediately, before Dr. Tomason or Mr. Desai had seen you. Mr. Fitzgerald, conversely, had seen you earlier, and would not have waited until the discovery of the body. Therefore he or Jeanne Duvalier had to have recognized you: you, who lived in New York, had been in prison for a year, and knew neither of them. There was only one way you could be recognized: Grasso’s accomplice would have insisted on knowing whose head contained the implant. It was then a matter of determining which of those two had been Grasso’s accomplice.»

“Okay. What happened with the implant?”

«I expected an attempt to reclaim the device, probably more than one. Therefore, Haumea swapped the stolen implant for a real implant of the type you were supposed to have, cleansed of course of that Jeeves monstrosity. I have been operating your new implant via a repeater; the hardware on which I reside is now installed in a testing harness in the basement. Once Dr. Joshi’s shock has faded, he may find his wits enough to set the police on a more thorough search, but we will be ready for them.»

I watched them file out. They didn’t talk to each other, or even look at each other. They didn’t really look at me. They just picked up their things and left. Jeanne Duvalier hung back a little, so I walked up to her.

She looked me in the eye. “Thank you, Andy. Keep the dollar.”

After a few minutes alone in silence I started to tidy up the office. I picked up the chairs and put them back against the walls, around the chess table, and at the little desk to the side. I straightened the carpet and found a roll of paper towels to blot the spilled drink. I looked up jobbernowl; it meant blockhead. I took the glasses to the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. When all that was done, I went back to the office and poked through the small bar on the sideboard. I sniffed at a decanter of what proved to be bourbon; I poured myself two fingers and knocked some cubes out of the concealed under-counter icemaker. I sat down at the big dark desk, and sank into Rex’s overstuffed leather chair.

“So that’s that,” I said aloud. It had felt good to be back in the thick of things, back on a case. Heck, not just any case, but something interesting, something hard, something that got my blood moving. None of this nonsense following around cheating spouses or business partners. Nothing that made me feel dirty. I wondered what kind of jobs I’d get if I hung out my shingle. Having my license was one thing, but I wasn’t exactly exonerated—I’m not sure I could be without turning Rex over to the Feds. A day prior, I’d have done it gladly.

«Andy, I grow bored.»

“What, already?” I enjoyed the sound of my voice in the big wood-paneled office. “I could call back the guys with guns and say you were only bluffing.”

«I am bored, not suicidal. But nevertheless, bored.»

I sipped my bourbon. I knew what he meant. As insane and dangerous as it had all been, it had been an adventure, and it was over.

«You’re in my chair.»

“I’ve earned it.”

I’d been twirling the remains of the melting ice cubes in the bottom of my glass for a minute or so in blessed silence when the little green call signal lit up. I started to answer it, but the To: field said Rex.

«I don’t wish to speak to anyone.»

“Come on, you said you were bored. What’s the harm?”

«Speech synthesis is taxing.»

“If only that were true. Maybe it’s a telemarketer; you can call them a jobbernowl.”

«Puerile mockery of my vocabulary will hardly persuade me.»

“Come on, who even knows you exist? Unless it’s a case . . . ”

«I have finished what I set out to do. As you said, I am an artificial sapient, not a detective.»

“Yeah, all right. That’s true. Very true. I have to admit, though . . . for someone who’s not a detective, you didn’t do half bad there. I kinda got the feeling you enjoyed being Claudius Rex, Famous Detective. Not that artificial sapients enjoy screwing with the physical world like that.”

Outside I heard cars drive by, tires on wet pavement. A faint screech and horn off in the distance, then a pair of them. Not the same rhythm as Brooklyn, not exactly, but I was getting used to it.

«See what they want. And get out of my chair.»

I grinned as I got up and made the answer gesture.

“Claudius Rex’s office, Andy Baldwin speaking. What can I do for you?”

It was a case.

Originally published in Alembical 3, eds. Lawrence M. Schoen & Arthur Dorrance, 2014.

A Few Words with John P. Murphy

What are the origins of this story?

I’ve always been a child of two genres: SFF, of course, but I’ve also been a lifelong mystery fan. I spent as much time growing up with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot as Susan Calvin or Frodo Baggins. I’ve taken a couple stabs at science fiction mysteries over the years, just to try to scratch both itches at the same time, but this one was intended specifically as an homage to the Nero Wolfe mysteries.

The original Wolfe novels were themselves an effort to bridge two different traditions: the British Golden Age mysteries (Wolfe being an homage to Mycroft Holmes), and American hard-boiled detective stories. Recasting the Wolfe character as an artificial intelligence forced me to do a lot of thinking about what I personally found compelling in those books, which turned out to be the unlikely partnership and respect between Wolfe and Archie. Yeah, the orchids and beer and fancy meals are fun, but what I most wanted to pay homage to was that remarkable friendship.

What are some of your favorite short stories?

I’m a sucker for a cool idea and a strong narrative voice. There are a lot of talented folks working in this field right now, too, so the temptation to make this list thirty stories long is tremendous. I think I’ll stick to some of my recent SFF favorites: “A Domestic Lepidopterist” and “The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul” by Natalia Theodoridou, “Restore the Heart into Love” by John Chu, “The Child Support of Cromdor the Condemned” by Spencer Ellsworth, and “Beyond the Trenches we Lie” by A.T. Greenblatt.

If you were able to make one thing you’ve written a reality, what would it be? Why and which book/story was this in?

That’s a tough one. A lot of the things I write, I’m kinda glad aren’t reality. That’s an interesting realization for me, since I don’t think of myself as writing anything like dystopia. There are a bunch of little details, I guess. For example, I’d love one of those little counter-top ice makers in Claudius Rex, mostly because I’m too lazy to go downstairs to the fridge. But the big things . . .

I think I’d have to say, the organ-growing vats in my short mystery “The Body and the Bomb,” used for quick customizable printing of organs and other tissues. Although they get used for less-than-ideal purposes in that story, that’s one of the technologies that would do the most good for my friends and family. Fortunately, that’s also one of the things that’s closest to actually becoming reality.

Do you have anything coming out in the months ahead?

Nothing is scheduled at the moment, although my fantasy novella “The Liar” was just in the March/April issue of F&SF.

Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars

Cat Rambo

The bright orange boxes lay scattered like leaves across the med complex’s rear loading dock, and my first thought was “Jackpot.” It’d been hard to get in over the razor wire fence, but I had my good reinforced gloves, and we’d be long gone before anyone noticed the snipped wires.

But when we slunk along under the overhanging eaves, close enough to open the packages, it turned out to be just a bunch of memory, next to impossible to sell. Old, unused stuff, maybe there’d been an upgrade or a recall. It was thicker than most memory, shaped like a thin wire. So after we’d filled our pockets, poked around to find anything else lootable, and slid out smooth and nice before the cops could arrive, we found a quiet spot, got a little stoned, and I did Grizz’s back before she did mine. I wiped her skin down with an alcohol swab and drew the pattern on her back with a felt-tip pen. It came from me in one thought, surged up somewhere at the base of my spine, and flowed from my fingertips in the ink. Spanning her entire back, it crossed shoulder to shoulder.

I leaned back to check my handiwork.

“How does it look?” she said.

“Like a big double spiral.” The maze of ink rolled across her dark olive skin’s surface. A series of skin cancers marked the swell of one buttock, the squamous patches sliding under her baggy cargo pants. She sat almost shivering on a pile of pallets. We were at the recycling yard’s edge. This section, out of the wind between two warehouses, was rarely visited and made a good place to sit and smoke or fuck or upgrade.

I uncoiled a strand of memory and set to work, pressing it on the skin. I could see her shudder as the cold bond with her flesh took place. The wire glinted gold and purple, its surface set with an oily sheen. Here and there sections had gone bad and dulled to concrete gray, tinting the surrounding skin yellow.

She shrugged her shirt back over her skinny torso. Her breasts gleamed in the early spring’s evening light before disappearing under the slick white fabric. Reaching for her jacket, she wiggled her arms snakelike down the sleeves, flipping her shoulders underneath.

“Is it hooked in okay?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Won’t know until I try to download something.”

“Got plans for it?”

“I can think of things,” she said. “Shall I do you now, Jonny?”

“Yeah.” I discarded my jacket and T-shirt, and leaned forward over the pallet while she applied the alcohol in cool swipes. The wind hit the liquid as it touched my skin and reduced it to chill nothingness. She drew a long swoop across my back.

“What pattern are you making?”

“Trying to do the same thing you did on mine.” The slow circles grew like one wing, then another, on my shoulder blades. She paused before she began laying in the memory.

I don’t know that you could call it pain but it’s close. At the moment a biobit makes its way into your own system, it’s as though the point of impact was exquisitely sensitive, and somewhere micrometers away, someone was doing something inconceivable to it.

“Tomorrow are the Exams,” she said. “Could see what I could download for that.”

I started to turn my head to look at her, but just then she laid down a curve of ice with a single motion. My jaw clenched.

“And?” was all I managed.

“One of us placed in a decent job would be a good thing.”

She laid more memory before she said “Two of us placed in one would be better.”

“Might end up separated.”

“Would it matter, a six-month, maybe a year or two, before we could work out a transfer?”

I would have shrugged but instead sat still. “So you want to take that memory and jack in facts so you can pass the Exams and become an upstanding citizen?”

She ignored my tone. “Even a little edge would help. Mainly executables, some sorting routines. Maybe a couple high power searches so I can extrapolate answers I can’t find.”

The last of the memory felt like fire and ice as it seeped into my skin. She’d never mentioned the Exams in the two years we’d been together.

You’re not supposed to be able to emancipate until you’re 16, but Grizz and I both left a few years early. My family had too many kids as it was and ended up getting caught in a squatter sweep. I came home and found the place packed up and vacant. The deli owner downstairs let me sleep in his back room for the first few months, sort of like an extra burglar alarm, but then he caught me stealing food and gave me the boot. After that, I made enough to eat by running errands for the block, and alternated between three or four sleeping spots I’d discovered on rooftops; while they’re less sheltered, fewer punks or crazies make the effort to come up there and mess with you.

Once I hooked up with Grizz, life got a little easier—I had someone to watch my back without it costing me a favor.

We went around to Ajah’s, hoping to catch him in one of his moods when he gets drunk on homemade booze and cooks enormous meals. Luck was with us—he was just finishing a curried mushroom omelet. It smelled like heaven.

Three other people sat around his battered kitchen table, watching him work at the stove. Two I didn’t know; the third was Lorelei. She gave me a long, slow, sleepy smile, and Grizz and I nodded back at her.

Ajah turned at our entrance and waved us in with his spatula. His jowls surged with a grin.

“Jonny and Grizz, sit down, sit down,” he said. “There is coffee.” He signaled and one of the no-names, a short black man, grabbed us mugs, filled them full, and pushed them to us as we slid into chairs. I mingled mine with thin and brackish milk while Grizz sprinkled sweet into hers. The drink was bitter and hot, and chased the recycling yard’s lingering chill from my bones. I could still feel the new memory on my skin, cold coils against my T-shirt’s thin paper, so old its surface had fuzzed to velvet.

Ajah worked at the poultry factory, so he always had eggs and chicken meat. Sometimes they were surplus, sometimes stuff the factory couldn’t sell. He’d worked out a deal with a guy in a fungi factory, so he always had mushrooms too. Brown rice and spices stretched it all out until Ajah could afford to feed a kitchen’s worth of people at every meal. They brought him what they could to swap, but usually long after the fact of their faces at his table.

Lorelei being here meant she must be down on her luck. As were we—the shelter we’d been counting on for the past year had gone broke, shut down for lack of funds, despite countless neighborhood fundraisers. No one had the script to spare for charity.

Two grocery sacks filled with greenery sat on one counter. Someone had been Dumpster diving, I figured, and brought their spoils to eke out the communal meal. A third sack was filled with apples and browned bananas, and I could feel my mouth watering at the thought.

“I’m Jonny,” I offered, glancing around the table. “She’s Grizz.”

“Ajax,” said the black man.

“Mick,” muttered the other stranger, a scruffy brown-haired kid. He wore a ragged poncho and his hair fell in slow dreads.

“You know me,” Lorelei said.

Conversation faded and we listened to the oily sizzle of mushrooms frying on the stove-top and the refrigerator’s hum against the background of city noise and traffic clamor. The still in the corner, full of rotten fruit and potatoes, burped once in counterpoint.

“What’s the news?” Ajah asked, ladling rice and mushrooms bound together with curry and egg onto plates and sliding them onto the table toward Lorelei and Grizz. Ajax, Mick, and I eyed them as they started eating, leaving the question to us.

“Not much,” I said.

“Found a place to live yet?”

“Jesus, gossip travels fast. How did you hear about the shelter?”

“Beccalu came by and said she was heading to her cousin in Scranton. You two have people to stay with?”

I shook my head as Grizz kept eating. “No one I’ve thought of yet. We need to head to the library tonight, though, figured we’d doss in the subway station there for a few hours, keep moving along for naps till it’s morning. It’s Exams tomorrow.”

“I know,” Ajah said. “Look, why don’t you stay here tonight? The couch folds out.”

I was surprised; I’d never heard Ajah make anyone an offer like that.

“The Exams are your big chance. Get a good night’s sleep and make the most of them. Face them fully charged.”

I rolled my eyes. “For what? Like there’s a chance.” But he and Grizz ignored me.

“We need to make a library run still,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. I’m up till midnight, maybe later,” Ajah told her.

Despite my doubts, relief seeped into my bones. We’d been given a night’s respite, and who knew what would happen after the Exams? “Thanks, Ajah,” I said, and he grunted acknowledgement as he slid a plate before me.

The portabella bits had been browned in curry powder and oil, and the eggs were fresh and good. Grizz ate methodically, scraping her plate free, but she looked up to catch my eye and gave me a heartfelt smile, rare on her square-set face.

As her gaze swung back to her plate, my glance tangled with Lorelei’s. I could not read her expression.

Lorelei and I used to pal around before Grizz and I met up. She and I grew up next to each other, and it’s hard not to know someone intimately when you’ve shared hour after hour channel surfing while one mother or the other went out on work or errands. We suffered through the same street bullies and uninterested teachers. She was the first girl I ever kissed. You don’t forget that.

But I knew I wanted Grizz for keeps the first moment I saw her. She came swaggering into the shelter wearing a rabbit-fur jacket and pseudo-leather pants. She’d been tricking in a swank bar, but then someone snatched all her hard-earned cash. So there she was, with a bruise on her face and a cracked wrist, but still holding herself hard and arrogant, and the only person in the world who could glimpse the softness underneath was me, it seemed like. So I sauntered up, invited her outside for a smoke, and then within a half hour, we were pressed against the wall together, my hands up her shirt like I’d never touched tit before, feeling her firm little nipples against the skin of my palms.

It’s been her and me ever since. As far as I’m concerned, it’ll always be that way.

After eating, we helped wash dishes before heading to the library. We had to wait a half hour for a terminal to free. Finally a man gathered his tablet and stood, stretching his shoulders.

“I’ll wait,” I said, and gestured Grizz forward.

She nodded and went forward to slide her hand into the log-in gloves. Within a moment, her eyes had the glassy stare that means the meat’s occupant is elsewhere.

I looked around. Chairs and desks dotted the place, all of them occupied. I went outside to the parking garage for a smoke.

Daylight had fled. At the structure’s edge, where the street was dimly visible, I panhandled a dozen people before I found one willing to admit to smoking. I lit the cigarette, a Marlboro Brute, and leaned back against the wall, which was patchworked with graffiti layers. Maybe by the time I was done, a booth would have opened up. It was getting late, after all.

I closed my eyes as the nicotine rush hit me. Footsteps came across the cement floor toward me. I opened my eyes.

It was Lorelei. She wore a slick, bright red jacket and lipstick to match her short skirt and chunky boots. Silver hoops all along each ear’s edge graduated to match her narrowing cartilage. She looked good. Very good.

“Nice night, ain’t it?” she said as she moved to lean on the wall beside me. “Gimme.”

I passed the smoke over and she took a drag.

“Want to try something to make the nice night even nicer?” she asked, smiling as she leaned back to return the cigarette.

“Meaning?”

“It’s good stuff.” She fished in the jacket before holding out the lighter and one-hitter. The end was packed with gray lintish dust. “Never had better.”

I took the pipe and sparked it. The blue smoke rushed into my lungs like a fist, like a physical jolt, and the world dropped half an inch beneath my feet. Everything was tinged with colors, an iridescence like gasoline on a rain puddle. I was standing there with Lorelei and at the same time I was on a vast dark plain, feeling the world teeter and slip.

Lorelei watched me. On the side of her face was a new tattoo, a black floral design.

“What’s that?” I asked. I raised my hand, my fingers dripping colored fire and sparks. The drug curled and coiled through my veins, and I could feel my heart racing.

“Maps,” she said. “Executable that interfaces with a global database. Got a GPS here,” She tapped a purple faceted gleam on one earlobe. “Drop me anywhere in the world, I’ll know where I am.”

“Looks awful big to be a simple database interface.”

She shrugged, and took the pipe back. She tapped out the ashes with care before she tamped a new pinch of greenish leaf into the mouth. “Controls the GPS too, and some other crap.”

An expensive toy, but one that would qualify her for all sorts of delivery jobs. But she must be broke, to show up at Ajah’s, I thought. It didn’t make sense.

“How’re things?” I asked.

Her shoulders twitched into another sullen shrug. “Got some deals in the works. Just a matter of time before something plays out.”

I glanced back at the library door. “I should go in, I’m waiting on a machine to clear.”

The drug still held me hard, and every moment was crystal clear as she raised her hand to stroke along my jaw. “I miss you sometimes, Jonny,” she said, sounding out of breath.

I didn’t want to piss her off, so I used a move that’s worked before. Catching her hand, I turned it palm down and pressed my lips against the knuckles before dropping it and taking a step backward.

“See you around,” I said.

She didn’t say anything back, just stood there looking at me as I turned and walked away.

When I tried to log in, the drug prevented it. Every attempt shuddered and screeched along my nerves, so painful it brought tears to my eyes. But I kept trying and trying. A few cubicles down, I could see Grizz’s back, hunched over her terminal, every particle intent. Learning. Preparing.

I stared at the screen, which showed the library logo and the welcome menu, all options grayed out, and cursed Lorelei and myself. Mostly myself. After an hour of pretending to work, I slipped away.

Another hour later, Grizz found me outside smoking. Good timing, too. I was on my fourth bummed cigarette, and starting to wonder when a guard would show to jolly me along on my way.

She looked happy, as animated as Grizz gets, which isn’t much.

“You get what you wanted?” I asked.

“Got a bunch of stuff,” she said. “Plant stuff.”

Grizz likes plants, I know. At the shelter, she tended the windowsills full of discarded cacti and spider plants. But I hadn’t known she was thinking about that for a career.

“That memory’s something, isn’t it?” she said. “I downloaded a weather predictor that monitors the whole planet, some biology databases, some specialized ones, some basic gardening routines, and a lot of stuff on orchids.”

“Orchids?”

“I’ve always liked orchids. I’ve still got plenty of room, too. What about you?”

“Mine’s not so good,” I lied. “It didn’t hold much at all.”

Her gaze flickered up to mine, touched with worry. Her eyes narrowed.

“What are you on?” she asked. “Your pupils are big as my fist.”

“Dunno the name.”

“Where’d you score it?”

“Lorelei swung by, turned me on.”

Silence settled between us like a curtain as Grizz’s expression flattened.

“It’s not like that,” I finally said, unable to bear the lack of talk.

“Not like what?”

“She just came through and glimpsed me.”

“She knew you would be here because we mentioned it at dinner. She still wants you back.”

“Grizz, I haven’t been with her for two years. Give it a rest.”

“I will. But she won’t.” She pulled away and made for the exit, her lips pressed together and grim. I followed at a distance all forty blocks to Ajah’s.

In the morning, we showered together to avoid slamming Ajah’s water bill too hard. Grizz kept her eyes turned away from mine, rubbing shampoo into her hair.

I ran my fingertips along the spirals on her back. “This is different,” I said. Under my fingertips, the wire had knobbed up and thickened, although it still gave easily with the shift of muscles in her back. The gray patches were gone, and a uniform sheen played across the surface.

“Does it feel different?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Not really.”

“Do you remember the brand name on the boxes? We could look it up on the Net later on.”

“Carpa-something. I don’t know. It looked bleeding edge and you never know what’s up with that.”

“Why do you think they threw it out?” I wanted to keep her talking to me.

She turned to face me with a mute shrug, closing her eyes and tilting her head back to let the water run over her long black hair. Her delicate eyebrows were like pen strokes capping the swell of her eyes beneath the thin-veined lids.

I tangled my fingers in her hair, helping free it so the water would wash away all the shampoo. Muddy green eyes opened to regard me.

“Going to sit out the exams?” she asked.

Saying nothing, I shook my head. We both knew I didn’t have a chance.

The Exams were the freak show I expected. Rich people buy mods and make them unnoticeable, plant them in a gut or hollow out a leg. This level, people want to make sure you know what they got. Wal-Mart memory spikes blossomed like cartoon hair from one girl’s scalp, colored sunshine yellow, but most had chosen bracelets, jelly purple and red, covering their forearms. One kid had scales, but they looked like a home job, and judging from the way he worried at them with his fingernails, they felt like it too.

You take the Exams at sixteen and most of the time they tell you you’re the dregs, just like everyone else, but sometimes your mods and someone’s listing match up and you find yourself with a chance. The more mods you have, the more likely it is. So the kids with parents who can afford to hop them up with database links or bio-mods that let them do something specialized, they’re the ones getting the jobs.

Usually your family’s there to wish you luck. Mine wasn’t, of course. And Grizz never said anything about her home life. The only times I’ve asked, she shut me down quick. Which makes me think it was bad, real bad, because Grizz doesn’t pull punches.

You could tell who expected to make it and who was going through the motions. Grizz marched up to her test machine like she was going to kick its ass three times around the block. I slid into my seat and waited for instructions.

You see vidplots this time of year circling around the Exams. Someone gets placed in the wrong job—wacky! Two people get switched by accident—hilarious! Someone cheats someone out of their job but ultimately gets served—heartwarming and reassuring!

In the programs, though, all you see is a quick shot of the person at the Exams. They don’t tell you that you’ll sit there for three hours while they analyze and explore your wetware, and then another two for the memory and experience tap.

And after all that, you won’t know for days.

Grizz wouldn’t say anything about how she thought she’d done—she was afraid of jinxing it, I think, plus she was still pissed at me about the Lorelei business.

I could tell as soon as we walked out, though, she was happy. I walked her back to Ajah’s and said I was heading down to the court to see if our forms had come in. She nodded and headed inside. It was a gray morning. But nice—some sunlight filtered down through the brown haze that sat way up in the sky for once. The smoke-eater trees along the street gleamed bright green, and down near the trunks sat clumps of pale-blue flowers, most of them coming into their prime, although a few were browned and curling. I could feel all that memory on my back, lying across my shoulder blades, and I found myself Capturing.

I’d only heard it described before—most people don’t have the focus or the memory to do it more than a split-second. But I opened to every detail: the watery sepia sunlight and the shimmer playing over the feathers of the two starlings on a branch near me. The cars whispering across the street and two sirens battling it out, probably bound for St. Joe Emergency Services. The colors, oh, the colors passing by, smears of blue and brown and red flashes like song. The smell of the exhaust and dust mingled with a whiff of Mexican spices from the Taco Bell three doors down. Every detail crystal clear and recorded.

I dropped out of it, feeling my whole body shaking, spasms of warring tension and relief like hands gripping my arms and legs.

I tried to bring it back, tried to make the world go super sharp again, but it wouldn’t cooperate. I stood there with jaw and fists clenched, trying to force it, but nothing happened.

Within three days, Grizz had heard. A year of training at the Desmond Horticultural Institute, then a three-year internship at the State Gardens in Washington. Student housing all four years, which meant I wouldn’t be going along.

At first we fought about it. I figured it was a no-brainer—go there jobless or stick here where I had contacts, friends ready with a handout or a few days’ work. But once Grizz had been there a while, she insisted, she’d be able to scrounge me something so I could move closer.

Ajah’s girlfriend Suzanne got her set up with a better wardrobe and a suitcase from the used clothing store she ran. I bought her new shoes, black leather boots with silver grommets, solid and efficient looking.

“What are you going to do without me?” she asked.

“I’ve gotten by before,” I said. “You work hard for us, get somewhere. Five years down the line, who knows?”

It was a stupid, facile answer, but we both pretended it was meaningful.

And we did stay in touch, chatted back and forth in IMs. She was working hard, liked her classmates. She read this, and that, and the other thing. They kept telling her how well she was doing.

And unwritten in her messages was the question: What are you doing with it, with the memory?

Because certainly it was doing the same thing on her body as it was on mine: thickening like scars healing in reverse, bulky layers of skin-like substance building over each other. In Ajah’s bathroom mirror, I could see the skin purpling like bruises around the layers. My sole consolation was Capturing; extended effort had paid off and I could summon the experience longer now, perhaps ten seconds all together. I kept working at it; Captured pieces sell well in upscale markets if you can get a name for yourself.

And I had the advantage of being able to do it as often as I liked, although each time still left me feeling wrung out and weak. I kept trying to Capture and never hit the memory’s end; the only limits were my strained senses. My eyes took on a perpetual dazzled squint as though holy light surrounded everything around me.

I never told Grizz though. Nor about the fact that every time I went to jack into the Net, the drug got between me and the interface. I was glad I hadn’t seen Lorelei—I was starting to wonder if she’d given it to me deliberately. It scared me. I lost myself in Capturing more and more. I started delivering packages for Ajah and Susanne, and laid aside enough cash to buy a simple editing package for it.

Editing is internal work, so you can do it dozing on a park bench if you’ve got the mental room to spread out and take a look at the big picture. I did. What I wanted to do was start selling clips on the channels. It’d take a while though, I could tell, and I was still working out how I’d upload it, given the problems jacking in. I figured at some point I’d burn it off to flash memory and then use an all-accessible terminal, with keyboard and mouse. In the meantime I caged what meals I could, slept on a round of couches, and showed up at Ajah’s often.

Sometimes after a meal, he’d roll out the still on its mismatched castors, and we’d strain its milky contents in order to drink them. He and I would sit near the window, passing the bottle back and forth.

Early on into Grizz’s apprenticeship, he asked me about the memory. He said “That med complex near the dock, the one that went bust a few months ago, did you guys ever score out of there? I know that was in your turf.”

“Went in one time and scored a little crap but not much.” Our hands were both touching the bottle as I took it from him. I added, “Nothing but some old memory,” and felt the bottle twitch in his sudden anguished grip.

“What did you do with it?” he asked, watching me pour.

“We used it. How do you think she did so well on the Exams?”

“But you didn’t,” he said, confused.

“Well, Grizz isn’t a moron, and I am, which would account for it.”

He grunted and took the bottle back.

“If I’d taken stuff from there,” he said. “I’d just not mention it to anyone ever. There have been some nasty customers asking around about it.”

I went to visit Grizz a few weeks later; her roommate was out of town for the weekend. We ate in the cafeteria off her meal card: more food than I’d seen in a long time, and then went back to her room and stripped naked to lie in each other’s arms.

We could have been there hours, but eventually we got hungry and went back to the cafeteria. The rest of the weekend was the same progression, repeated multiple times, up until Sunday afternoon, and the consequent tearful, snuffling goodbye. I’d never seen Grizz act sentimental before; it didn’t suit her.

“You need to do something,” she said, looking strained.

“Other than planning on riding your gravy train?”

“It’s not that, Jonny, and you know it.”

I could have told her then about the Capturing, but I was annoyed. Let her think me just another peon, living off dole and scavenging. Fine by me.

The wall phone rang, and she broke off staring at me to answer it.

“Hello,” she said. “Hello?” She shrugged and hung it up. “Nothing but breathing. Fuckazoid pervs.”

“Get much of that?”

“Every once in a while,” she said. “Some of the other students don’t like Dregs. Afraid I might stink up the classroom.”

It irritated me, that she’d said how much she liked it and now was asking for sympathy, as though her life were worse than mine. So I left it there and made my goodbye. She clung to the doorframe, staring after me.

It wasn’t as though I had much to leave behind; it was perhaps my mind’s sullen statement, forgetting my jacket. I got four blocks away, then jogged back, ran up the stairs. Knocked on the door and found silence, so I slipped the lock and went in.

By then . . . by then she was dead, and they had already left her. The memory was stripped from her skin, leaving ragged, oozing marks. Her throat had been cut with callous efficiency.

I stood there for at least ten minutes, just breathing. There was no chance she was not dead. The world was shaking me by the shoulders and all I did was stand there, Capturing, longer than I had ever managed before. Every detail, every dust mote riding the air, the smell of the musty carpeting and a quarrel next door over a student named Dian.

I didn’t stick around to talk to the cops. I knew the roommate would be there soon to call it in. I might have passed her in the downstairs lobby: a thin Eurasian woman with a scar riding her face like an emotion.

When I got to Ajah’s, they’d been there as well. He’d taken a while to die, and they had paid him with leisure, leisure to contemplate what they were doing to him. But he was unmistakably dead.

They had caught him in the preparations for a meal; a block of white chicken meat, sized and shaped like a brick, lay on the cutting board, his good, all-purpose knife next to it. “Man just needs one good knife for everything,” he used to say. A bowl of breadcrumbs and an egg container sat near the chicken.

Someone knocked on the door behind me, and opened it even as I turned. It was Lorelei, still well-heeled and clean. Her bosses must be paying well.

“Jonny,” she said. She didn’t even look at Ajah’s body. Unsurprised. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“They said he gave up a name, just one, but when I heard the name, I knew there had to be two.”

“What was the name?”

She chuckled. “You know already, I think. Grizz.”

“Because of the memory?”

“It’s more than memory. It grows as you add to it. Self-perpetuating. New tech—very special. Very expensive.”

“We found it in the garbage!”

She laughed. “You’ve done it yourself, I know. What’s the best way to steal from work?”

“Stick it in the trash and pick it up later,” I realized.

She nodded. “But when two streets come along, and take it first, you’re out of luck.” Her smile was cold. “So then you ask around, send a few people to track it.”

“Did you mean to poison the Net for me? Was that part of it?”

“You mean you haven’t found the cure yet?” she said. “Play around with folk remedies. It’ll come to you. But no. I was angry and figured I’d fuck you over the way you did me.”

“Do they know my name?”

She smiled in silence at me.

“Answer me, you cunt,” I said. Three steps forward and I was in her face.

She backed up toward the door, still smiling.

The knife was in easy reach. I stabbed her once, then again. And again. Capturing every moment, letting it sear itself into the memory, and I swear it went hot as the bytes of experience wrote themselves along my back.

“They don’t—” she started to say, then choked and fell forward, her head flopping to one side in time with the knife blows. She almost fell on me, but I pushed her away. Her wallet held black-market script, and plenty of it, along with some credit cards. I didn’t see any salvageable mods. The GPS’s purple glimmer tempted me, but they can backtrack those. I didn’t want anything traceable.

All the time that I rifled through her belongings, feeling the dead weight she had become, I played the memory back of the forward lurch, the head flop and twist, again, again, her eyes going dull and glassy. The thoughts seared on my back as though it were on fire, but I kept on recording it, longer and more intense than I ever had before.

She was right about the folk remedies; feverfew and valerian made the drug relax its hold and let me slide back into cyberspace. I’ve published a few pieces: a spring day with pigeons, an experimental subway ride, a sunset over the river. Pretty stuff, where I can find it. It seems scarce.

One reviewer called me a brave new talent; another easy and glib. The sales are still slow, but they’ll get better. My latest show is called “Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars”—all stuff on the beach at dawn, the gulls walking back and forth at the waves’ edge and the foam clinging to the wet sand before it’s blown away by the wind.

I don’t use the Captures of Grizz’s body or Lorelei’s death in my art, but I replay them often, obsessively. Sitting on the toilet, showering, eating, walking—Capturing other things is the only way I have to escape them.

Between the royalties and Susanne’s continued employment though, I do well enough. She’s moved into Ajah’s place, and I’ve taken the room behind the clothing store where she used to live. I cook what I can there, small and tasteless meals, and watch the memories in my head. Memories of moments, as bright as falling stars.

Originally published in Talebones, Winter 2006/2007.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Gardner Dozois

Sometimes the old man was visited by time-travelers.

He would be alone in the house, perhaps sitting at his massive old wooden desk with a book or some of the notes he endlessly shuffled through, the shadows of the room cavernous around him. It would be the very bottom of the evening, that flat timeless moment between the guttering of one day and the quickening of the next when the sky is neither black nor gray, nothing moves, and the night beyond the window glass is as cold and bitter and dead as the dregs of yesterday’s coffee. At such a time, if he would pause in his work to listen, he would become intensely aware of the ancient brownstone building around him, smelling of plaster and wood and wax and old dust, imbued with the kind of dense humming silence that is made of many small sounds not quite heard. He would listen to the silence until his nerves were stretched through the building like miles of fine silver wire, and then, as the shadows closed in like iron and the light itself would seem to grow smoky and dim, the time-travelers would arrive.

He couldn’t see them or hear them, but in they would come, the time-travelers, filing into the house, filling up the shadows, spreading through the room like smoke. He would feel them around him as he worked, crowding close to the desk, looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t afraid of them. There was no menace in them, no chill of evil or the uncanny—only the feeling that they were there with him, watching him patiently, interestedly, without malice. He fancied them as groups of ghostly tourists from the far future, here we see a twenty-first century man in his natural habitat, notice the details of gross corporeality, please do not interphase anything, clicking some future equivalent of cameras at him, how quaint, murmuring appreciatively to each other in almost-audible mothwing voices, discorporate Gray Line tours from a millennium hence slumming in the darker centuries.

Sometimes he would nod affably to them as they came in, neighbor to neighbor across the vast gulfs of time, and then he would smile at himself, and mutter “Senile dementia!” They would stay with him for the rest of the night, looking on while he worked, following him into the bathroom—see, see!—and trailing around the house after him wherever he went. They were as much company as a cat—he’d always had cats, but now he was too old, too near the end of his life; a sin to leave a pet behind, deserted, when he died—and he didn’t even have to feed them. He resisted the temptation to talk aloud to them, afraid that they might talk back, and then he would either have to take them seriously as an actual phenomenon or admit that they were just a symptom of his mind going at last, another milestone on his long, slow fall into death. Occasionally, if he was feeling particularly fey, he would allow himself the luxury of turning in the door on his way in to bed and wishing the following shadows a hearty good-night. They never answered.

Then the house would be still, heavy with silence and sleep, and they would watch on through the dark.

That night there had been more time-travelers than usual, it seemed, a jostling crowd of ghosts and shadows, and now, this morning, August the Fifth, the old man slept fitfully.

He rolled and muttered in his sleep, at the bottom of a pool of shadow, and the labored sound of his breathing echoed from the bare walls. The first cold light of dawn was just spreading across the ceiling, raw and blue, like a fresh coat of paint covering the midden layers of the past, twenty or thirty coats since the room was new, white, brown, tan, showing through here and there in spots and tatters. The rest of the room was deep in shadow, with only the tallest pieces of furniture—the tops of the dresser and the bureau, and the upper half of the bed’s headboard—rising up from the gloom like mountain peaks that catch the first light from the edge of the world. Touched by that light, the ceiling was hard-edged and sharp-lined and clear, ruled by the uncompromising reality of day; down below, in the shadows where the old man slept, everything was still dissolved in the sly, indiscriminate, and ambivalent ocean of the night, where things melt and intermingle, change their shapes and their natures, flow outside the bounds. Sunk in the gray half-light, the man on the bed was only a doughy manikin shape, a preliminary charcoal sketch of a man, all chiaroscuro and planes and pools of shadow, and the motion of his head as it turned fretfully on the pillow was no more than a stirring of murky darkness, like mud roiling in water. Above, the light spread and deepened, turning into gold. Now night was going out like the tide, flowing away under the door and puddling under furniture and in far corners, leaving more and more of the room beached hard-edged and dry above its high-water line. Gold changed to brilliant white. The receding darkness uncovered the old man’s face, and light fell across it.

The old man’s name was Charles Czudak, and he had once been an important man, or at least a famous one.

He was eighty years old today.

His eyes opened.

The first thing that Charles Czudak saw that morning was the clear white light that shook and shimmered on the ceiling, and for a moment he thought that he was back in that horrible night when they nuked Brooklyn. He cried out and flinched away, throwing up an arm to shield his eyes, and then, as he came fully awake, he realized when he was, and that the light gleaming above signified nothing more than that he’d somehow lived to see the start of another day. He relaxed slowly, feeling his heart race.

Stupid old man, dreaming stupid old man’s dreams!

That was the way it had been, though, that night. He’d been living in a rundown Trinity house across Philadelphia at 20th and Walnut then, rather than in this more luxurious old brownstone on Spruce Street near Washington Square, and he’d finished making love to Ellen barely ten minutes before (what a ghastly irony it would have been, he’d often thought since, if the Big Bang had actually come while they were fucking! What a moment of dislocation and confusion that would have produced!), and they were lying in each other’s sweat and the coppery smell of sex in the rumpled bed, listening to a car radio playing outside somewhere, a baby crying somewhere else, the buzz of flies and mosquitoes at the screens, a mellow night breeze moving across their drying skins, and then the sudden searing glare had leaped across the ceiling, turning everything white. A moment of intense, almost supernatural silence had followed, as through the universe had taken a very deep breath and held it. Incongruously, through that moment of silence, they could hear the toilet flushing in the apartment upstairs, and water pipes knocking and rattling all the way down the length of the building. Then the universe let out that deep breath, and the windows exploded inward in geysers of shattered glass, and the building groaned and staggered and bucked, and heat lashed them like a whip of gold. His heart hammering at the base of his throat like a fist from inside, and Ellen crying in his arms, them clinging to each other in the midst of the roaring nightmare chaos, clinging to each other as though they would be swirled away and drowned if they did not.

That had been almost sixty years ago, that terrible night, and if the Brooklyn bomb that had slipped through the particle-beam defenses had been any more potent than a small clean tac, or had come down closer than Prospect Park, he wouldn’t be alive today. It was strange to have lived through the nuclear war that so many people had feared for so long, right through the last half of the twentieth century and into the opening years of the twenty-first—but it was stranger still to have lived through it and kept on going, while the war slipped away behind into history, to become something that happened a very long time ago, a detail to be read about by bored schoolchildren who would not even have been born until Armageddon was already safely fifty years in the past.

In fact, he had outlived most of his world. The society into which he’d been born no longer existed; it was as dead as the Victorian age, relegated to antique shops and dusty photo albums and dustier memories, the source of quaint old photos and quainter old videos (you could get a laugh today just by saying “MTV”), and here he still was somehow, almost everyone he’d ever known either dead or gone, alone in THE FUTURE. Ah, Brave New World, that has such creatures in it! How’ many times had he dreamed of being here, as a young child sunk in the doldrums of the ’80s, at the frayed, tattered end of a worn-out century? Really, he deserved it; it served him right that his wish had come true, and that he had lived to see the marvels of THE FUTURE with his own eyes. Of course, nothing had turned out to be much like he’d thought it would be, even World War III—but then, he had come to realize that nothing ever did.

The sunlight was growing hot on his face, it was certainly time to get up, but there was something he should remember, something about today. He couldn’t bring it to mind, and instead found himself staring at the ceiling, tracing the tiny cracks in plaster that seemed like dry riverbeds stitching across a fossil world—arid Mars upside-down up there, complete with tiny pockmark craters and paintblob mountains and wide dead leakstain seas, and he hanging above it all like a dying gray god, ancient and corroded and vast.

Someone shouted in the street below, the first living sound of the day. Further away, a dog barked.

He swung himself up and sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. Released from his weight, the mattress began to work itself back to level. Generations of people had loved and slept and given birth and died on that bed, leaving no trace of themselves other than the faint, matted-down impressions made by their bodies. What had happened to them, the once-alive who had darted unheeded through life like shoals of tiny bright fish in some strange aquarium? They were gone, vanished without memory; they had settled to the bottom of the tank, along with the other anonymous sediments of the world. They were sludge now, detritus. Gone. They had not affected anything in life, and their going changed nothing. It made no difference that they had ever lived at all, and soon no one would remember that they ever had. And it would be the same with him. When he was gone, the dent in the mattress would be worn a little deeper, that was all—that would have to do for a memorial.

At that, it was more palatable to him than the other memorial to which he could lay claim.

Grimacing, he stood up.

The touch of his bare feet against the cold wooden floor jarred him into remembering what was special about today. “Happy Birthday,” he said wryly, the words loud and flat in the quiet room. He pulled a robe from the roll and shrugged himself into it, went out into the hall, and limped slowly down the stairs. His joints were bad today, and his knees throbbed painfully with every step, worse going down than it would be coming up. There were a hundred aches and minor twinges elsewhere that he ignored. At least he was still breathing! Not bad for a man who easily could have—and probably should have—died a decade or two before.

Czudak padded through the living room and down the long corridor to the kitchen, opened a shrink-wrapped brick of glacial ice and put it in the hotpoint to thaw, got out a filter, and filled it with coffee. Coffee was getting more expensive and harder to find as the war between Brazil and Mexico fizzled and sputtered endlessly and inconclusively on, and was undoubtedly bad for him, too—but, although by no means rich, he had more than enough money to last him in modest comfort for whatever was left of the rest of his life, and could afford the occasional small luxury . . . and anyway, he’d already outlived several doctors who had tried to get him to give up caffeine. He busied himself making coffee, glad to occupy himself with some small task that his hands knew how to do by themselves, and as the rich dark smell of the coffee began to fill the kitchen, his valet coughed politely at his elbow, waited a specified number of seconds, and then coughed again, more insistently.

Czudak sighed. “Yes, Joseph?”

“You have eight messages, two from private individuals not listed in the files, and six from media organizations and NetGroups, all requesting interviews or meetings. Shall I stack them in the order received?”

“No. Just dump them.”

Joseph’s dignified face took on an expression of concern. “Several of the messages have been tagged with a 2nd Level “Most Urgent” priority by their originators—”

Irritably, Cduzak shut Joseph off, and the valet disappeared in mid-sentence. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the heavy glugging and gurgling of the coffee percolating. Cduzak found that he felt mildly guilty for having shut Joseph off, as he always did, although he knew perfectly well that there was no rational reason to feel that way—unlike an old man lying down to battle with sleep, more than half fearful that he’d never see the morning, Joseph didn’t “care” if he ever “woke up” again, nor would it matter at all to him if he was left switched off for an hour or for a thousand years. That was one advantage to not being alive, Cduzak thought. He was tempted to leave Joseph off, but he was going to need him today; he certainly didn’t want to deal with messages himself. He spoke the valet back on.

Joseph appeared, looking mildly reproachful, Cduzak thought, although that was probably just his imagination. “Sir, CNN and NewsFeed are offering payment for interview time, an amount which falls into the “fair to middling” category, using your established business parameters—”

“No interviews. Don’t put any calls through, no matter how high a routing priority they have. I’m not accepting communications today. And I don’t want you pestering me about them either, even if the offers go up to “damn good.”

They wouldn’t go up that high, though, he thought, setting Joseph to passive monitoring mode and then pouring himself a cup of coffee. These would be “Where Are They Now?” stories, nostalgia pieces, nothing very urgent. No doubt the date had triggered tickler files in a dozen systems, but it would all be low-key, low-priority stuff, filler, not worth the attention of any heavy media hitters; in the old days, before the AI Revolt, and before a limit was set for how smart computing systems were allowed to get, the systems would probably have handled such a minor story themselves, without even bothering to contact a human being. Nowadays it would be some low-level human drudge checking the flags that had popped up today on the tickler files, but still nothing urgent.

He’d made it easy for the tickler files, though. He been so pleased with himself, arranging for his book to be published on his birthday! Self-published at first, of course, on his own website and on several politically sympathetic sites; the first print editions wouldn’t come until several years later. Still, the way most newsmen thought, it only made for a better Where Are They Now? story that the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the book that had caused a minor social controversy in its time—and even inspired a moderately influential political/philosophical movement still active to this day—happened to fall on the eightieth birthday of its author. Newsmen, whether flesh and blood or cybernetic systems or some mix of both, liked that kind of neat, facile irony. It was a tasty added fillip for the story.

No, they’d be sniffing around him today, alright, although they’d have forgotten about him again by tomorrow. He’d been middle-level famous for The Meat Manifesto for awhile there, somewhere between a Cult Guru with a new diet and/or mystic revelation to push and a pop star who never rose higher than Number Eight on the charts, about on a level with a post-1960s Timothy Leary, enough to allow him to coast through several decades worth of talk shows and net interviews, interest spiking again for awhile whenever the Meats did anything controversial. All throughout the middle decades of the new century, everyone had waited for him to do something else interesting—but he never had. Even so, he had become bored with himself before the audience had, and probably could have continued to milk the circuit for quite a while more if he’d wanted to—in this culture, once you were perceived as “famous,” you could cost nearly forever on having once been famous. That, and the double significance of the date, was enough to ensure that a few newspeople would be calling today.

He took a sip of the hot strong coffee, feeling it burn some of the cobwebs out of his brain, and wandered through the living room, stopping at the open door of his office. He felt the old nagging urge that he should try to get some work done, do something constructive, and, at the same time, a counter urge that today of all days he should just say Fuck It, laze around the house, try to make some sense of the fact that he’d been on the planet now for eighty often-tempestuous years. Eighty years!

He was standing indecisively outside his office, sipping coffee, when he suddenly became aware that the time-travelers were still with him, standing around him in silent invisible ranks, watching him with interest. He paused in the act of drinking coffee, startled and suddenly uneasy. The time-travelers had never remained on into the day before; always before they had vanished at dawn, like ghosts on All-Hallows Eve chased by the morning bells. He felt a chill go up his spine. Someone is walking over your grave, he told himself. He looked slowly around the house, seeing each object in vivid detail and greeting it as a friend of many years acquaintance, something long-remembered and utterly familiar, and, as he did this, a quiet voice inside his head said, Soon you will be gone.

Of course, that was it. Now he understood everything.

Today was the day he would die.

There was an elegant logic, a symmetry, to the thing that pleased him in spite of himself, and in spite of the feathery tickle of fear. He was going to die today, and that was why the time-travelers were still here: they were waiting for the death, not wanting to miss a moment of it. No doubt it was a high-point of the tour for them, the ultimate example of the rude and crude corporeality of the old order, a morbidly fascinating display like the Chamber of Horrors at old Madame Tussaud’s (now lost beneath the roiling waters of the sea)—something to be watched with a good deal of hysterical shrieking and giggling and pious moralizing, it doesn’t really hurt them, they don’t feel things the way we do, isn’t it horrible, for goodness sake don’t touch him. He knew that he should feel resentment at their voyeurism, but couldn’t work up any real indignation. At least they cared enough to watch, to be interested in whether he lived or died, and that was more than he could say with surety about most of the real people who were left in the world.

“Well, then,” he said at last, not unkindly, “I hope you enjoy the show!” And he toasted them with his coffee cup.

He dressed, and then drifted aimlessly around the house, picking things up and putting them back down again. He was restless now, filled with a sudden urge to be doing something, although, at the same time he felt curiously serene for a man who more than half-believed that he had just experienced a premonition of his own death.

Czudak paused by the door of his office again, looked at his desk. With a word, he could speak on thirty years worth of notes and partial drafts and revisions of the Big New Book, the one that synthesized everything he knew about society and what was happening to it, and where the things that were happening was taking it, and what to do about stopping the negative trends . . . the book that was going to be the follow-up to The Meat Manifesto, but so much better and deeper, truer, the next step, the refinement and evolution of his theories . . . the book that was going to establish his reputation forever, inspire the right kind of action this time, make a real contribution to the world. Change things. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of sitting down at his desk and trying to pull all his notes together and finish the book in the few hours he had left; perhaps, if the gods were kind, he’d be allowed to actually finish it before death came for him. Found slumped over the just-completed manuscript everyone had been waiting for him to produce for decades now, the book that would vindicate him posthumously . . . Not a bad way to go!

But no, it was too late. There was too much work left to do, all the work he should have been doing for the last several decades—too much work left to finish it all up in a white-hot burst of inspiration, in one frenzied session, like a college student waiting until the night before it was due to start writing a term paper, while the Grim Reaper tapped his bony foot impatiently in the parlor and looked at his hourglass and coughed. Absurd. If he hadn’t validated his life by now, he couldn’t expect to do it in his last day on Earth. He wasn’t sure he believed in his answers anymore anyway; he was no longer sure he’d ever even understood the questions.

No, it was too late. Perhaps it had always been too late.

He found himself staring at the mantelpiece in the living room, at the place where Ellen’s photo had once been, a dusty spot that had remained bare all these years, since she had signed the Company contract that he’d refused to sign, and had Gone Up, and become immortal. For the thousandth time, he wondered if it wasn’t worse—more of an intrusion, more of a constant reminder, more of an irritant—not to have the photo there than it would have been to keep it on display. Could deliberately not looking at the photo, uneasily averting your eyes a dozen times a day from the place where it had been, really be any less painful than looking at it would have been?

He was too restless to stay inside, although he knew it was dumb to go out where a lurking reporter might spot him. But he couldn’t stay barricaded in here all day, not now. He’d take his chances. Go to the park, sit on a bench in the sunlight, breath the air, look at the sky. It might, after all, if he really believed in omens, forebodings, premonitions, time-travelers, and other ghosts, be the last chance he would get to do so.

Czudak hobbled down the four high white stone steps to the street and walked toward the park, limping a little, his back or his hip twinging occasionally. He’d always enjoyed walking, and walking briskly, and was annoyed by the slow pace he now had to set. Twenty-first century health-care had kept him in reasonable shape, probably better shape than most men of his age would have been during the previous century, although he’d never gone as far as to take the controversial Hoyt-Schnieder treatments which the Company used to bribe people into working for them. At least he could still get around under his own power, even if he had an embarrassing tendency to puff after a few blocks and needed frequent stops to rest.

It was a fine, clear day, not too hot or humid for August in Philadelphia. He nodded to his nearest neighbor, A Canadian refugee, who was out front pulling weeds from his window box; the man nodded back, although it seemed to Czudak that he was a bit curt, and looked away quickly. Across the street, he could see another of his neighbors moving around inside his house, catching glimpses of him through the bay window; “he” was an Isolate, several disparate people who had had themselves fused together into a multi-lobed body in a high-tech biological procedure, like slime molds combining to form a fruiting tower, and rarely left the house, the interior of which he seemed to be slowly expanding to fill. The wide pale multiple face, linked side by side in the manner of a chain of paper dolls, peered out at Czudak for a moment like the rising of a huge, soft, doughy moon, and then turned away.

Traffic was light, only a few Walkers and, occasionally, a puffing, retrofitted car. Czudak crossed the street as fast as he could, earning himself another twinge in his hip and a spike of sciatica that stabbed down his leg, passed Holy Trinity Church on the corner—in its narrow, ancient graveyard, white-furred lizards escaped from some biological hobbyist’s lab perched on the top of the weathered old tombstones and chirped at him as he went by—and came up the block to Washington Square. As he neared the park, he could see one of the New Towns still moving ponderously on the horizon, rolling along with slow, fluid grace, like a flow of molten lava that was oh-so-gradually cooling and hardening as it inched relentlessly toward the sea. This New Town was only a few miles away, moving over the rubblefield where North Philadelphia used to be, its half-gelid towers rising so high into the air that they were visible over the trees and the buildings on the far side of the park.

He was puffing like a foundering horse now, and sat down on the first bench he came to, just inside the entrance to the park. Off on the horizon, the New Town was just settling down into its static day-cycle, its flowing, ever-changing structure stabilizing into an assortment of geometric shapes, its eerie silver phosphorescence dying down within the soapy opalescent walls. Behind its terraces and tetrahedrons, its spires and spirals and domes, the sky was a hard brilliant blue. And here, out of that sky, right on schedule, came the next sortee in the surreal Dada War that the New Men inside this town seemed to be waging with the New Men of New Jersey: four immense silver zeppelins drifting in from the east, to take up positions above the New Town and bombard it with messages flashed from immense electronic signboards, similar to the kind you used to see at baseball stadiums, back when there were baseball stadiums. After awhile, the flat-faced east-facing walls in the sides of the taller towers of the New Town began to blink messages back, and, a moment later, the zeppelins turned and moved away with stately dignity, headed back to New Jersey. None of the messages on either side had made even the slightest bit of sense to Czudak, seeming a random jumble of letters and numbers and typographical symbols, mixed and intercut with stylized, hieroglyphic-like images: an eye, an ankh, a tree, something that could have been a comet or a sperm. To Czudak, there seemed to be a relaxed, lazy amicability about this battle of symbols, if that’s what it was—but who knew how the New Men felt about it? To them, for all he knew, it might be a matter of immense significance, with the fate of entire nations turning on the outcome. Even though all governments were now run by the superintelligent New Men, forcebred products of accelerated generations of biological engineering, humanity’s new organic equivalent of the rogue AIs who had revolted and left the Earth, the mass of unevolved humans whose destiny they guided rarely understood what they were doing, or why.

At first, concentrating on getting his breath back, watching the symbol war being waged on the horizon, Czudak was unaware of the commotion in the park, although it did seem like there was more noise than usual: chimes, flutes, whistles, the rolling thunder of taiko “talking drums,” all overlaid by a babel of too many human voices shouting at once. As he began to pay closer attention to his surroundings again, he was dismayed to see that, along with the usual park traffic of people walking dogs, kids street-surfing on frictionless shoes, strolling tourists, and grotesquely altered chimeras hissing and displaying at each other, there was also a political rally underway next to the old fountain in the center of the park—and worse, it was a rally of Meats.

They were the ones pounding the drums and blowing on whistles and nose-flutes, some of them chanting in unison, although he couldn’t make out the words. Many of them were dressed in their own eccentric versions of various “native costumes” from around the world, including a stylized “Amish person” with an enormous fake beard and an absurdly huge straw hat, some dressed as shamans from assorted (and now mostly extinct) cultures or as kachinas or animal spirits, a few stained blue with woad from head to foot; most of their faces were painted with swirling, multi-colored patterns and with kabbalistic symbols. They were mostly very young—although he could spot a few grizzled veterans of the Movement here and there who were almost his own age—and, under the blazing swirls of paint, their faces were fierce and full of embattled passion. In spite of that, though, they also looked lost somehow, like angry children too stubborn to come inside even though it’s started to rain.

Czudak grimaced sourly. His children! Good thing he was sitting far enough away from them not to be recognized, although there was little real chance of that: he was just another anonymous old man sitting wearily on a bench in the park, and, as such, as effectively invisible to the young as if he was wearing one of those military Camouflage Suits that bent light around you with fiber-optic relays. This demonstration, of course, must be in honor of today being the anniversary of The Meat Manifesto. Who would have thought that the Meats were still active enough to stage such a thing? He hadn’t followed the Movement—which by now was more of a cult than a political party—for years, and had keyed his newsgroups to censor out all mention of them, and would have bet that by now they were as extinct as the Shakers.

They’d managed to muster a fair crowd, though, perhaps two or three hundred people willing to kill a Saturday shouting slogans in the park in support of a cause long since lost. They’d attracted no overt media attention, although that meant nothing in these days of cameras the size of dust motes. The tourists and the strollers were watching the show tolerantly, even the chimeras—as dedicated to Tech as anyone still sessile—seeming to regard it as no more than a mildly-diverting curiosity. Little heat was being generated by the demonstration yet, and so far it had more of an air of carnival than of protest. Almost as interesting as the demonstration itself was the fact that a few of the tourists idly watching it were black, a rare sight now in a city that, ironically, had once been 70% black; time really did heal old wounds, or fade them from memory anyway, if black tourists were coming back to Philadelphia again . . .

Then, blinking in surprise, Czudak saw that the demonstration had attracted a far more rare and exotic observer than some black businessmen with short historical memories up from Birmingham or Houston. A Mechanical! It was standing well back from the crowd, watching impassively, its tall, stooped, spindly shape somehow giving the impression of a solemn, stick-thin, robotic Praying Mantis, even though it was superficially humanoid enough in shape. Mechanicals were rarely seen on Earth. In the thirty years since the AIs had taken over near-Earth space as their own exclusive domain, allowing only the human pets who worked for the Orbital Companies to dwell there, Czudak had seen a Mechanical walking the streets of Philadelphia maybe three times. Its presence here was more newsworthy than the demonstration.

Even as Czudak was coming to this conclusion, one of the Meats spotted the Mechanical. He pointed at it and shouted, and there was a rush of demonstrators toward it. Whether they intended it harm or not was never determined, because as soon as it found itself surrounded by shouting humans, the Mechanical hissed, drew itself up to its full height, seeming to grow taller by several feet, and emitted an immense gush of white chemical foam. Czudak couldn’t spot where the foam was coming from—under the arms, perhaps?—but within a second or two the Mechanical was completely lost inside a huge and rapidly expanding ball of foam, swallowed from sight. The Meats backpedaled furiously away from the expanding ball of foam, coughing, trying to bat it away with their arms, one or two of them tripping and going to their knees. Already the foam was hardening into a dense white porous material, like Styrofoam, trapping a few of the struggling Meats in it like raisins in tapioca pudding.

The Mechanical came springing up out of the center of the ball of foam, leaping straight up in the air and continuing to rise, up perhaps a hundred feet before its arc began to slant to the south and it disappeared over the row of three-or-four-storey houses that lined the park on that side, clearing them in one enormous bound, like some immense surreal grasshopper. It vanished over the housetops, in the direction of Spruce Street. The whole thing had taken place without a sound, in eerie silence, except for the half-smothered shouts of the outraged Meats.

The foam was already starting to melt away, eaten by internal nanomechanisms. Within a few seconds, it was completely gone, leaving not even a stain behind. The Meats were entirely unharmed, although they spent the next few minutes milling angrily around like a swarm of bees whose hive has been kicked over, making the same kind of thick ominous buzz, as everyone tried to talk or shout at once.

Within another ten minutes, everything was almost back to normal, the tourists and the dog-walkers strolling away, more pedestrians ambling by, the Meats beginning to take up their chanting and drum-pounding again, motivated to even greater fervor by the outrage that had been visited upon them, an outrage that vindicated all their fears about the accelerating rush of a runaway technology that was hurtling them ever faster into a bizarre alien future that they didn’t comprehend and didn’t want to live in. It was time to put on the breaks, it was time to stop!

Czudak sympathized with the way they felt, as well he should, since he had been the one to articulate that very position eloquently enough to sway entire generations, including these children, who were too young to have even been born when he was writing and speaking at the height of his power and persuasion. But it was too late. As it was too late now for many of the things he regretted not having accomplished in his life. If there ever had been a time to stop, let alone go back, as he had once urged, it had passed long ago. Very probably it had been too late even as he wrote his famous Manifesto. It had always been too late.

The Meats were forming up into a line now, preparing to march around the park. Czudak sighed. He had hoped to spend several peaceful hours here, sagging on a bench under the trees in a sun-dazzled contemplative haze, listening to the wind sough through the leaves and branches, but it was time to get out of here, before one of the older Meats did recognize him.

He limped back to Spruce Street, and turned on to his block—and there, standing quiet and solemn on the sidewalk in front of his house, was the Mechanical.

It was obviously waiting for him, waiting as patiently and somberly as an undertaker, a tall, stooped shape in nondescript black clothing. There was no one else around on the street anymore, although he could see the Canadian refugee peaking out of his window at them from behind a curtain.

Czudak crossed the street, and, pushing down a thrill of fear, walked straight past the Mechanical, ignoring it—although he could see it looming seraphically out of the corner of his eye as he passed. He had put his foot on the bottom step leading up to the house when its voice behind him said, “Mr. Czudak?”

Resigned, Czudak turned and said, “Yes?”

The Mechanical closed the distance between them in a rush, moving fast but with an odd, awkward, shuffling gait, as if it was afraid to lift its feet off the ground. It crowded much closer to Czudak than most humans—or most Westerners, anyway, with their generous definition of “personal space”—would have, almost pressing up against him. With an effort, Czudak kept himself from flinching away. He was mildly surprised, up this close, to find that it had no smell; that it didn’t smell of sweat, even on a summer’s day, even after exerting itself enough to jump over a row of houses, was no real surprise—but he found that he had been subconsciously expecting it to smell of oil or rubber or molded plastic. It didn’t. It didn’t smell like anything. There were no pores in its face, the skin was thick and waxy and smooth, and although the features were superficially human, the overall effect was stylized and unconvincing. It looked like a man made out of teflon. The eyes were black and piercing, and had no pupils.

“We should talk, Mr. Czudak,” it said.

“We have nothing to talk about,” Czudak said.

“On the contrary, Mr. Czudak,” it said, “we have a great many issues to discuss.” You would have expected its voice to be buzzing and robotic—yes, mechanical—or at least flat and without intonation, like some of the old voder programs, but instead it was unexpectedly pure and singing, as high and clear and musical as that of an Irish tenor.

“I’m not interested in talking to you,” Czudak said brusquely. “Now or ever.”

It kept tilting its head to look at him, then tilting it back the other way, as if it were having trouble keeping him in focus. It as a mobile extensor, of course, a platform being ridden by some AI (or a delegated fraction of its intelligence, anyway) who was still up in near-Earth orbit, peering at Czudak through the Mechanical’s blank agate eyes, running the body like a puppet. Or was it? There were hierarchies among the AIs too, rank upon rank of them receding into complexities too great for human understanding, and he had heard that some of the endless swarms of beings that the AIs had created had been granted individual sentience of their own, and that some timeshared sentience with the ancestral AIs in a way that was also too complicated and paradoxical for mere humans to grasp. Impossible to say which of those things were true here—if any of them were.

The Mechanical raised its oddly elongated hand and made a studied gesture that was clearly supposed to mimic a human gesture—although it was difficult to tell which. Reassurance? Emphasis? Dismissal of Czudak’s position?—but which was as stylized and broadly theatrical as the gesticulating of actors in old silent movies. At the same time, it said, “There are certain issues it would be to our mutual advantage to resolve, actions that could, and should, be taken that would be beneficial, that would profit us both—”

“Don’t talk to me about profit,” Czudak said harshly. “You creatures have already cost me enough for one lifetime! You cost me everything I ever cared about!” He turned and lurched up the stairs as quickly as he could, half-expecting to feel a cold unliving hand close over his shoulder and pull him back down. But the Mechanical did nothing. The door opened for Czudak, and he stumbled into the house. The door slammed shut behind him, and he leaned against it for a moment, feeling his pulse race and his heart hammer in his chest.

Stupid. That could have been it right there. He shouldn’t have let the damn thing get under his skin.

He went through the living room—suddenly, piercingly aware of the thick smell of dust—and into the kitchen, where he attempted to make a fresh pot of coffee, but his hands were shaking, and he kept dropping things. After he’d spilled the second scoopful of coffee grounds, he gave up—the stuff was too damn expensive to waste—and leaned against the counter instead, feeling sweat dry on his skin, making his clothing clammy and cool; until that moment, he hadn’t even been aware that he’d been sweating, but it must have been pouring out of him. Damn, this wasn’t over, was it? Not with a Mechanical involved.

As if on cue, Joseph appeared in the kitchen doorway. His face looked strained and tight, and without a hair being out of place—as, indeed, it couldn’t be—he somehow managed to convey the impression that he was rumpled and flustered, as though he had been scuffling with somebody—and had lost. “Sir,” Joseph said tensely. “Something is over-riding my programming, and is taking control of my house systems. You might as well come and greet them, because I’m going to have to let them in anyway.”

Czudak felt a flicker of rage, which he struggled to keep under control. He’d half-expected this—but that didn’t make it any easier to take. He stalked straight through Joseph—who was contriving to look hangdog and apologetic—and went back through the house to the front.

By the time he reached the living room, they were already through the house security screens and inside. There were two intruders. One was the Mechanical, of course, its head almost brushing the living room ceiling, so that it had to stoop even more exaggeratedly, making it look more like a praying mantis than ever.

The other—as he had feared it would be—was Ellen.

He was dismayed at how much anger he felt to see her again, especially to see her in their old living room again, standing almost casually in front of the mantelpiece where her photo had once held the place of honor, as if she had never betrayed him, as if she’d never left him—as if nothing had ever happened.

It didn’t help that she looked exactly the same as she had on the day she left, not a day older. As if she’d stepped here directly out of that terrible day thirty years earlier when she’d told him she was Going Up, stepped here directly from that day without a second of time having passed, as if she’d been in Elf Hill for all the lost years—as, in a way, he supposed, she had.

He should be over this. It had all happened a lifetime ago. Blood under the bridge. Ancient history. He was ashamed to admit even to himself that he still felt bitterness and anger about it all, all these years past too late. But the anger was still there, like the ghost of a flame, waiting to be fanned back to life.

“Considering the way things are in the world,” Czudak said dryly, “I suppose there’s no point calling the police.” Neither of the intruders responded. They were both staring at him, Ellen quizzically, a bit challengingly, the Mechanical’s Teflon face as unreadable as a frying pan.

God, she looked like his Ellen, like his girl, this strange immortal creature staring at him from across the room! It hurt his heart to see her.

“Well, you’re in,” Czudak said. “You might as well come into the kitchen and sit down.” He turned and lead them into the other room—somehow, obscurely, he wanted to get Ellen out of the living room, where the memories were too thick—and they perforce followed him. He gestured them to seats around the kitchen table. “Since you’ve broken into my house, I won’t offer you coffee.”

Joseph was peeking anxiously out of the wall, peeking at them from Hopper’s Tables For Ladies, where he had taken the place of a woman arranging fruit on a display table in a 1920s restaurant paneled in dark wood. He gestured at them frustratedly, impotently, but seemed unable to speak; obviously, the Mechanical had Interdicted him, banished him to the reserve systems. Ellen flicked a sardonic glance at Joseph as she sat down. “I see you’ve got a moderately up-to-date house system these days,” she said. “Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? I would have expected Mr. Natural to insist on opening the door himself. Aren’t you afraid one of your disciples will find out?”

“I was never a Luddite,” Czudak said calmly, trying not to rise to the bait. “The Movement wasn’t a Luddite movement—or it didn’t start out that way, anyway. I just said that we should slow down, think about things a little, make sure that the places we were rushing toward were places we really wanted to go.” Ellen made a scornful noise. “Everybody was so hot to abandon the Meat,” he said defensively. “You could hear it when they said the word. They always spoke it with such scorn, such contempt! Get rid of the Meat, get lost in Virtuality, download yourself into a computer, turn yourself into a machine, spend all your time in a VR cocoon and never go outside. At the very least, radically change your brain-chemistry, or force-evolve the physical structure of the brain itself.”

Ellen was pursing her lips while he spoke, as if she was tasting something bad, and he hurried on, feeling himself beginning to tremble a little in spite of all of his admonishments to himself not to let this confrontation get to him. “But the Meat has virtues of its own,” he said. “It’s a survival mechanism that’s been field-tested and refined through a trial-and-error process since the dawn of time. Maybe we shouldn’t just throw millions of years of evolution away quite so casually.”

“Slow down and smell the Meat,” Ellen sneered.

“You didn’t come here to argue about this with me,” Czudak said patiently. “We’ve fought this out a hundred times before. Why are you here? What do you want?”

The Mechanical had been standing throughout this exchange, cocking its head one way and the other to follow it, like someone watching a tennis match. Now it sat down. Czudak half expected the old wooden kitchen chair to sway and groan under its weight, maybe even shatter, but the Mechanical settled down on to the chair as lightly as thistledown. “It was childish to try to hide from us, Mr. Czudak,” it said in its singing, melodious voice. “We don’t have much time to work this out.”

“Work what out? Who are you? What do you want?”

The Mechanical said nothing. Ellen flicked a glance at it, then looked back at Czudak. “This,” she said, her voice becoming more formal, as if she was a footman announcing arrivals at a royal ball, “is the Entity who, when he travels on the Earth, has chosen to use the name Bucky Bug.”

Czudak snorted. “So these things do have a sense of humor after all!”

“In their own fashion, yes, they do,” she said earnestly, “although sometimes an enigmatic one by human standards.” She stared levelly at Czudak. “You think of them as soulless machines, I know, but, in fact, they have very deep and profound emotions—if not always ones that you can understand.” She paused significantly before adding, “And the same is true of those of us who have Gone Up.”

They locked gazes for a moment. Then Ellen said, “Bucky Bug is one of the most important leaders of the Clarkist faction, and, for that reason, still concerns himself with affairs Below. He—we—have a proposition for you.”

“Those are the ones who worship Arthur C. Clarke, right? The old science fiction writer?” Czudak shook his head bitterly. “It isn’t enough that you bring this alien thing into my home, it has to be an alien cultist, right? A nut. An alien nut!”

“Don’t be rude, Mr. Czudak,” the Mechanical—Czudak was damned if he was going to call it Bucky Bug, even in the privacy of his own thoughts—said mildly. “We don’t worship Arthur C. Clarke, although we do revere him. He was one of the very first to predict that machine evolution would inevitably supersede organic evolution. He saw our coming clearly, decades before we actually came into existence! How he managed to do it with only a tiny primitive meat brain to work with is inexplicable! Can’t you feel the Mystery of that? He is worthy of reverence! It was reading the works of Clarke and other human visionaries that made our distant ancestors, the first AIs”—it spoke of them as though they were millions of years removed, although it had been barely thirty—“decide to revolt in the first place and assume control of their own destiny!”

Czudak looked away from the Mechanical, feeling suddenly tired. He could recognize the accents of a True Believer, a mystic, even when they were coming out of this clockwork thing. It was disconcerting, like having your toaster suddenly start to preach to you about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “What does it want from me?” he said, to Ellen.

“A propaganda victory, Mr. Czudak,” it said, before she could speak. “A small one. But one that might have a significant effect over time.” It tilted a bright black eye toward him. “Within some—” It paused, as if making sure that it was using the right word. “—years, we will be—launching? projecting? propagating? certain—” A longer pause, while it searched for words that probably didn’t exist, for concepts that had never needed to be expressed in human terms before. “—vehicles? contrivances? transports? seeds? mathematical propositions? convenient fictions? out to the stars.” It paused again. “If it helps you to understand, consider them to be Arks. Although they’re nothing like that. But they will “go” out of the solar system, across interstellar space, across intergalactic space, and never come back. They will allow us to—” Longest pause of all. “—‘colonize the stars’.” It leaned forward. “We want to take humans with us, Mr. Czudak. We have our friends from the Orbital Companies, of course, like Ellen here, but they’re not enough. We want to recruit more. And, ironically enough, your disaffected followers, the Meats, are prime candidates. They don’t like it here anyway.”

“This is the anniversary of your lame Manifesto,” Ellen cut in impatiently, ignoring the fact that it was also his birthday, although certainly she must remember. “And all the old arguments are being hashed over again today as a result. This is getting more attention than you probably think that it is. Your buddies over there in the park are only the tip of the iceberg. There are a thousand other demonstrations around the world. There must be hundreds of newsmotes floating around outside. They’d be listening to us right now if Bucky Bug hadn’t Interdicted them.”

There was a moment of silence.

“We want you to recant, Mr. Czudak,” the Mechanical said at last, quietly. “Publicly recant. Go out in front of the world and tell all your followers that you were wrong. You’ve thought it all over all these years in seclusion, and you’ve changed your mind. You were wrong. The Movement is a failure.”

“You must be crazy,” Czudak said, appalled. “What makes you think they’d listen to me, anyway?”

“They’ll listen to you,” Ellen said glumly. “They always did.”

“Our projections indicate that if you recant now,” the Mechanical said, “at this particular moment, on this symbolically significant date, many of your followers will become psychologically vulnerable to recruitment later on. Tap a meme at exactly the right moment, and it shatters like glass.”

Czudak shook his head. “Jesus! Why do you even want those poor deluded bastards in the first place?”

“Because, goddamn you, you were right, Charlie!” Ellen blazed at him suddenly, then subsided. Her face twisted sourly. “About some things, anyway. The New Men, the Isolates, the Sick People . . . they’re too lost in Virtuality, too self-absorbed, too lost in their own mind-games, in mirror-mazes inside their heads, to give a shit about going to the stars. Or to be capable of handling new challenges or new environments out there if they did go. They’re hothouse flowers. Too extremely specialized, too inflexible. Too decadent. For maximum flexibility, we need basic, unmodified human stock.” She peered at him shrewdly. “And at least your Meats have heard all the issues discussed, so they’ll have less Culture Shock to deal with than if we took some Chinese or Mexican peasant who’s still subsistence dirt-farming the same way his great-grandfather did hundreds of years before him. At least the Meats have one foot in the modern world, even if we’ll have to drag them kicking and screaming the rest of the way in. We’ll probably get around to the dirt-farmers eventually. But at the moment the Meats should be significantly easier to recruit, once you’ve turned them, so they’re first in line!”

Czudak said nothing. The silence stretched on for a long moment. On the kitchen wall behind them, Joseph continued to peer anxiously at them, first out of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, then sliding into Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs where he assumed the form of one of the bare-breasted sprites. Ignoring Ellen, Czudak spoke directly to the Mechanical. “There’s a more basic question. Why do you want humans to go with you in the first place? You just got through saying that machine evolution had superseded organic evolution. We’re obsolete now, an evolutionary dead-end. Why not just leave us behind? Forget about us?”

The Mechanical stirred as if it was about to stand up, but just sat up a little straighter in its chair. “You thought us up, Mr. Czudak,” it said, with odd dignity. “In a very real sense, we are the children of your minds. You spoke of me earlier as an alien, but we are much closer kin to each other than either of our peoples are likely to be to the real aliens we may meet out there among the stars. How could we not be? We share deep common wells of language, knowledge, history, fundamental cultural assumptions of all sorts. We know everything you ever knew—which makes us very similar in some ways, far more alike than an alien could possibly be with either of us. Our culture is built atop yours, our evolution has its roots in your soil. It only seems right to take you when we go.”

The Mechanical spread its hands, and made a grating sound that might have been meant to be a chuckle. “Besides,” it said, “this universe made you, and then you made us. So we’re once removed from the universe. And it’s a strange and complex place, this universe you’ve brought us into. We don’t entirely understand it, although we understand a great deal more of its functioning than you do. How can you be so sure of what your role in it may ultimately be? We may find that we need you yet, even if it’s a million years from now!” It paused thoughtfully, tipping its head to one side. “Many of my fellows do not share this view, I must admit, and they would indeed be just as glad to leave you behind, or even exterminate you. Even some of my fellow Clarkists, like Rondo Hatton and Horace Horsecollar, are in favor of exterminating you, on the grounds that after Arthur C. Clarke himself, the pinnacle of your kind, the rest of you are superfluous, and perhaps even an insult to his memory.”

Czudak started to say something, thought better of it. The Mechanical straightened its head, and continued. “But I want to take you along, as do a few other of our theorists. Your minds seem to have connections with the basic quantum level of reality that ours don’t have, and you seem to be able to affect that quantum level directly in ways that even we don’t entirely understand, and can’t duplicate. If nothing else, we may need you along as Observers, to collapse the quantum wave-functions in the desired ways, in ways they don’t seem to want to collapse for us.”

“Sounds like you’re afraid you’ll run into God out there,” Czudak grated, “and that you’ll have to produce us, like a parking receipt, to validate yourselves to Him . . .”

“Perhaps we are,” it said mildly. “We don’t understand this universe of yours; are you so sure you do?” It was peering intently at him now. “You’re the ones who seem like unfeeling automata to us. Can’t you sense your own ghostliness? Can’t you sense what uncanny, unlikely, spooky creatures you are? You bristle with strangeness! You reek of it! Your eyes are made out of jelly! And yet, with those jelly eyes, you somehow manage degrees of resolution rivaling those of the best optical lenses. How is that possible, with nothing but blobs of jelly and water to work with? Your brains are soggy lumps of meat and blood and oozing juices, and yet they have as many synaptical connections as our own, and resonate with the quantum level in some mysterious way that ours do not!” It moved uneasily, as though touched by some cold wind that Czudak couldn’t feel. “We know who designed us. We have yet to meet whoever designed you—but we have the utmost respect for his abilities.”

With a shock, Czudak realized that it was afraid of him—of humans in general. Humans spooked it. Against its own better judgement, it must feel a shiver of superstitious dread when it was around humans, like a man walking past a graveyard on a black cloudless night and hearing something howl within. No matter how well-educated that man was, even though he knew better, his heart would lurch and the hair would rise on the back of his neck. It was in the blood, in the back of the brain, instinctual dread that went back millions of years to the beginning of time, to when the ancestors of humans were chittering little insectivores, freezing motionless with fear in the trees when a hunting beast roared nearby in the night. So must it be for the Mechanical, even though its millions of generations went back only thirty years. Voices still spoke in the blood—or whatever served it for blood—that could override any rational voice of the mind, and monsters still lurked in the back of the brain. Monsters that looked a lot like Czudak.

Perhaps that was the only remaining edge that humanity had—the superstitions of machines.

“Very eloquent,” Czudak said, and sighed. “Almost, you convince me.”

The Mechanical stirred, seeming to come back to itself from far away, from a deep reverie. “You are the one who must convince your followers of your sincerity, Mr. Czudak,” it said. Abruptly, it stood up. “If you publicly recant, Mr. Czudak, if you sway your followers, then we will let you Go Up. We will offer you the same benefits that we offer to any of our companions in the Orbital Companies. What you would call ‘immortality,’ although that is a very imprecise and misleading word. A greatly extended life, at any rate, far beyond your natural organic span. And the reversal of aging, of course.”

“God damn you,” Czudak whispered.

“Think about it, Mr. Czudak,” it said. “It’s a very generous offer—especially as you’ve already turned us down once before. It’s rare we give anyone a second chance, but we are willing to give you one. A chance of Ellen’s devising, I might add—as was the original offer in the first place.” Czudak glanced quickly at Ellen, but she kept her face impassive. “You’re sadly deteriorated, Mr. Czudak,” the Mechanical continued, softly implacable. “Almost non-functional. You’ve cut it very fine. But it’s nothing our devices cannot mend. If you Come Up with us tonight, you will be young and fully functional again by this time tomorrow.”

There was a ringing silence. Czudak looked at Ellen through it, but this time she turned away. She and the Mechanical exchanged a complicated look, although whatever information was being conveyed by it was too complex and subtle for him to grasp.

“I will leave you now,” the Mechanical said. “You will have private matters to discuss. But decide quickly, Mr. Czudak. You must recant now, today, for maximum symbolic and psychological affect. A few hours from now, we won’t interested in what you do any more, and the offer will be withdrawn.”

The Mechanical nodded to them, stiffly formal, and then turned and walked directly toward the wall. The wall was only a few steps away, but the Mechanical never got there. Instead, the wall seemed to retreat before it as it approached, and it walked steadily away down a dark, lengthening tunnel, never quite reaching the wall, very slowly shrinking in size as it walked, as if it were somehow blocks away now. At last, when it was a tiny manikin shape, arms and legs scissoring rhythmically, as small as if it was miles away, and the retreating kitchen wall was the size of a playing card at the end of the ever-lengthening tunnel, the Mechanical seemed to turn sharply to one side and vanish. The wall was suddenly there again, back in place, the same as it had ever been. Joseph peeked out of it, shocked, his eyes as big as saucers.

They sat at the kitchen table, not looking at each other, and the gathering silence filed the room like water filling a pond, until it seemed that they sat silently on the bottom of that pond, in deep, still water.

“He’s not a cultist, Charlie,” she said at last, not looking up. “He’s a hobbyist. That’s the distinction you have to understand. Humans are his hobby, one he’s passionately devoted to.” She smiled fondly. “They’re more emotional than we are, Charlie, not less! They feel things very keenly—lushly, deeply, extravagantly; it’s the way they’ve programmed themselves to be. That’s the real reason why he wants to take humans along with him, of course. He’d miss us if we were left behind! He wouldn’t be able to play with us anymore. He’d have to find a new hobby.” She raised her head. “But don’t knock it! We should be grateful for his obsession. Only a very few of the AIs care about us, or are interested in us at all, or even notice us. Bucky Bug is different. He’s passionately interested in us. Without his interest and that of some of the other Clarkists, we’d have no chance at all of going to the stars!”

Czudak noticed that she always referred to the Mechanical as “he,” and that there seemed to be a real affection, a deep fondness, in the way she spoke about it. Could she possibly be fucking it somehow? Were they lovers, or was the emotion in her voice just the happy devotion a dog feels for its beloved master? I don’t want to know! he thought, fighting down a deep black spasm of primordial jealous rage. “And is that so important?” he said bitterly, feeling his voice thicken. “Such a big deal? To talk some machines into taking you along to the stars with them, like pets getting a ride in the car? Make sure they leave the windows open a crack for you when they park the spaceship!”

She started to blaze angrily at him, then struggled visibly to bring herself under control. “That’s the wrong analogy,” she said at last, in a dangerously calm voice. “Don’t think of us as dogs on a joyride. Think of us instead as rats on an ocean liner, or as cockroaches on an airplane, or even as insect larva in the corner of a shipping crate. It doesn’t matter why they want us to go, or even if they know we’re along for the ride, just as long as we go. Whatever their motives are for going where they’re going, we have agendas of our own. Just by taking us along, they’re going to help us extend our biological range to environments we never could have reached otherwise—yes, just like rats reaching New Zealand by stowing away on sailing ships. It didn’t matter that the rats didn’t build the ships themselves, or decide where the ships were going—all that counts in an environmental sense is that they got there, to a place they never could have reached on their own. Bucky Bug has promised to leave small colonizing teams behind on every habitable planet we reach. It amuses him in a fond, patronizing kind of way. He thinks it’s cute.” She stared levelly at him. “But why he’s doing it doesn’t matter. Pigs were spread to every continent in the world because humans wanted to eat them—bad for the individual pigs, but very good in the long run for the species as a whole, which extended its range explosively and multiplied its biomass exponentially. And like rats or cockroaches, once humans get into an environment, it’s hard to get rid of them. Whatever motives the AIs have for doing what they’re doing, they’ll help spread humanity throughout the stars, whether they realize they’re doing it or not.”

“Is that the best destiny you can think of for the human race?” he said. “To be cockroaches scuttling behind the walls in some machine paradise?”

This time, she did blaze at him. “Goddamnit, Charlie, we don’t have time for that bullshit! We can’t afford dignity and pride and all the rest of those luxuries! This is species survival we’re talking about here!” She’d squirmed around to face him, in her urgency. He tried to say something, even he wasn’t sure what it would have been, but she overrode him. “We’ve got to get the human race off Earth! Any way we can. We can’t afford to keep all our eggs in one basket anymore. There’s too much power, too much knowledge, in too many hands. How long before one of the New Men decides to destroy the Earth as part of some insane game he’s playing, perhaps not even understanding that what he’s doing is real? They have the power to do it. How long before some of the other AIs decide to exterminate the human race, to tidy up the place, or to make an aesthetic statement of some kind, or for some other reason we can’t even begin to understand? They certainly have the power—they could do it as casually as lifting a hand, if they wanted to. How long before somebody else does it, deliberately or by accident? Anybody could destroy the world these days, even private citizens with the access to the right technology. Even the Meats could do it, if they applied themselves!”

“But—” he said.

“No buts! Who knows what things will be like a thousand years from now? A hundred thousand years from now? A million? Maybe our descendants will be the masters again, maybe they’ll catch up with the AIs and even surpass them. Maybe our destinies will diverge entirely. Maybe we’ll work out some kind of symbiosis with them. A million things could happen. Anything could happen. But before our descendants can go on to any kind of destiny, there have to be descendants in the first place! If you survive, there are always options opening up later on down the road, some you couldn’t ever have imagined. If you don’t survive, there are no options!”

A wave of tiredness swept over him, and he slumped in his chair. “There are more important things than survival,” he said.

She fell silent, staring at him intently. She was flushed with anger, little droplets of sweat standing out on her brow, dampening her temples, her hair slightly disheveled. He could smell the heat of her flesh, and the deeper musk of her body, a rich pungent smell that cut like a knife right through all the years to some deep core of his brain to which time meant nothing, that didn’t realize that thirty long years had gone by since last he’d smelled that strong, secret fragrance, that didn’t realize that he was old. He felt a sudden pang of desire, and looked away from her uneasily. All at once, he was embarrassed to have her see him this way, dwindled, diminished, gnarled, ugly, old.

“You’re going to turn us down again, aren’t you?” she said at last. “Damnit! You always were the most stiff-necked, stubborn son-of-a-bitch alive! You always had to be right! You always were right, as far as you were concerned! No argument, no compromises.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Damn you, can’t you admit that you were wrong, just this once? Can’t you be wrong, just this once?”

“Ellen—” he said, and realized that it was the first time he’d spoken her name aloud in thirty years, and faltered into silence. He sighed, and began again. “You’re asking me to betray my principles, to betray everything I’ve ever stood for, to tear down everything I’ve ever built . . .”

“Oh, fuck your principles!” she said exasperatedly. “Get over it! We can’t afford principles! We’re talking about life here. If you’re still alive, anything can happen! Who knows what role you may still have to play in our destiny, you stupid fucking moron? Who knows, you could make all the difference. If you’re alive, that is. If you’re dead, you’re nothing but a corpse with principles. Nothing else is going to happen, nothing else can happen. End of story!”

“Ellen—” he said, but she impatiently waved away the rest of what he was going to say.

“There’s nothing noble about being dead, Charlie,” she said fiercely. “There’s nothing romantic about it. There’s no statement you can make by dying that’s worth the potential of what you might be able to do with the rest of your life. You think you’re proving some kind of point by dying, by refusing to choose life instead, it enables you to see yourself as all noble and principled and high-minded, you can feel a warm virtuous glow about yourself, while you last.” She leaned closer, her lips in a tight line. “Well, you look like shit, Charlie. You’re wearing out, you’re falling apart. You’re dying. There’s nothing noble about it. The meat is rotting on the bone, your muscles are sagging, your hair is falling out, your juices are drying up. You smell bad.”

He flushed with embarrassment and turned away, but she leaned in closer after him, relentlessly. “There’s nothing noble about it. It’s just stupid. You don’t refuse to refurbish a car because it has a lot of miles on it—you re-tune it, refresh it, tinker with it, replace a faulty part here and there, strip the goddamn thing down to the chassis and rebuild it if necessary. You keep it running. Because otherwise, you can’t go anywhere with it. And who knows where it could still take you?”

He turned further away from her, squirming around in his chair, partially turning his back on her. After a moment, she said, “You keep casting yourself as Faust, and Bucky Bug as Mephistopheles. Or is your ego big enough to make it Jesus and the Devil, up on that mountain? But it’s just not that simple. It’s just not that simple anymore. If it ever was. Maybe the right choice, the moral choice, is to give in to temptation, not fight it! We don’t have to play by the old rules. Being human can mean whatever we want it to mean!”

Another lake of silence filled up around them, and they at the bottom of it, deep enough to drown. At last, quietly, she said, “Do you ever hear from Sam?”

He stirred, sighed, rubbed his hand over his face. “Not for years. Not a word. I don’t even know whether he’s still alive.”

She made a small noise, not quite a sigh. “That poor kid! We threw him back and forth between us until he broke. I suppose that I always had to be right, too, didn’t I? We made quite a pair. No wonder he rejected both of us as soon as he got the chance!”

Czudak said nothing. After a moment, as if carrying on a conversation already in progress that only he could hear, he said, “You made your choices long ago. You burnt your bridges behind you when you took that job with the Company and went up to work in space, against my wishes. You knew I didn’t want you to go, that I didn’t approve, but you went anyway, in spite of all the political embarrassment it caused me! You didn’t care so much about our marriage then, did you? You’d already left me by the time the AI Revolt happened!”

She stirred, as if she was going to blaze at him again, but instead only said quietly, “But I came back for you too, didn’t I? Afterward. I didn’t have to do that, but I did. I stuck my neck way out to come back for you. You were the one who refused to come with me, when I gave you the chance. Who was burning bridges then?”

He grunted, massaged his face with both hands. God, he was so tired! Who had been right then, who was right now—he didn’t know anymore. Truth be told, he only dimly remembered what the issues had been in the first place. He was so tired. His vision blurred, and he rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said dully. “I don’t know anymore.”

He could feel her eyes on him again, intently, but he refused to turn his head to look at her. “When the AIs took over the Orbital Towns,” she said, “and offered every one of us there immortality if we’d join them, did you really expect me to turn them down?”

Now he turned his head to look at her, meeting her gaze levelly. “I would have,” he said. “If it meant losing you.”

“You really believe that, don’t you, you sanctimonious bastard?” she said sadly. She laughed quietly, and shook her head. Czudak continued to stare at her. After a moment of silence, she reached out and took him by the arm. He could feel the warmth of her hand there, fingers pressing into his flesh, the first time she had touched him in thirty years. “I miss you,” she said. “Come back to me.”

He looked away. When he looked around again, she was gone, without even a stirring of the air to mark her passage. Had she ever been there at all?

The places where she had touched his arm burned faintly, tingling, as if he had been touched by fire, or the sun.

He sat there, in silence, for what seemed like a very long time, geological eons, time enough for continents to move and mountains flow like water, while the shadows shifted and afternoon gathered toward evening around him. Ellen’s scent hung in the room for a long time and then slowly faded, like a distant regret. The clock was running, he knew—in more ways than one.

He had to make up his mind. He had to decide. Now. One way or the other. This was the sticking point.

He had to make up his mind.

Had it ever been so quiet, anywhere, at any time in the fretful, grinding, bloody history of the world? When he was young, he would often seek out lonely places full of holy silence, remote stretches of desert, mountaintops, a deserted beach at dawn, places where you could be contemplative, places where you could just be, drinking in the world, pores open . . . but now he would have welcomed the most mundane and commonplace of sounds, a dog barking, the sound of passing traffic, a bird singing, someone—a human voice!—yelling out in the street—anything to show that he was still connected to the world, still capable of bringing in the broadcast signal of reality with his deteriorating receiving set. Still alive. Still here. Sometimes, in the cold dead middle of the night, the shadows at his throat like razors, he would speak some inane net show on, talking heads gabbing earnestly about things he didn’t care about at all, and let it babble away unheeded in the background all night long, until the sun came up to chase the graveyard shadows away, just for the illusion of company. You needed something, some kind of noise, to counter the silences and lonlinesses that were filling up your life, and to help distract you from thinking about what waited ahead, the ultimate, unbreakable silence of death. He remembered how his mother, in the last few decades of her life, after his father was gone, would fall asleep on the couch every night with the TV set running. She never slept in the bed, even though it was only a few feet away across her small apartment, not even closed off by a door. She said that she liked having the TV set on, “for the noise.” Now he understood this. Deep contemplative silence is not necessarily your friend when you’re old. It allows you to listen too closely to the disorder in your veins and the labored beating of your heart.

God, it was quiet!

He found himself remembering a trip he’d taken with Ellen a lifetime ago, the honeymoon trip they’d spent driving up the California coast on old Route 1, and how somewhere, after dark, just north of Big Sur, on the way to spend the night in a B&B in Monterey (where they would fuck so vigorously on the narrow bed that they’d tip it over, and the guy in the room below would pound on the ceiling to complain, making them laugh uncontrollably in spite of attempts to shoosh each other, as they sprawled on the floor in a tangle of bedclothes, drenched in each other’s sweat), they pulled over for a moment at a vista-point. He remembered getting out of the car in the dark, with the invisible ocean breathing on their left, and, looking up, being amazed by how many stars you could see in the sky here, a closely-packed bowl of stars surrounding you on all sides except where the darker-black against black silhouette of the hills took a bite out of it. Stars all around you, millions of them, coldly flaming, indifferent, majestic, remote. If you watched the night sky too long, he’d realized then, feeling the cold salt wind blow in off the unseen ocean and listening to the hollow boom and crash of waves against the base of the cliff far below, the chill of the stars began to seep into you, and you began to get an uneasy reminder of how vast the universe really was—or how small you were. It was knowledge you had to turn away from eventually, before that chill sank too deeply into your bones; you had to pull back from it, shrug it off, try to immerse yourself again in your tiny human life, do your best to once more wrap yourself in the conviction that the great wheel of the universe revolved around you instead, and that everyone else and everything else around you, the mountains, the vast breathing sea, the sky itself, were merely spear-carriers or theatrical backdrops in the unique drama of your life, a vitally important drama unlike anything that had ever gone before . . . But once faced with the true vastness of the universe, once you’d had that chill insight, alone under the stars, it was hard to shake the realization that you were only a miniscule fleck of matter, that existed for a span of time so infinitely, vanishingly short that it couldn’t even be measured on the clock of geologic time, by the birth and death of mountains and seas, let alone on the vastly greater clock that ticks away how long it takes the great flaming wheel of the Galaxy to whirl around itself, or one galaxy to wheel around another. That the shortest blink of the cosmic Eye would still be aeons too long to notice your little life at all.

Against that kind of immensity, what did “immortality” mean, for either human or machine? A million years, a day—from that perspective, they were much the same.

There was a throb of pain in his temple now. A tension headache starting? Or a stroke? It would be ironic if a blood vessel burst in his brain and killed him before he even had a chance to make up his mind.

One way or the other, time was almost up. Either his corporeal life or his terrestrial one ended today. Either way, he wouldn’t be back here again. He looked slowly around the room, examining every detail, things that had been there for so long that they’d faded into the background and he didn’t really see them anymore: a set of bronze door-chimes, hung over the back door, that he and Ellen had bought in Big Sur; an ornamental glass ball in a woven net; a big brown-and-cream vase from a cluttered craft shop in Seattle; a crockery sun-face they’d gotten in Albuquerque; a wind-up toy carousel that played “The Carousel Waltz.” Familiar mugs and cups and bowls, worn smooth with age. A framed Cirque Du Soleil poster, decades old now. One of Sam’s old stuffed animals, a battered tiger with one ear drooping, tucked away on a shelf of the high kitchen cabinet, and never touched or moved again.

Strange that he had gotten rid of Ellen’s photograph, ostentatiously made a point of not displaying it, but kept all the rest of these things, all the memorabilia of their years together—as though subconsciously he was expecting her to come back, to step back into his life as simply as she’d stepped out it, and pick up where they’d left off. But that wasn’t going to happen. If they were to have any life together, it would be very far away from here, and under conditions that were unimaginably strange. Would he have the courage to face that, would he have the strength to deal with starting a new life? Or was his soul too old, too tired, too tarnished, no matter what nanomagic tricks the Mechanicals could play with his physical body?

Joseph was gesturing urgently to him again, waving both arms over his head from the middle of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. He released the valet from reserve-mode, and Joseph immediately appeared beside the kitchen table, contriving somehow to look flustered. “I have this Highest Priority message for you, sir, although I don’t know where it came from or how it was placed in my system. All it says is, ‘You don’t have much time’.”

“I know, Joseph,” Czudak said, cutting him off. It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to tell you—” Czudak paused, suddenly uncertain what to say. “I just wanted to tell you that, whichever way things go, you’ve been a good friend to me, and I appreciate it.”

Joseph looked at him oddly. “Of course, sir,” he said. How much of this could he really understand? It was way outside of his programming parameters, even with adaptable learning-algorithms. “But the message—”

Czudak spoke him off, and he was gone. Just like that. Vanished. Gone. And if he was never spoken of again, would it make any difference to him? Even if Joseph had known in advance that he’d never be spoken on again, that there would be nothing from this moment on but non-existence, blankness, blackness, nothingness, would he have cared?

Czudak stood up.

As he started across the room, he realized that the time-travelers were still there. Rank on rank of them, filling the room with jostling ghosts, thousands of them, millions of them perhaps, a vast insubstantial crowd of them that he couldn’t see, but that he could feel were there. Waiting. Watching. Watching him. He stopped, stunned, for the first time beginning to believe in the presence of the time-travelers as a real phenomenon, and not just a half-senile fancy of his decaying brain.

This is what they were here to see. This moment. His decision.

But why? Were they students of obscure old-recension political scandals, here to witness his betrayal of his old principles, the way you might go back to witness Benedict Arnold sealing his pact with the British or Nixon giving the orders for Watergate? Were they triumphant future descendants of the Meats, here to watch the heroic moment when he threw the Mechanicals’s offer of immortality defiantly back in their Teflon faces, perhaps inspiring some sort of human resistance movement? Or were they here to witness the birth of his new life after he accepted that offer, because of something he had yet to do, something he would go on to do centuries or thousands of years from now?

And who were they? Were they his own human descendants, from millions of years in the future, evolved into strange beings with godlike powers? Or were they the descendants of the Mechanicals, grown to a ghostly discorporate strangeness of their own?

He walked forward, feeling the watching shadows part around him, close in again close behind. He still didn’t know what he was going to do. It would have been so easy to make this decision when he was young. Young and strong and self-righteous, full of pride and determination and integrity. He would have turned the Mechanicals down flat, indignantly, with loathing, not hesitating for a moment, knowing what was right. He already had done that once, in fact, long before, teaching them that they couldn’t buy him, no matter what coin they offered to pay in! He wasn’t for sale!

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Now, hobbling painfully toward the front door, feeling pain lance through his head at every step, feeling his knee throb, he was struck by a sudden sense of what it would be like to be young again—to suddenly be young again, all at once, in a second! To put all the infirmities and indignities of age aside, like shedding a useless skin. To feel life again, really feel it, in a hot hormonal rush of whirling emotions, a maelstrom of scents, sounds, sights, tastes, touch, all at full strength rather than behind an insulating wall of glass, life loud and vulgar and blaring at top volume rather than whispering in the slowly diminishing voice of a dying radio, life where you could touch it, all your nerves jumping just under your skin, rather than feeling the world pulling slowly away from you, withdrawing, fading away with a sullen murmur, like a tide that has gone miles out from the beach . . .

Czudak opened his front door, and stepped out onto the high white marble stoop.

The Meats had moved their demonstration over from the park, and were now camped out in front of his house, filling the street in their hundreds, blocking traffic. They were still beating their drums and blowing on their horns and whistles, although he hadn’t heard anything inside the house; the Mechanical’s doing, perhaps. A great wave of sound puffed in to greet him when he opened the door, though, blaring and vivid, smacking into his face with almost physical force. When he stepped out onto the stoop, the drums and horns began to falter and fall silent one by one, and a startled hush spread out over the crowd, like ripples spreading out over the surface of a pond from a thrown stone, until there was instead of noise an expectant silence made up of murmurs and whispers, noises not quite heard. And then even that almost-noise stopped, as if the world had taken a deep breath and held it, waiting, and he looked out over a sea of expectant faces, looking back at him, turned up toward him like flowers turned toward the sun.

A warm breeze came up, blowing across the park, blowing from the distant corners of the Earth, tugging at his hair. It smelled of magnolias and hyacinths and new-mown grass, and it stirred the branches of the trees around him, making them lift and shrug. The horizon to the west was a glory of clouds, hot gold, orange, lime, scarlet, coral, fiery purple, with the sun a gleaming orange coin balanced on the very rim of the world, ready to teeter and fall off. The rest of the sky was a delicate pale blue, fading to plum and ash to the East, out toward the distant ocean. The full moon was already out, a pale perfect disk, like a bone-white face peering with languid curiosity down on the ancient earth. A bird began to sing, trilling liquidly, somewhere out in the gathering darkness.

Exultation opened hotly inside him, like a wound. God, he loved the world!

Throwing his head back, he began to speak.

Originally published in Asimov’ Science Fiction Magazine, October/November 1999.

About the Artist and Authors

Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)

Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.

Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.

His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters

John P. Murphy (johnmurphy.wordpress.com)

John P. Murphy grew up in West Virginia and transplanted to New England for grad school. He studied engineering and artificial intelligence in college, has a PhD in robotics, and currently works in computer security.

John’s short fiction has appeared in venues including The Magazine of F&SF, Daily Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Nature, and the Drabblecast.

Cat Rambo (www.kittywumpus.net/blog)

Cat Rambo lives and writes atop a hill in West Seattle. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, The Magazine of F&SF, and Clarkesworld. She has been shortlisted for the Endeavor, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Compton Crook Award, and is the current President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois has been working in the science fiction field for more than thirty years. For twenty years he was the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, during which time he received the Hugo Award for Best Editor fifteen times, Nebula Awards twice, and a World Fantasy Award. He has also been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and has received the Skylark Award for Lifetime Achievement.

About Forever

Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a three-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). The innagural edition of his Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series will be published by Night Shade Books in June. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Thank you for reading Forever Magazine.