Chimera (3 page)

Chapter Two

It was a night for back doors. The next on the tour belonged to the new police headquarters. Two cops, one human, male and beginning to wrinkle, and one bot, sexless and stainless, met our cruiser. There's nothing impressive about the rear entrance, beyond the fact that its smooth surfaces must be easy to clean. Below a Christmas wreath, someone had slapped a small sticker on the glasteel door that read, "Garbage in, garbage out."

The copbot directed us through the building with simple commands: "Forward." "Left." "Halt." The cat kept me between her and the bot, and she watched it constantly. A few states had banned copbots, but I couldn't remember if Minnesota was one.

The human cop never said a word as we walked a long hall, then rode the elevator. Since we weren't exactly prisoners and we weren't exactly guests, his compromise between intimidation and civility was that all-purpose emotion of the underpaid civil servant, boredom.

They left us in a small waiting room with a holovision set. I looked out. A copbot stood at attention in the hall. I tried the door. Locked.

The cat dropped onto a couch and said, "Any idea how long we wait?"

"They have any reason to be nice to you?"

"No."

"Me, neither."

So we watched HV. Adam Tromploy, KCAL's digicaster who seems as artificial to me as any human news anchor, gave us the day's events, starting with the proposed Chimera Rights Resolution. It was facing fierce challenges in the U.N.'s General Assembly; the likelihood of passage was "not good."

"Some surprise," the cat said, curling up on the couch and closing her golden eyes. "Like the genomeries would free their property out of the goodness of their hearts."

The next news item brought her to the edge of the couch—a werewolfing in an Italian restaurant in New York City, the fifth in that city this year. The restaurant's security-cam caught most of the action:

A shaggy apeman in a busboy's uniform was carrying dishes through a room filled with human diners when he staggered. His tray slipped from his hand. Plates, glasses, and cutlery clattered onto the hardwood floor as he doubled over, clutching his chest. Customers turned and stared. A human in a white jacket, probably the maitre d', hurried up to him, looking angry. Then the apeman reared up. Before the human could speak, the apeman snapped the guy's neck, threw him against the dessert cart, and tore into a man and a woman at the nearest table.

In less than thirty seconds, the ape killed four humans and a dogwoman waiter who tried to stop him. Her sacrifice gave everyone else time to get out. When the cops arrived, they opened fire with bullets, not sleep darts. The first shots barely slowed him. He tore open a copbot before he finally fell under the hail of police fire.

As medics carried out the dead and wounded in the background, a man in a bloody shirt gave the usual werewolfing victim's spiel: One, it attacked anything that moved. Two, how could anyone want to give critters equal rights when one of them might begin a killing spree at any time?

In the interest of the appearance of balanced reporting, some guy came on with a subtitle proclaiming him a real scientist. He gave the usual chimera expert's spiel: One, statistically, genetically enhanced creatures are not significantly more likely to go berserk than humans. Two, we've given chimeras our virtues; should we be surprised if they have our vices, too?

The cat's eyes closed again when Tromploy began talking about AIs competing for the world chess championship in Jerusalem. I could've dozed then, too. The contest may've officially been between Indigo 74 and AI-LL23C, but it seemed more like free advertising for Chain Logic and Apple IBM, the companies that designed them.

I looked out the door again. So far as I could tell, we had been forgotten. I said, "Why me?"

The cat answered without opening her eyes. "I didn't take you for the philosophical type."

"I wasn't asking why I had to have my game interrupted—"

"Which you would've lost anyway."

"Without getting in hock to you."

Her eyelids flicked open as she gave me a sideways glance, dark slitted pupils at the edge of golden eyes. "Refresh my memory. When did I force you to take all of my money?"

One point for the cat. I turned back to the HV.

We watched the usual unpromising news about efforts to restore the ozone layer, and another border dispute between North and South California over homeless people heading north for welfare benefits. The Chief Justice announced that the Supreme Court would consider whether the laws of the Arizona theocracy were in violation of the First Amendment, Arizona's Christian Party governor announced the state legislature would consider whether the Supreme Court was in violation of the Decentralization Amendment, and the President's spokeswoman said no Federal troops would be sent to impose the will of nine old men and women on the free people of Arizona. Then the chairwoman of one of the human football leagues complained about the growing popularity of the chimera league, saying that for their safety, chimera players ought to wear helmets and padding like their counterparts in the human leagues.

"
Que
altruist," the cat said.

When Elvis and Marilyn sims began singing about the cocaine being back in Coca-Cola, I turned to the cat and tried again. "What I meant was, why'd you come to me? Or is that something you'd rather not talk about now?"

"I called some other agencies. The first three were very friendly, until they heard I was calling for myself, not my owner."

"You've got an owner?"

"No. I called four more detectives with the camera turned off. None of them would work for cash."

"Why'd you think I'd be any different?"

"I was calling from a bar in Crittertown. The Tavern of Dr. Moreau."

It's a small place on Lankershim with cheap beer, no decor to mention, and every Tuesday night, a house band consisting of four chimeras and a human on sax that played the finest wildsong in L.A. They didn't welcome humans, but they didn't discourage us, either—one afternoon, I overheard a chimera ask, "What's a skin doing in a fur bar?" and the weaselman behind the counter answered, "Keeping his tab paid up. Which is more than I can say for some."

I didn't think anyone at Moreau's knew my name, but the cat anticipated that question. She said, "I asked the barman if he knew any detectives who would work for chimeras. He said there was a skin that might be worth a call. He dug your card out of a big glass bowl, some kind of drawing for dinner for two at Beauty and the Beast's. That's when I got your recording."

"I hope you put the card back in after you called."

She smiled at that. "Relax, Mr. Maxwell. I did."

"Call me Max."

The smile faded.

"Or don't, Ms. Domingo. You're the client."

She nodded. "It's nothing personal. You have a policy about working for chimeras. I have a policy about humans with policies about chimeras."

"I broke mine."

"Because you can't afford to pay me back. If you'd known what I was, would you have taken my case?"

There were a lot of things I might've said. I settled for the truth. "No."

"I don't see any reason to compromise my principles, Mr. Maxwell."

"You're claiming the moral high ground, when you presented yourself as—" I remembered that the room had to be bugged and stopped the sentence there. I glanced twice at the ceiling to remind her that they would love for us to give them something useful.

She glared at me, breathed once in exasperation, then breathed again more calmly and said, "I needed to get to you as soon as possible."

"Ah. Necessity is a principle now."

"What would you know about necessity?"

"I know that principles you abandon in the face of necessity don't deserve the name."

"That's easy for a human to say, Mr. Maxwell."

I looked at my watch. Zoe Domingo would be my client for another twenty-two hours and ten minutes. I said, "Did I mention I get eight hours off for sleep, an hour each for meals, and as many bathroom breaks as I want?"

She smiled, baring very white teeth. What do you call the canines in a cat? Her teeth, like so much of her, passed for human at first glance. But her fangs, like those of her forebears, had been designed to rip flesh from her prey. "If we're both lucky, Mr. Maxwell, it won't take you long to find what I'm after."

A home repair show followed the news. Neither of us got up to see if it was possible to change the channel. If I ever have a house with gutters, I'll be able to take great care of them.

A human cop saved me from learning how to take equally great care of tile grout. She was short, stocky, and a little more communicative than her predecessor. She seemed to have decided to treat us like guests you could shoot if they misbehaved. "Mr. Maxwell? Zoe? This way, please."

The cat kept her eye on the bot backing up the human. I began to wonder about Minnesota's policy on bots in general. Some people don't like them, the way some people get the creeps from dolls and puppets. But copbots are humanform in silhouette only. Okay, they have optics where a human's eyes would be so they can send stereoscopic images to CityCentral. Still, they look as lifelike as a wooden artist's mannequin. No one would look at a copbot and see any kind of mimicry of life.

Then I thought about the way housecats chase light from laser pointers. I had no idea what Zoe Domingo saw when she looked at a copbot or what she considered a mimicry of life. Bots move, don't they? The apeman that werewolfed in New York had torn into a copbot with the same berserker glee that it had taken to its biological prey.

The second cop duo brought us to a small room with a table, four uncomfortable plastic chairs, and a monitor mounted high on the wall. Classical music played in the background, something almost soporific. The walls were sky blue, a soothing color, but that and the music did not make this a soothing room. The closest thing to decoration was a "no smoking" sign bought cheap from an office supply site. I'm sure there's a room in police headquarters where they would bring the governor if they needed to question her about something. This wasn't it.

The cat took a chair and closed her eyes. I was getting envious. I watched her nap and wondered what I had gotten into. I had just decided to light a cig and see whether the smoke would summon anyone when two men entered.

"Mr. Maxwell? I'm Detective Vallejo. This is my partner, Detective Chumley." No one offered a hand, so I nodded to them. Vallejo was a small, round man in a business suit that absorbed light. My first thought was that he wore it to look thinner. But nullight is expensive—if he'd wanted to be thinner, he clearly could've afforded the occasional visit to a body shop. His voice was pleasant, with a hint of an accent, his tone was polite, and his smile looked sincere. I knew I was supposed to like the guy, but I did anyway.

Chumley looked like he'd walked out of a museum exhibit for the theory of human evolution. If he grew a beard and got a forehead tat, your only question would be whether he had gorilla or baboon genes. My vote would've been for gorilla. I first thought his suit was cheap because he hit a body shop every week. Then I saw that his hands were hard like a fighter's and decided that his muscle came the hard way, and the cheap suit was a badge of honor. Or maybe it was to annoy his more fashionable partner. Or maybe it was just to say that he didn't want to get anything on good clothes, like your blood.

Chumley's expression of perpetual constipation told me I wasn't supposed to like him. Stifling the impulse to assure him he was doing one hell of a job, I stood and offered my hand. "What can we do for you, detectives?"

Vallejo's grip was firm, to emphasize that he was more than a dandy. Chumley's was gentle, to let me know that he didn't need to use his strength to threaten me.

The cat had risen when I did. Both detectives ignored her. Vallejo indicated the chairs. "We need to ask Zoe some questions."

She nodded. "Of course."

I said, "And everything we say in here's going to be run through a lie detection program."

Chumley grinned coldly. "What do you think?"

I shrugged. "No one's got anything to hide."

As we all sat, Vallejo asked the cat, "You realize that it's a crime to fail to report a crime?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

Chumley said, "Should he try again in Spanish?" When she blinked at him, he added, "We pulled your file. We can tell you your litter number at Bionova's Panama branch and the names of everyone you were sold to. No one wants to keep you long, do they?"

She said, "English is fine. What crime did I fail to report?"

Vallejo said, "Tell us about Janna Gold."

"If you're asking, you already know."

Chumley said, "Humor us."

"She was my friend."

"Friend," said Chumley. "You've had the same address for two years. After you ran away from Fulltime Entertainment, she bought your papers and gave you your freedom. I'm guessing she was a little more than a friend, huh, pussycat?"

The cat studied him. "You don't know a lot about friends, do you, Detective?"

Vallejo smiled as he looked away from his partner.

Chumley said, "You and the doctor have some kind of spat? If there was trouble between you two, we'll find out about it."

"No," said the cat. "You can't think I'm responsible for—"

"You didn't report it. You abandoned your friend—"

Vallejo interrupted. "Given the circumstances, that might be understandable."

Chumley frowned at him. "Yeah, right."

Vallejo said, "Did Dr. Gold have any enemies?"

"No," said the cat.

"There's no reason anyone would want her dead?"

"Not that I know of." When the detectives kept watching her, she added, "Doc tended to under-tip. That's no reason to kill her."

I wanted to tell her that her experience with necessity must not have included waiting tables, but I kept my place in the peanut gallery.

Vallejo said, "Who would benefit from her death?"

"She has a sister in Havana with a couple of kids. But they were close. They visited often. I can't believe her family had anything to do with it."