Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (23 page)

She took an inventory: storage boxes and spheres; bags, implements for tilling and turning, trimming and toiling. Her bId tagged each of these items with their name and the chance to find out
more if she happened to be interested. But she wasn’t interested. The hammer was gone. //Where’s the weapon?//

//?? – A weapon is a device for causing harm, or defending one’s . . .//

She had meant to ask that out loud. She turned to Iago. He was wrinkling his nose up; his face like an ancient turtle’s. ‘Where is the weapon?’

‘The police removed it, Miss. It is evidence, and there are legal requirements.’

‘I wanted to see how heavy it was.’

‘It was a hammer, for banging in pegs and posts and the like. There’s another over there just like it.’ He pointed.

Without the bId tagging everything, the storage room had reacquired a little of its former, estranging tang. Incomprehensible grids stacked six-deep leant against the wall; weird wide horizontal
fins embedded into the wall itself; a pendule with curious attachments hanging from the ceiling. She located the hammer and grasped the handle. The shaft moved towards her, like a lever being
pulled, but there was no way she could move the dense metal head up from the floor. It was simply too heavy.

‘This is too heavy for me to lift.’

‘It is solid metal,’ Iago agreed.

‘I don’t believe any of the servants, decanted from a zero-g environment directly into one full g, could lift such a hammer.’

‘Somebody did,’ Iago noted.

‘Ah, but I have a
theory
.’

‘Miss?’

She gestured towards the garden robot in the corner. ‘I was thinking: of course, normally a servant wouldn’t have clearance to operate something as expensive as a robot. But that one
is specifically for garden work, isn’t it? And many of these servants must have been here
pour cultiver le jardin
! Maybe one of them took advantage of the fact that they could
manipulate this heavy-duty ordnance to kill the victim.’

Iago made a moue with his wrinkly old mouth.

‘Oh don’t be like
that
ee-arrr-
gow
,’ she said. ‘It’s a neat theory, no?’

‘I was only thinking, Miss,’ he said, not meeting her eye. ‘Why get the robot to
pick up a hammer
and hit the victim? Why not just use the robot to strike the victim
directly?’

‘You’re just hole-picking. You hole-picker. These robots are – there was something about them that caught my eye. When we were here before, I mean. Something.’

They went over to the hulking great machines. ‘This,’ said Diana, excitedly, drawing an open-brackets in the floor with her toe. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘The floor, Miss?’

‘Dust! I read about it – tiny particles of matter. Usually it just floats in a suspension of air; but under gravity, like here, it
settles
. . . accumulates. Look.’ She
was proud of herself for knowing about the action of dust in gravity. Details like that could be important. ‘The dust is on the floor, and the implements. But look
here
.’ She
gestured to a patch on the robot’s inert arm, and another on its shoulder and head. ‘The dust has been disturbed! It snagged my attention without my even
realising
it. I’ll
tell you, Iago: I dreamt that night of the whole solar system seen from a long way out, with all the billions of home globes in orbit. At the time I thought it looked like foam; but now I know what
my dream-mind was trying to tell me. Dust!’

‘It
has
been disturbed,’ admitted Iago, examining the robot. ‘But I’m not sure I see what that means. Or whether it necessarily means anything.’

‘It means the
robot
is the one who lifted the hammer and brained poor Leron. Which means the murderer is the person who
controlled the robot
.’

‘Miss, we can easily check the machine’s record of work.’

Of course they could. ‘I expect it to confirm my theory,’ said Dia. They had to call up the House AI in order to access the robot’s CV: it hadn’t been so much as
switched-on in over six months.

‘Six months?’ cried Diana. ‘I don’t believe it!’

‘I’m afraid it’s undeniable. And look, the dust forms an unbroken skin over the device’s feet and the floor. This robot hasn’t moved in a long time.’

‘This stupid great machine, just
standing
here in the corner of this storeroom?’ Dia snapped, angry that her theory had so summarily been disproved. ‘What’s the
point in that?’

‘Robots are expensive, Miss,’ Iago pointed out. ‘People are cheaper. Apart from very specific jobs – large-scale construction, or the use of RACdroids in contract work
– it’s almost never cost-effective to use a robot.’

‘Then why have the brute at all?’

‘It’s anomalous, I suppose. A piece of old junk. It was probably bought for some specific, larger job, and then mothballed afterwards.’

Diana took a deep breath. Ghastly gravity, making
breathing
so hard. ‘So that’s not it. Never mind,’ she said. ‘But
somebody
lifted that hammer and smashed
it down on Leron’s head.’

‘That’s the position we started from.’

‘Never mind that, Wats-loon,’ she said, angrily. ‘I want to ask the suspects some questions now!’

Iago said: ‘I’ll order a car.’

They came back outside, and waited a minute or so in the hot sun until the car buzzed over. ‘Roof down, I think,’ Dia announced, settling into the seat. Jong-il sat
close beside her, his weapon out, and Iago opposite her. Then the platform buzzed away – a little shakily over the grass until it found a road, where it could pick up speed.

They soon left the main compound far behind. To Diana’s right the Mediterranean buzzed blue and white with light; the morning sun still fairly low in the sky. There was a breeze too: clean
and salt-cool. Then they turned inland, and passed at speed alongside a straight row of cypresses. Sunlight epilected between trees. Dust blowzed over the road in spectral tan-coloured folds. Diana
watched the landscape in motion. Her mind wandered.

‘Here, Miss,’ Iago announced.

They were at a squat white-flanked building without windows. Jong-il went first; then Diana climbed awkwardly out and stood for a moment. The grassy odour of olive oil. The sound of the
cypresses hushing her. Beside the building was a swimming pool, ten metres across, filled, it appeared, with green tea. The shadow from the building printed a trapezoid over the dry grass, and
dipped its apex into the water.

Subinspector Zarian was waiting for them in the block’s main doorway, out of the sun. ‘Good morning Miss Argent,’ he said. ‘With regard to these nineteen suspects –
do you wish me to be present when you question them?’

‘No,’ said Diana, irritably.

Diana’s legs were aching, but it was nice to get out of the heat into the cool entrance hall. Two black-uniformed functionaries – policepersons too, according to her bId –
stood to attention. ‘Is this, then, a police facility?’ she asked Zarian. Her bId knew the answer, of course. But she wanted to remind the officer who was really in charge.

‘No, Miss,’ Zarian replied. ‘This facility belongs to the Argent family – to yourself.’

‘Do you have a chief suspect?’

‘Initial enquiries suggest that a twenty-year-old female called Sapho may have been responsible.’

‘Has she confessed?’

‘She has not. But she had a grudge against the deceased.’

That unlovely clenching sensation inside Diana’s chest was incipient disappointment. The danger here was that the mystery might be so cut-and-dried – so banal – that it was
already solved. ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she said. ‘I want to speak to Sapho myself.’

They all went through to a well-furnished room, with one small window in the wall. There was no other light. Dia wondered if murk were better for interrogation than brightness; but decided that
the plain light of day would be her ally in illuminating the truth. So she talked to the wall and widened the window until a great fall of light shone into every corner.

With a sigh, Diana settled onto a soft gel-filled couch. Jong-il took up a position next to her, and Iago leaned, standing against the wall. Zarian set a chair in the middle of the room and one
of the other functionaries (Officer first-class Avraam Kawa, said the bId) brought Sapho through.

She was a typical shanty-globe girl: long trembling limbs, some difficulty holding her head upright, sweat on her face from the effort of everything. She had to be helped to the chair by the
Officer, and she didn’t so much sit as coil loosely onto the seat. Her hair was close-trimmed, and her skin a patchy brown-black all over. She looked ancient, but was probably not much older
than Diana herself, the gravity tugging her face into all the shapes of old age. ‘Hello Sapho,’ said Diana. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Sapho, oh she looked
corpse
-tired, she really did: sagging parti-coloured skin and deep bags below her bovril-coloured eyes. Yet, it occurred to Dia, there was something pretty about the
girl too, despite her gravity exhaustion. A directness in her gaze, a good line along her long nose, a strong chevron-shaped chin with a neat point at the end. An attractive girl. She blinked.
Panic, or exhaustion, possessed her.

She repeated her question. ‘Know who I am, Sapho?’

Sapho nodded, fractionally, and then began to cry. ‘Oh Miss,’ she said. ‘Oh Miss.’

This, Dia knew, was the CRF acting on heightened emotions. It was one of the awkwardnesses of dosing one’s servants with the treatment. It did make them loyal, of course; and it
didn’t interfere with most of their functions – but it made them much more emotionally volatile, and oh my
lord
it robbed them of initiative and agency.

‘You knew Leron, Sapho?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Somebody killed him. Somebody cracked his head open like a revolutionary shanty globe!’

Sob, sob, sob.

‘Who killed him, Sapho?’

More staccato sobbing. ‘No, Miss. Don’t know, Miss. I’m scared, I’m only young, I’m scared, and I don’t want – I cannot – oh Miss, oh
Miss!’

‘A little difficult to see,’ Iago murmured, his arms folded, ‘how she could lift that heavy hammer, in this gravity. She can barely keep her own head up on her neck.’

‘Sapho,’ said Diana. ‘They are saying that you killed him. Why would they say that?’

‘They are saying hateful things about me, Miss, because I love the Argents, and I love the Ulanovs.’

‘They tell me you hated him. Leron. Did you?’

‘Leron was from my globe, Miss. He was a bad man. And when we were being made ready to come down here and serve you, he would put his – I cannot say the word to you Miss, it is too
vile, into my – I cannot say the word to you Miss, it is too vile. Oh Miss!’ She started sobbing again. ‘I love you so heartily, Miss! Please do not be disappointed!’

This was surprising news, and it took Diana a moment to digest it. ‘Which globe do you come from, Sapho?’

She reined in her weeping. ‘It is called Smirr, Miss.’

‘And you’re accusing the murdered man of being a rapist?’

‘He was a bad man, a bad man.’

‘Do you know who killed him?’

But Sapho only wept and shook her head. ‘He was a bad man, Miss! I love you – and I love the Ulanovs! But
he
– didn’t have the same love in his heart.’

‘Didn’t love us?’ Diana was startled to hear this. From her reaction, so was Sapho. ‘No Miss! Of course he loved
you
. He had as much CRF inside him as any of us!
But CRF of course,’ she made a mucus-thrummy noise behind her nose, coughed, and resumed, ‘but CRF means you are loyal to one group, not two. And he hated the Ulanovs! He was a terrible
man, a bad man, a terrorist and an anarchist and an antinomian – he used to say he wanted to break the Lex Ulanova into pieces.’

‘Was that was why he was killed?’

Sapho blinked, and blinked. ‘He was a terrible human being, Miss,’ she said again, in a low voice. Then she resumed sobbing.

Diana was interrupted by a message alert through her bId. But when she checked, there was no message. Wait up. What? She brought her attention out into the world, and heard the drone of the
alert again. It only took her a moment to locate the source of this buzzing. A
wasp
! A real live creature, butting its head against the plain section of wall, as if it could break through
and escape. Dia watched, fascinated. Nothing discouraged the beast: it went back and back at the window. Dia leaned over and used her bId to zoom the creature in. It was striped like a cartoon
tiger; an anvil-shaped head and those little tight half-globes of black-bubblewrap for eyes. Its wings were smoky blurs. Even setting the bId to its maximum slow-down setting didn’t resolve
them into discernible organs in motion. She moved the bId focus to its wasp head: curled antenna like ram’s horns. Anvil-shaped cranium. A monster.

‘They sting, Miss,’ said Iago, from the other side of the room. ‘You don’t want to get too close.’

Diana glowered at him. ‘Sapho – Sapho – tell me: who murdered Leron?’

‘I think it was justice, not murder, Miss. I think he was a bad man. I say he deserved it.’

‘The policepersons – they are saying you killed him.
Did
you kill him Sapho?’

But her only reply to this was disbelieving, self-pitying tears, and a series of gaspy incomprehensible words. Diana was bored with this display. She sent Sapho away: Officer first-class Avraam
Kawa led her out.

‘
She
seemed pretty happy to see him dead and gone,’ Diana observed. ‘What do you think, Iago?’

‘I think, Miss,’ said the Tutor-who-was-no-tutor, ‘that I personally vetted all twenty of these servants. I did so in direct, personal consultations with Ms and Ms Argent.
These were to be personal handservants to yourself, Miss, and to Eva as well. We took no chances, in terms of their moral character.’

‘You don’t think a revolutionary and a murderer could slip past such a vetting process?’

Iago made his right eyebrow go from – to ^. Just his right one! His left stayed where it was. Such a clever trick. He did it from time to time, but no matter how much Diana practised in
front of the mirror she had never been able to emulate it.