The Automatic Detective (10 page)

The doorman marched forward again. "I'm sorry, sir, but there's no appointment listed."

"I don't have one."

His smile dropped a third of a millimeter or so. "I'm sorry, sir, but there are no unauthorized visitors allowed." For a biological, this guy sounded more like a robot than I did.

"Can you give her a buzz and let her know I'm here?" I asked. "I'd appreciate it."

"I'm sorry, sir, but if you're not expected I'm afraid I must ask you to leave the premises." The security autos took a step forward.

I stuck with tried-and-true robot persistence. "Just buzz her. Isn't she home?"

"I'm not allowed to give that information, sir."

This outcome was not surprising, but I was still annoyed and somewhat insulted that Dennis didn't at least take the time to go back to his podium and pretend to call somebody so he could come back and say I'd been refused. It seemed the polite thing to do. Instead, I was treated like an encyclopedia salesman. I ignored my common sense emulator and kept on trying.

"It's about a friend of ours. Name's Tony Ringo." I turned to one of the scanner drones and repeated the name in case anyone important might be listening. "Tony Ringo."

Five gun drones dropped from their orbit of Proton Towers and circled around me. Their guns hummed with ready charges. The two security autos pulled their weapons and drew a bead. Worst of all, Dennis's smile completely vanished, replaced by a determined blankness.

"Sir, if you do not retreat to a safe distance immediately, I am authorized to use force."

The smart thing to do would be to back away. Unfortunately, my core aggression index, that thing I wasn't supposed to be having problems controlling, kept me from budging. Already my combat analyzer was plotting battle strategies.

"Sir, I will not ask again."

Whether I would've done the intelligent thing and retreat or not was anybody's guess. Especially mine. But the issue was nullified by a strong pinging from the doorman's badge.

He ordered security to hold their positions as he turned his back to me.

"Yes, ma'am?"

A new voice issued from his badge. Unfamiliar, but I had a pretty good guess as to whom it belonged.

"Please, Dennis," said Lucia Napier, "do send Mr. Megaton up."

The gun drones shot back into their orbit, and the autos put away their guns. Dennis turned back to me. The smile, as bright and shiny as ever, was back on his face.

The doorman led me inside, handing me off to a concierge. The short norm was meticulously groomed, right down to his wrinkle-free black trousers. My recognition file always picked out one or two features in a person to mark them for easy retrieval from my memory matrix. The details it noticed about him were his excessively plucked eyebrows and his hair: black, greased into submission, with a part so neat and precise that it must've taken a mathematical algorithm to get just right.

He bowed. "Hello, sir. If you'd be so kind as to follow me. . . ."

Most of the city still used the old-fashioned elevators, but Proton Towers had the latest in levitator pods. The concierge and I stepped into a pod decorated with a couch, a plant, and a painting of a garden villa. I found the painting very odd. Having been activated in Empire and never having set foot outside the city limits, I couldn't imagine a world where such a thing was possible. A building made of wood, all that green, and an expansive blue sky.

I wondered if it even existed.

The concierge caught me studying it. Actually, I'd already committed it to memory file, and could study it anytime I liked. I hadn't bothered to turn away from it.

"Do you like it, sir?" he asked.

Perhaps
like
was too solid a word. I had no desire to leave Empire and see the rest of the world. But there was something about this painting and its otherworldliness that kept my attention. Inexplicable, yes, but part of true consciousness was having inexplicable reactions from time to time.

"It's nice," I replied.

"Yes, sir, indeed, it is."

The doors closed, and the pod shot up. Seventy-six floors zipped by in forty seconds, and when the doors opened again, Lucia Napier and her penthouse were standing before me.

"Mr. Mack Megaton," announced the concierge, just in case she failed to notice the seven-foot robot standing behind him. She invited me in and dismissed him.

"It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir," he said.

"Likewise," I returned as the pod doors closed.

I scanned and analyzed Lucia Napier. Biological notions of beauty meant nothing to me, but my evolutionary programming had been attempting for some time now to work out what made humans attractive. It broke all the features down: five feet, seven inches tall. Long, blond hair. Sparkling blue eyes. Button nose. Smooth complexion. Proper number of well-proportioned limbs. Thin waist. Round hips. Breasts that were small but perky and noticeable. A nicely tailored dress that emphasized her curves without being showy, allowing a tasteful glimpse of cleavage. My evaluator performed some quick calculations and spit out a rating.

Attractive to 92 percent of the average biological populace with an eight point margin based on personal preference. It was hardly reliable. Beauty was more than the sum of its parts. Or sometimes, less.

Napier took longer to form her assessment of me. Wasn't her fault. Just the inefficient nature of that chemical lump sitting in
her skull. She stood there for ten seconds, her face a blank slate save for a slight smile.

"Very impressive." She stepped forward and held out her hand, palm down, for me to take. That surprised me. Most biologicals don't trust a big, dangerous machine enough to risk a handshake right off the bat. Those giant, bone-crunching hands of mine can be fairly intimidating, and as I took her delicate, squishy skin in my metal mitts, I couldn't honestly blame biologicals.

Napier's smile widened. "A pleasure to finally meet you, Mack."

"Likewise."

"Are you just saying that to be polite or do you really mean it?"

"I'm just saying it."

She giggled lightly. "Oh, I love you robots and your ruthless honesty. Biologicals are so difficult to nail down. Not you though. You say what you want."

"My shrink says I should work on my social subroutine."

"Oh, my no." She frowned. "Don't change a thing. It's so refreshing." She drew in a deep breath. "So delightfully direct."

She turned and walked through a pseudo-classical archway. Since she was still holding my hand, I did the polite thing and followed. We stepped into a hallway lined with photos of Lucia with other people. I hypothesized that they were important folks, though I didn't recognize many. Still, there were enough photos that I scanned a few movie stars, jazz musicians, and politicians stored in my memory matrix.

The biggest portrait was of Lucia receiving an award from Diamond Jill Mahoney, the first mutant mayor of Empire City. She'd been a norm when elected. The spontaneous crystallization of her skin had happened in the third year of her first term of office.

The hallway came to an end, and we stepped into a new room of gleaming steel. Everything from the walls to the floors to the furniture shimmered like it'd just been freshly polished. There were seven white rugs placed around the room, two metal vases shaped to look ancient and new at the same time, and a nine-foot lump of titanium trying to pass itself off as a sculpture. The room didn't look like the kind of place a biological could actually live in. Nonetheless, Napier let go of my hand, nestled in the corner of a fluffy white couch, and somehow managed to actually look comfortable.

A butler auto, wrapped in a cream tuxedo, glided his way across the room. He wasn't a model I recognized, and he didn't bear any company logos. Had to be a custom job. He handed Napier a bubbling green concoction.

"Thank you, Humbolt."

"My pleasure, doll." She'd forgone the standard Olde Money English Butler voice package and given him a gruff Brooklyn accent.

She sipped her drink. "Atomic Kiss. All the rage. Well, not quite yet. I invented it this morning. But give it a week. I'd offer you one, Mack, but, well, you know . . ."

"I know," I replied.

"It must be a very odd existence." She took a very slight sip of her drink. "Then again, I suppose we flesh and blood creatures must appear very strange to you as well."

"I try not to judge," I said honestly.

"Please, Mister Megaton, have a seat." She gestured toward a chair. My coat was still wet, my chassis smudged, and to sit in the chair would've required the white cushions be sent out for dry cleaning. More likely, Napier would toss them in the trash and order up another one. Probably went through couches like I went through plastic airplane models.

"I'll stand. Thanks."

"As you wish." She took another measured sip, rose from her couch, and drew closer. Her movements were graceful, confident. This was a woman who was used to being in charge. She reached toward my faceplate.

"May I, Mister Megaton?"

My threat assessor marked her as physically benign. Of course, in a non-battlefield situation there were more dangerous things than ray cannons and plasma bolts. In her own way, Lucia Napier was more perilous than Grey and his electrokinetic touch. At least, I thought so. I had no real proof. Only an impression gleaned by edgy subroutines.

"Sure," I said, ignoring my better judgment.

She put her hand on either side of my cranial unit. "Hmmm. Interesting. You're cooler than I expected."

"You know it, daddio," I replied.

An unidentifiable expression crossed her face. "Is that a joke?"

"You tell me."

"A rudimentary sense of humor. How wonderful." She smiled. "Might I bother you to remove your coat?"

"Miss Napier, I'm not here for—"

"Oh, please, Mr. Megaton. I'll be happy to answer any of your questions afterwards."

She batted her eyelashes at me, and while the look had little effect on me, my problem-solving skills usually sought out the most direct solution. I removed my coat. The butler auto smoothly glided beside me and held out his hand.

"Want me to take that for you, buddy?"

I was about to tell him not to bother when he snatched it away and glided out of the room.

Napier circled me three times without saying a word. She smiled very slightly, apparently amused by something other than my rudimentary sense of humor.

"Magnificent. Your specs don't do you justice, Mister Megaton."

"Specs? Where did you see my specs? They're—"

"Classified? Yes, well, I have certain . . . connections with The Learned Council. I was brought in as one of the consultants for your probation hearings."

"We've never met."

"No, we haven't. But that's not surprising." She went back to her sofa and had a seat. "You haven't met with most of your creators."

"Lady, I don't know what you think you know, but I've only got one creator."

"Oh, I know you believe that, but I'm afraid Professor Megalith fudged a bit on that point." She laughed. "Did you really think one man, no matter how ingenious, was capable of creating such a sophisticated mechanism such as yourself all by his lonesome?"

"Hadn't thought about it," I said.

"No, I guess you wouldn't. Despite that wonderful Freewill Glitch, a residual devotional dictate to Megalith should remain. Don't try to deny it. Or did those giant hands of yours just clench into fists at the mere implication of imperfection in your . . . creator?"

I uncurled my fingers. My relationship with Megalith was complicated, but not that unusual. Fathers and sons didn't always get along, but that rarely kept sons from seeking dear old dad's approval. Logic told me pop was a megalomaniacal madman and his love was out of reach as long as I kept at this "productive citizen" edict of mine. It didn't stop me from having some mixed feelings about it.

"Don't get me wrong, Mack," added Napier. "The Professor is a genius. Half the systems inside you are still in the prototype stage elsewhere, and the other half have been improved
significantly. Your cooling system, for example." She ran her fingers along the rim of her glass. "That's my baby. Among a few other choice bits."

"You design robotics?" I asked.

She chuckled. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"About me. And my ascent to fabulously wealthy bad girl of Empire."

"I don't read the papers," I said. "Sorry."

"Oh, don't apologize, Mack. You may be the only citizen in all of Empire, perhaps all the world, who doesn't." She gulped down the rest of her Atomic Kiss, threw the glass over her shoulder. It bounced off the carpet, and a cleaning drone zipped out of the wall and vacuumed up the mess.

"How wonderful!" she exclaimed with all the glee of a cheerleader on prom night. She clapped her hands. A section of carpeted floor parted to reveal a stairway in the middle of the room. Napier jumped up and took me by the hand again. "Come along, Mack. I've got something to show you."

She pulled. It didn't even occur to me to resist. I was swept along in the gravity well of this small biological creature. Down the short flight of stairs, a laboratory waited. And what a lab it was. All chrome and stainless steel. An entire automated assembly line, with the latest in drone workers, occupied one wall. There were laser welders, supercomputers, and enough spare parts in neatly organized racks to build a horde of vacuum drones. Blueprints covered the walls or hung, framed and laminated, from the ceiling. The place must've occupied the entire floor beneath her apartment. There was a noticeable lack of buttons though, and a dearth of switches and levers. Like her apartment, the lab seemed impractical. It also appeared unused, judging from its extreme cleanliness, lack of any noticeable projects, and deathly stillness.