The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (28 page)

Her mouth opened as she examined the
thing. Her eyes slid over to Gene.

“
This probably belonged to
the original thief.”

“
Yeah—maybe. But she
impresses me as the flexible type. I mean, in her planning.” The
fact was that the pair had eluded them for days, and in the
ordinary, run of the mill type of criminal activity, that just
didn’t happen.

The system might not detect a crime.
It might not identify a suspect. Not all crimes got reported or
recorded. But when they did, the system was pretty good about
finding someone when they wanted them.

The nightly news was jammed with
coverage of pursuits, high-speed chases, and then there were all of
the reality-based TV shows where these incredibly stupid people
were getting picked off all over the place. It was a funny thing,
but people never seemed to learn.

“
What in the hell is
that?”

He passed over a small plastic case
with some kind of child-proof fastening. Parsons fiddled with it,
as Gene pulled out more black boxes. These were a little more
obscure, although a pad with a manual key-pad and a handful of
adapter cords looked interesting. He wondered what in the hell that
was for, but the adapters would fit just about anything electronic.
One cord had what looked like a programmable bank card on the
end.

“
Hmn. Nice.”

Parsons cussed. Gene looked over in
time to see the case had popped open and what looked like
multi-coloured diodes or transistors, coded in finely-hued stripes,
as they flew up in the air in what would have been comedic except
they really ought to preserve the integrity of their chain of
evidence.

“
Shit! Make sure you don’t
lose any.” Gene suppressed a grin.

There was no telling how it would go,
but they had plenty of material evidence. A rational explanation of
Betty’s behaviour, (and Mister Nettles’ for that matter) would have
been nice. But it wasn’t essential to a conviction. He had a long
list of potential charges, and that was always useful.

More than anything, he would like to
get them talking.

Simple possession of any of these
devices was enough for a good stretch.

Sitting twelve feet away was Scott
Nettles. That one would talk—he was almost sure of it.

Jammed in against the window on this
wide-bodied jet, Betty Blue, shackled by metre-long chains to the
frame of her seat, stared straight ahead and ignored everything
that went on around her.

He wondered just what she was thinking
right about then. If Parson’s little thingies were what he thought
they were, blank human ID chips, then that equipment must have come
from somewhere else. Car-thieves tended to specialize. It was the
key to survival and they really didn’t bother with complex and
overly-dangerous sidelines.

Chapter
Eighteen

Forty-eight hours had gone by. Gene
felt refreshed, after a couple of good sleeps, a proper shave, and
some real food. Hyper-lag was a bitch. He’d kind of forgotten that
as he didn’t travel so much these days. There was some unfinished
business to take care of.

Gene MacBride sat across from Scott
Nettles in Interview Room Four. Nettles looked oddly comfortable in
the orange coveralls and red slippers. The face had character,
except when he got angry and it all twisted up like a raisin on
PCP.

“
I just want you to know
that you’re not in any trouble.”

“
Huh.”

Bullshit.

The thought was written all over Mister
Nettles’ face and body, as he sat there with arms crossed and one
ankle up on the other knee.

“
Seriously. We see you
more as kind of a victim here…”

“
Fuck off.”

Gene suppressed a laugh.

Good for you, sir.

Never give up one iota of your power,
Mister Nettles.

Thank you, God, for allowing me to
witness this moment.

“
I’m a police officer.
We’re just here to help you, sir.”

Even Gene heard the soft hack of
Francine’s cough on the other side of the partition, with its
obligatory one-way glass panel, dark and smoky and looking like
Scott’s tired but angry brown eyes. Scott’s eyebrows climbed but he
said nothing.

“
Anyway, Mister Nettles,
your property will be returned to you. We’ll have a constable help
you with that, and there is a bus stop right out front.”

Nettles still had a pair of tens as
Gene recalled from the case notes. With the workload, it was
amazing how yesterday’s novelty was today’s passé.

Scott Nettles sat there in disbelief, a
frozen look on his face.

With the benefit of two full days of
news coverage, it had become patently obvious that some of their
fears had been groundless. A prominent singer had just delivered
triplets in conjunction with her new three-album boxed set (all
part of the promotional campaign, suspected Gene) and the world was
simply moving on. There were real crises looming on the horizon and
all of this would be quickly forgotten. That disturbed him, but he
wasn’t an ethicist. No one disputed that robots had a kind of
self-awareness, a kind of identity. In more than one interview, the
rather creepy looking Doctor Piqua had simply evaded the question
of whether Betty Blue had the right to
self-determination.

I’m not an ethicist. I just build them,
Piqua had said.

He was letting everyone else do the
talking, the defining of the terms and the setting of the
agenda.

Gene stood.

“
So that’s it,
then?”

“
Yes, Mister Nettles. We
would appreciate it if you were available to answer any further
questions that we might have—I always like to leave the door open
like that, but that’s just the normal duty of a citizen…I don’t
expect too much to come out of it.”

“
But—but. But—what about
my kid?”

“
I’m sorry, Mister
Nettles. That, is a matter for other authorities. It’s out of my
hands—and none of my concern…” Yeah, and maybe you and Betty should
have thought of that earlier.

But Human Services were all over the
unborn child like a dirty shirt. On balance, a recently-founded
foundation was lobbying all over the Hill on behalf of Betty’s
right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

“
What—fuck you! God damn
you all to hell! What about all that stuff I stole—what about all
the God-damned crimes I committed…?” Scott was furious.

In here, there was a chance of sneaking
a message to her. He’d already tried to get on the laundry work
team, but had been turned down. It wasn’t a real jail, just a
holding facility and things really didn’t work that way. Scott
Nettles was an idiot in several ways. Gene could read him like a
book, and it was all so unnecessary.

“
Mister
Nettles.”

Scott was going on. The man certainly
had an impressive vocabulary. Gene winced and reddened slightly
when Scott turned from the state and the system and the world and
humankind in general and started in on him, personally.

“
Mister Nettles.” Gene
broke in during a pause for breath as Nettles ran out of air,
beet-red in the face and glowering blindly at him. “You’re blind.
You are simply not capable of committing all the crimes you are
describing. No jury in the land would convict you. My colleagues
and I are agreed on that much at least…relax. Get over it. Go home.
Get on with your life.”

“
Argh! What about
Betty—you fucking son of a bitch.”

Gene reminded himself that a paranoid
person was a suffering person. One had to make
allowances.

“
Scott. You can’t help
Betty Blue—or your child, when you’re sitting on the inside of a
jail cell.” There were a million people, some of them pretty good
lawyers, all wanting to talk to Mister Nettles.

It wasn’t Gene’s job to give the man
advice, legal or otherwise.

A shudder of emotion went through that
thin frame and then the man got a hold on his emotions.

Fuck the world. The knowledge that he
was powerless was devastating. To know that he simply didn’t matter
in the equation.

Scott slumped in resignation, head
going back and forth, no, no, no, and jaws working. He was near
tears. Gene had a moment of remorse.

“
Aw, fuck.” Scott slumped
forward and put his head in his hands.

“
Thank you, Mister
Nettles. Now let’s see about getting you out of here.”

As Nettles clambered unsteadily to his
feet, Gene took him by the elbow and led him to the
doorway.

He stood there, breathing heavily, as
Gene opened up. Scott was clearly on edge and emotionally
flabbergasted. Probably thought they were going to gas him or
something.

“
Tom?” A uniformed officer
cooling his heels on a hard plastic bench, flipping mindlessly
through a garden magazine, looked up.

“
Yes, sir?”

“
Would you take the
gentlemen down, please? He’s, uh, legally blind and needs help
getting out of here. See if we have a stick or a cane in Lost and
Found.”

Throwing the magazine aside, the
officer hastened over to take Scott and the paperwork proffered by
Gene.

“
Yes, sir.” Anything that
would get him off that bench for a while.

“
Thanks, Tom. And goodbye,
Mister Nettles. God bless, and good luck to you in all
things.”

It was nothing more and nothing less
than he would have said to any other citizen under similar
circumstances.

***

“
Good morning, Miss
Blue.”

“
Good morning, Inspector
MacBride.”

“
Please call me Betty—or
Missus Nettles.”

Gene smiled in spite of his inner
misgivings.

“
I hope you’ve been
getting enough of the, ah…precious bodily fluids.” He didn’t know
what else to call them, but her needs were a bit out of the
ordinary and there was the baby to consider. “…while you have been
our guest.”

“
Yes. Thank you. It’s all
been very nutritious.” She was expressionless, and yet always that
sense of menace.

He had to admit the reaction was not
unique. Gene cut quite the authority figure when he had to. She
would be defensive as all hell.

“
So, anyways. Betty, ah,
we’ve been sort of consulting back and forth, with your, ah, former
employer—and the, uh, other authorities…”

“
Yes?”

“
Well, I wonder if I might
ask you one or two questions?” He tried desperately not to be
overly threatening.

All he wanted was a few
answers.

Yes, she was in trouble—of sorts, and
yes, he had the power to cause her and Scott endless
torment.

For what?

For what, he asked her.

“
No comment.”

“
Yeah—exactly.” He cleared
his throat. “No comment. Hmn.”

She wouldn’t let his eyes go, and so
he dropped them of his own accord, to the table top, where his
hands lay neatly folded.

“
Are there other robots
like you, Betty?”

Somewhere out there in the world? Did
they help you? Were they watching out for you, defying their human
masters, feeding you data and holding it back from the
authorities?

Was this some mad impulse on her part,
or part of some larger agenda…? That was the really scary
part.

She stared right through him. That
didn’t exactly help her case or ease his anxiety.

Is this a malfunction, Betty Blue? Or
is it something more?

Are you the first of many, Betty
Blue?

“
No comment.”

It was possible she didn’t know. It
was possible that she had acted entirely on her own, based entirely
on her own feelings, and maybe it wasn’t a malfunction,
either.

In which case why not just say
so?

She was aware of the
issues.

And smart enough not to give him
anything…

Hmn. Interesting.

Gene was calm, cool and
collected.

Like a cucumber.

“
I’m prepared to release
you right now, Miss Blue. No strings attached. However, I have just
one small request.”

His eyes came up again, and
hardened.

“
It’s all been very
fascinating. Really. I’ll be keeping my eye on you, young lady.”
The publishers were clamoring for their story—her and
Scott.

Life didn’t seem very fair,
sometimes.

He smiled, slowly, lasciviously,
making it as hard as he could for her. It was the only revenge he
was likely to get.

It was the only revenge for a
forgotten life.

The smile faded.

“
Missus Cartier would
desperately like to hear from you, Betty. I think she misses
you.”