Sandra rubbed her shoulder. “You want to watch where you’re going, Barb?”
“Why don’t you show up on time?” said Barbara, as she stormed away.
Jake and Sandra sat down at the booth. My two older assistants worked together well, complementing each other; Jake was tall, wide, and jovial, and Sandra was short, thin, and serious. Jake looked at me and said, “I’d ask what’s bugging her if the question hadn’t become so monotonous.”
“Give Barbara some time,” I said. “It takes more than two months to settle into a job.”
Sandra gave me a skeptical look.
Jake leaned toward the order mike and said, “I’ll have a root beer, Coke, cheeseburger, and an up-yours-Yoobie bar. Oh, and a side order of dark chocolate, please.” He shrugged. “I’m starting to engage in more sensible dietary choices.”
“What’s up today, boss?” asked Sandra.
I told them about my conversation with the AI.
“Wow,” said Sandra. “That’s big. Arden Kirst was one of the leading geneticists at the Crogan Biomedical Institute, wasn’t he? If his AI thinks something was up—”
“An AI that may or may not be his,” I corrected.
Jake rolled his eyes. “Always suspicious, aren’t you?”
“That’s why I’m not in rehab watching an I.V. shoot neuro-corrective drugs into my system, and promising to be a loyal Yoobie voter in the next election.”
A bot brought Jake’s order. Sandra commandeered the root beer.
Sandra said, “Most people don’t need drugs to convince them to elect pols who give them money.”
“Which means we’re dumb,” said Jake.
“Your job,” I told them, “is to visit the Crogan Institute and learn as much as you can about what Kirst was working on.” I transferred some background information on Kirst’s publications. “And check to make sure his AI matches the one who visited me. I’ve given you the specs.”
“What’s your job?” asked Jake, his cheeks smeared with cheese.
“To make sure my assistants do theirs.”
Sandra was about to say something when the alarm bell rang. An instant later a bot rolled up to our table and tilted it, collecting every scrap into the incinerator in its belly. Another bot wiped our faces and squirted masque in our mouths. We rinsed and spit into the bot’s cuspidor.
I got up. I told my assistants to hang around for a few minutes, then I headed for the exit. Bots were handing out bottles of Yoobie beer, and the stereo system was now tuned to United Bureaus Public Radio.
Just as I got outside and stepped onto the busy sidewalk, a U.B. Public Relations officer stopped me. Tall, blond, and gorgeous. She must have been high-ranking because she displayed an S.R.C.B. on her green uniform.
“Smile, citizen,” she told me.
I smiled as she aimed the spectrometer. A bored-looking assistant in khakis stood behind her.
My rinse job must have missed a tooth, because the instrument reading gave her pause. “We’ve been alerted of contraband in the area, citizen,” she said cheerfully. “Have you seen any illicit substances this morning?”
“No.”
She glanced skeptically at the spectrometer’s output. The instrument had probably detected a trace of refined sugar from the soda. She also looked at her ID machine. “Well, Mr. Ellam K. Troy, what have you been doing this morning?”
“I just walked through a crowd of rock-and-rollers.”
“Ah,” she said. “And their perfumes—”
“Intoxicatingly cloying,” I said, making a face.
“That explains it. Where are they?”
I pointed toward an art school nearby.
“Dirty little gangbangers,” muttered the officer. Her shoes clicked on the plasticrete as she headed toward the school.
Her assistant took two steps and then stopped beside me. Staring at me—making sure I was watching him—he tapped his comm twice, then hurried to catch up with the boss.
I waited until I rounded the corner to pull out my comm. Dozens of people were walking or belting past me, so I punched the “private” button and put the comm up to my ear.
“Good morning,” it said. “I observed a small speck of dust on your E.R.C.B. badge of merit.”
I slipped the comm back into my pocket while a chill ran up my spine. I hadn’t recognized the man, but the message was up-to-date in the codebook. We issued that kind of warning only when a member was in grave danger.
The community bus looked full, and I was in a mood for some privacy anyway, so I hoofed it two blocks down the street to a rental agency. Along the way I sent out warnings to all three of my assistants: stop what you’re doing and hide. Jake and Sandra affirmed receipt at once. Barbara didn’t. Great—yet another thing to worry about.
The rental agency’s business thrived this morning, as it usually did when the buses were crowded. A line snaked all the way to the door, which was underneath a guide rail. Cars hummed overhead. A heavy scent of ozone hung in the air.
A beefy guy with a proprietor’s badge came out. “Sorry, bud,” he told me, “we’ll rent everything we got before your turn comes up.” He pushed me out and started to close the door.
On the chance that he was one of us, I quickly said, “Uncle Barry loves me!”
He hesitated, and I knew I’d struck gold. He closed the door, but a minute later he returned. He’d recognized this week’s emergency code phrase. “You’re in luck,” he said, ushering me inside. “We got a crate I wouldn’t rent to nobody except a guy like you in dire need.”
I palmed payment, leaving a ring of sweat on the platter.
A moment later I was in the best “crate” I could have asked for—a highly illegal carbon-belcher with a turbojet to supplement guide-rail power. A cowcatcher mounted on the front tossed slower vehicles to the side and a grappler leap-frogged the other car’s rail attachment so that I could pass, leaving in my wake a trail of wildly oscillating cars. And probably seasick passengers.
Still no word from Barbara.
Just because someone wanted to put me in the recycle factory didn’t mean that they were also after my assistants. But that was the way these things tend to work. If the boss gets knocked off then so do the underlings, because nobody knows what they might have been told or what they could find out if they had access to the boss’s comm.
The first thing to do was find out who wanted little old ladies to be planting their geraniums in my ground-up and sanitized remains. That might be hard to figure out. Most detectives have a lengthy list of enemies, and those of us who specialize in biology tend to get involved in the messiest cases—family disputes, violent crime, and affairs of the heart and other organs. Mostly other organs. Add to that my membership in the Opposition. You could probably stand anywhere in the city and spit on the shoes of half a dozen people who’d consider me good potting material. I’d spent so much money escaping enemies that I was already in debt up to my chin.
Did Yoobie finally peg me as an Op? Maybe, but if I hadn’t made any mistakes then that must mean somewhere, somehow, a smart U.B. official existed.
Could it have been a false message? Doubtful. All of our guys are careful—or at least competent—otherwise even Yoobie can catch you. And you don’t want to think about what happens after that.
I had nothing to go on but a hunch. That hunch involved Arden Kirst.
At the Bureau of Statistics I detached the car from the guide rail and piloted it to a garage. Yoobie sensors detected the turbojet exhaust and undoubtedly alerted a patrol. I quickly exited the car and disabled Yoobie video monitors with a video-frequency scrambler. The car’s autopilot engaged the weak battery-powered engines and floated up to the ceiling with its fans, attaching itself using magnetic stabilizers. An automatic adjustment of the nano-paint did an excellent job of camouflage.