Somehow I doubted they were performing more diagnostics. What was more likely was that they wanted to doctor the evidence, if not outright manufacture it, so that no one would ever think they were to blame. “Zero,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“I only work for one client at a time, Bwer Fwer.”
“I see.”
“But I will tell you this. If I find him, and he’s crazy, I’ll definitely let you know.”
He frowned. “That’s very kind of you… My mother-pod still thinks I’m unmodified.”
“Give my best to your mother-pod.”
“What?”
I left without answering.
The next two days were a series of dead ends and wrong turns that left me increasingly frustrated. Deciding to stay on Jellon until I had another lead, I spent most of the time on the vid in a cheap hotel—old habits die hard—talking with various associates, friends, and employees of Vergon Daughn. The picture that emerged was of a cautious, quiet, and extremely logical android who became an even more quiet, cautious and logical man, somebody with no hobbies other than the one he’d developed fairly recently—keeping the three-breasted woman in his life happy. Otherwise, he spent all his time working.
Even his personal attendants couldn’t offer anything useful, except to say he seemed even quieter and more withdrawn after he became a human. I was trying to get a handle on where a slightly deranged Vergon Daughn might go, and it would have been helpful if I had hobbies, interests, or favorite places to get me started.
Then, on the third day on Jellon, it came me: maybe he hadn’t left at all.
Maybe he was still there.
Like everyone else, I’d assumed that because Vergon Daughn was a genius with technology, he would have found a way to fool the security scanners at all the stepdocks or spaceports. But even without the scanners, that would have been incredibly risky. No, the most logical thing to do would have been to stay on Jellon itself, exactly because everybody knew he could get off if he wanted.
But where would he go? Someplace hospitable for androids, so perhaps one of the large cities where there’d be plenty of power grids and high-traffic nexlinks. I started to make a list of all the underground contacts I knew in the biggest cities, people who could point me in the right direction, when I realized I had it all wrong.
Vergon wouldn’t go to a big city. He was too smart for that. He’d go someplace nobody would expect an android to go.
The good news was that most of Jellon was highly developed, so there were really only a handful of places an android wouldn’t be able to survive long without returning to civilization—the Harlo Desert, the Three Seas of Kinl, and Nelsani Rainforest. In fact, he wouldn’t have been able to get far in any of them without some sort of guide. If my theory was right, I just had to find the guide.
I downloaded a list of travel agents and other tourist operations to my handheld, then headed out into the crowded streets, past booths of loud-mouthed vendors of every race imaginable, the air alive with sizzling grease and pungent spices. I was about halfway to the nearest stepdock when I had the distinct feeling I was being followed.
In the elbow-to-elbow crowd, I was barely able to lift my arms, but I managed to round a corner and duck into a shadowy alcove. I hung back, the crowd drifting past like a river choked with debris. I watched, waiting, looking for a reaction of some kind from somebody, and then I saw it.
A muscular blond human in a black trench coat picked up his pace and rounded the corner.
I dropped into the crowd and followed. When I rounded the corner myself, we came face-to-face. He’d been running, and he pulled up short. His face was expressionless, but it was still frozen in place.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, clamping down on his arm, “I want to have a word—”
My fingers might as well have been made of tissue because he tore out of my grip as if it was nothing. Then he was running, nimbly dodging through the crowd, sprinting away at such a speed that he was halfway down the street before I managed to even shout after him.
“You! Come back!”
It wasn’t one of my most original moments. But by the time I’d thought of something better to say, he was already gone.
It was going on three weeks when I wandered into the bamboo hut at the outskirts of the tiny village of Gonoa, one of five villages in the foothills of the Nelsani Mountains. Outside, the rain sliced into the vegetation like a machete. Even after the door swung shut, the downpour still filled the hut with a roar.
I was tired and cranky and about to give up. Of course, I’d been feeling that way for the past week, and still I found myself pressing on to the next destination. The only problem was that I was running out of destinations. I’d searched every dune of the Harlo Desert, all three seas of the Three Seas of Kinl, and a good chunk of the Nelsani Rainforest
Racks of hiking and hunting gear packed the hut. The popular flared canoes hung from the ceiling. Twangy harp music—annoyingly popular on Jellon—played from speakers mounted in the corners, and the only good thing about the rain was that it mostly blotted out the music. The musky stench of the rainforest, the smell that got into everything and stayed there like a bad houseguest, hung heavy in the air.
Nobody seemed to be around. I pushed past some brown repel coats and some anti-grav moccasins and found a counter for vacation booking. Nobody was there either, though there appeared to be a room behind the counter, obscured from view by beads. There was a smell too, wafting out from the back room, a tangy odor that immediately brought water to my eyes. It smelled vaguely of lemons.
“Hello?” I said.
A dark-skinned man, bald on top but thick black beard below, pushed through the rattling beads. He carried a bundle of yellow rope, coiled in a circle. He wore a camo vest that bared his muscular arms. His skin was mocha brown, except for the pink jagged scar on his right shoulder. There was a bit of silver in his beard, but I wouldn’t have tried to guess his age. He could have been thirty or fifty.
“Welcome to Nelsani, good man,” he said, exhaling a hint of smoke from his nostrils, and that lemon smell got stronger. “Are you here for a tour? If you book today, I can give you—”
“I’m actually here looking for someone,” I said.
“Oh?” he said.
“Yes. I’m looking for an android. He’s quite famous, actually. His name is Vergon Daughn. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
The man stared at me as if I’d spoken in another language.
“I have reason to believe he’s on this planet,” I went on, “and that he might be in a remote location. Maybe he came to see you, or maybe you heard of him passing through.”
He simply stared, blinking.
“Any help would be much appreciated. His wife is very worried.”
He might as well have been a statue. I felt like strangling him. I might not have been able to do it—he was a decent-sized fellow, after all—but I was willing to give it a shot. It would make life more interesting for a while, at least.
“Did you hear me?” I said.
“I heard you,” he said. “I’m trying to decide whether to help you.”
My hopes soared. Finally, a breakthrough. “You’ve seen Daughn?”
“Didn’t say that. But I might be able to help you.”
“How?”
He placed the rope on a hook behind him, turning his back to me. “That depends on how much the information is worth it to you.”
I gritted my teeth. “You want a bribe?”