"I don't get it,” said Shad.
"What's that?” I asked as I logged and filed the data.
"I've been wringing this nag's sponge with my neural image reader, and Champion isn't just subhuman, boss; he's subhorse."
I faced Shad and returned the analyzer to my pocket. “How so?"
"Watch out!” screamed Shad looking behind me at something way up there.
I turned and Champion had reared back on his hind legs, his front hooves pawing at the air, his wild-eyed gaze fixed directly on me. “Bloody hell!” I cried as the hooves came down hard. Thanks to Shad's timely warning, I avoided the brunt of the onslaught, only catching a glancing blow above my left temple. Nevertheless it was sufficient to knock me off my feet. I collapsed in the straw in one of the corners, my ears deafened by the most horrible screaming. When I could focus my eyes again, I was momentarily powerless to do anything but watch as Shad distracted the murderous brute from killing me by flapping his wings and running figure eights between and around the horse's legs, all the time screaming “Aa-flak, aa-flak, aa-flak, aa-flak!"
Torn between trying to get away from the duck and trying to kill it, Champion lost track of me long enough for me to pull myself up, stumble to the stall's gate, and get on the other side. As I slammed shut the gate, automatically latching it, Shad came flying over the top, landing in the center of my chest with sufficient force to knock me on my backside.
As I sat up I saw Shad flat on his back, wings straight out against the floor, his webbed feet sticking straight up in the air. It looked to me as though he had lost a considerable quantity of feathers from his left wing and tail. “Well,” he said, looking between his legs at his missing tail feathers, “I'll be plucked."
"Close to what I was just thinking, as well, Shad."
"I bet.” Using his wings, he rolled himself over on his left side, at last flopping on his breast. Another couple of flaps and he was wobbling on his feet, which is more than I could say for myself. I noticed several drops of my own blood decorating the left lapel of my suit. “Oh, dear."
"Not that bad,” said Shad, looking at my head. “Cut. Bruising. You might need a butterfly or two. Not as bad as it looks."
"You'll have to come home with me for dinner, Shad."
He cocked his head at me in modest wonderment. “Great. When?"
"Tonight."
The duck stared at me for a moment. “Kind of short notice."
"Can't be helped.” I debated with myself for a moment, then confessed. “My last year in Metro I was wounded during an arrest. Shot. In and out my left bicep. I had it treated, went home, and told Val it was nothing."
"Then she found out the truth."
"Quite. Ever since, if I have any kind of injury, I need to provide a witness if Val is to believe that it's nothing serious. There's a man who comes in to cook—the mech I mentioned, actually. His name is Walter. I'm sure he can make something you can eat."
"I eat everything but waterfowl and spinach,” Shad answered. He seemed to frown for a moment. “I can tell Val your injury isn't serious, but how you got that injury is real serious. It's what I was trying to say when we were so rudely interrupted. About the neural scan I was doing on Champion?"
"Yes?"
"That nag has been fried, partner. I'm surprised he has enough of a nervous system left to feed himself."
"He seemed bloody spry to me."
Shad cocked his head to one side, glanced at the door to Champion's stall, and looked back at me. “While we were in there, someone hit Champ with an image implant. I was reading it when the horse freaked: Truck full of toilets runs over horse? Desert equine destruction—"
"Charge of the Light Brigade,” I completed. “How could someone do an image implant in a horse stall unobserved? For all that matters, how could they do it in a forest? As I recall, that equipment is heavy, awkward, and that doesn't even include the power requirements."
"However impossible, that horse was panicked into trying to kill to defend itself."
"Someone is going to a lot of trouble to pin Miles Bowman's death on a horse."
"And whoever it is doesn't seem too particular about who gets killed to do it."
We both thought upon that for a moment, then I faced him. “Shad, when we were in there and you were busily and quite bravely saving my current life, there was something you kept screaming."
"Oh, that.” He squatted and sat like a duck, his gaze wearily on the beautifully tan and rust tiled floor. “From my old commercials. ‘Aa-flak!’”
"Yes."
"Spelled different than it sounds. Pressure is what does it. Handy during cattle calls when you're really stressed. I never forgot a line. See, when the weight's on, all I can think to say are old lines from scripts I've memorized.” He faced me and said, “'Here's looking at you, kid,'” with the voice of classic actor Humphrey Bogart.
We heard a siren and in moments we saw a Houndtor Down ambulance approaching us through the corridor. “I wonder,” Shad asked with just a touch of perpetually rejuvenated comedian Robin Williams in his voice, “is that for us or the horse?"
After informing D. Supt. Matheson of our progress, leaving him even more convinced that Lady Iva was innocent, I brought Shad home for show and tell. Even after his harrowingly honest account of our brief misadventure with the deceased's horse, Val seemed less concerned about my condition or who might have caused it than she was about how famously I was getting on with my new partner.
Walter had prepared an appetizing eggplant Parmesan and judging from the quantity Shad put down, it was duck-compatible. Despite being a mech and frequently in a state of melancholy, that evening Walter couldn't resist laughing at his own duck jokes (There was a veterinarian he knew who was a duck, but the guy was a quack). Despite Shad's exception to fowl references upon our first acquaintance, he gave Walter as good as he got with a repertory of his own mech jokes that even had Val laughing (How many screws in does it take to light a robot's bulb?).
Once dinner was finished, Walter cleared the table and began cleaning the dishes. Val, Shad, and I moved to the lounge. Shad stood on an end table and slurped at his mint tea, Val curled up on the folded duvet on the settee, and I sat next to her and sipped at my Assam. The telly was on to BBC 228, which was airing the original Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, the lovely Ingrid Bergman, and the forgivably corrupt police official, Claude Rains. I had imagined it would be a treat for both Shad and myself, but I wasn't able to concentrate. It had been a while since anyone had tried to kill me, and all those old feelings were back again: fear, paranoia, anger, and a sense of relief I couldn't trust. Shad wasn't paying attention either.
"Jaggers?” he said. “All right if I call you Jaggers? The boss-inspector thing seems a little bulky."
"No objection. How is your south end?"
"Sore. How's your head?"
"It feels like a horse kicked it. Something you wanted to ask?"
"Yeah. After I did that scan on Champion, remember I said the nag was fried?"
"Something about being surprised he could still feed himself."
"Yeah.” The duck jumped down to the floor and began pacing. “On the Benton-Lutz AB Scale, average horse intelligence is twenty-seven point something. Back there in his stall Champion came in at a four, which is only a little better than a banana slug."
"That's not fried, Shad. That's cremated."
Shad froze, then slowly turned and looked at me. “Insects. Fly on a wall,” he said at last. “The expression, you know? I wish I was a fly on that wall, meaning I wish I could've seen and heard what was going on in a particular place unobserved."
"Yes?"
"Remember years ago the surveillance industry offered a prize to whoever could figure out how to successfully human imprint a mech or bio vehicle under one and a half millimeters in size?"