THE HANGINGSTONE RAT
by BARRY B. LONGYEAR
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Illustration by John Allemand
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The line between “who” and “what” is likely to get less and less distinct....
Early on a late summer morning Artificial Beings Crimes took a call from Okehampton Station reporting a dead bio in North Dartmoor at a place called Hangingstone Hill. The location was seven kilometers south-southeast of the army camp, deceased was a dead male rodent amdroid reported by a hiker: no apparent signs of violence, scene marked, hiker’s statement received, constable standing by. Rodent bios aren’t terribly long lived, and it was likely the fellow simply happened to be on the moor when he pegged it. Likely the death was natural and the owner of the engrams had another meat suit in stasis. Nonetheless, it had to be investigated, and it was a welcome opportunity to get out of the city. At home in Exeter, as I waited for Shad to pick me up with the cruiser, I used Val’s computer and looked up Hangingstone Hilclass="underline" a minor legend, unremarkable history, third highest elevation on the moor.
“Guy’s here,” Val called from the hallway. She padded into the lounge and hopped up on the desk. I gave her ears a perfunctory scratch. My wife was a Golden Tonkinese.
“Have a good day, dear,” I said as I went to get my coat.
She looked at the computer screen. “You have a call out on the moor?”
I pulled on my coat and sealed it. “Yes. Shouldn’t be much of anything, dear. Dead rat bio reported by a hiker.”
“Well, take care, Harry. I have a premonition.”
I smiled. “Remember your last premonition, dear? Wasn’t it a furball?”
“Even so, Harry, take care. I don’t like rats.”
“I understand rats feel the same way about cats. Good-bye, dear.”
“We’re coming up on the moor,” Shad quacked. He was a mallard duck bio and flew the cruiser remotely by means of his wireless interface. He had once been a quite famous telly star doing adverts for an insurance firm “in whiteface,” as he put it. We talked old movies for a while then fell silent as we watched the rugged greenness of Dartmoor spread before us.
“Pick up the Vader prang beacon yet?” I asked him.
“We’re right on the wire.”
I looked over the vast expanses of hilly heather, broken only by granite-topped hills, boulder fields, ponds, peat bogs, and stream-carved cleaves. Among them the shadows of clouds seemed fixed in place. I could see for miles. What I failed to see was the constabulary cruiser that was supposed to be waiting for us. “I don’t see the cop supposed to meet us, Shad.”
He glanced at me. “You’re the one who pointed out to me the low esteem in which ABCD is held among the constabulary.”
“This juvenile anchor dragging grows tedious, nevertheless.”
“Hangingstone Hill up ahead,” announced Shad. “Ought to be a movie title,” he concluded whimsically.
I smiled. “Hangingstone Hill, a western tale of murder and vengeance, torn from the pages of history, directed by John Ford—”
“—Starring Susan Hayward and Gary Cooper,” completed Shad.
“I always loved Susan Hayward. Wasn’t there a Gary Cooper film called The Hanging Tree?” I asked.
“Nineteen fifty-six,” said Shad, flaunting his vast cinematic knowledge. The theater was never far from the former insurance duck’s thoughts. “Gary Cooper and Maria Schell,” he continued. “You know, The Hanging Tree was George C. Scott’s movie debut.”
“Really. Well, Shad, I know why Hangingstone Hill carries such an ominous name.”
“Oh?” He was silent for a beat. “You do?”
It does me good to stump the duck once in awhile. “It has to do with a natural phenomenon, Shad: a rather big plate of rock called a logan stone that hangs out over another rock on the side of the hill.”
“That’s disappointing,” Shad remarked. “With a name like Hangingstone Hill the place ought to be covered in ghosts left over from innumerable medieval neck stretchings. Turnkeys With Gibbets,” imagined Shad aloud. “A Cranberry and Gravy Production. You can be the sheriff. Everyone expects British sheriffs to look like Basil Rathbone.”
“Sorry?” I said. “Cranberries?”
“A Thanksgiving reference. U.S. holiday? Turkey and giblets? Forget it.”
I glanced at Shad. “Legend has it that a seventeenth-century mayor of Okehampton was hanged on Hangingstone Hill.”
“They must’ve brought their own gibbet with them,” said Shad as he changed heading a few degrees south. “Look at the hills around here. Not a tree in sight. Okay,” he relented, “why’d they hang him?”
“Stealing sheep.”
“They gave him the rope on a mutton rap? Tough town.”
“I’m certain the mayor represented the charges against him as being politically motivated.”
“So that’s where that came from.”
“Indeed, but it wasn’t only the mayor’s body that was sentenced. His spirit was sentenced to empty with a sieve Cranmere Pool—that’s at the west foot of Hangingstone.”
“Now that’s hard time.”
“Not at all,” I said. “The clever fellow lined his sieve with sheepskin and proceeded to empty the thing. Cranmere Pool has no water in it.”
“So he beat the rap?”
“Not quite. The punishment was altered to having to weave the sand at the bottom of the pool into a rope. Poor fellow’s still at it, I imagine.” I again looked for the constabulary electric. “Shad, I still do not see a car.”
“Nothing on the instruments,” he responded. “The scene analyzer beacon is located on the northwest side of the hill. What’s that hut down there?”
Directly in front of us was a high hill with gentle slopes. On its north end were the remains of a stone shack, its shed roof partially collapsed. “That’s an old artillery observation post. For centuries this end of the moor was an artillery range. Incidentally, ducks, the army still advises hikers not to pick up any curiosities they might find out here.”
“Souvenir go boom; important safety tip.”
“Very well, Shad, ring up Okehampton Station and find out where their missing constable is. Meanwhile, put us down near the prang.”
While he did that I turned in my seat and ran up the mechs: vehicles of various sizes and configurations, big walking to micro flying, into which we could copy to get into difficult places allowing us to collect and analyze evidence. Shad put down the cruiser on the northwest slope of the hill about five meters above the aforementioned logan stone. The sunlight reflected from the polished metal Vader prang, cop slang for the pencil-thin scene analyzer mounted on the southwest edge of the rock plate. It would be facing the corpse. I looked in that direction but could see nothing among the heather. It was, at least, not a terribly large rat.
“Jaggs, guy on the phone says Okehampton cops can’t find any Hangingstone Hill report. He says they didn’t call in a dead bio to ABCD this morning.”
“Rubbish.”
“The call would have been automatically logged and recorded, according to their man PC Sudbury, and he can find no such record in the computer. Case closed.”
“Tell him to pull his ruddy thumb out and try again.”
The doors rotated up, and I held up a hand to Shad. “Before that, let’s see if we even have a body. This is beginning to look suspiciously like a hoax.”
“Local yokels having a little fun with ABCD?” suggested the duck.
“Perhaps the constabulary having a laugh.” I climbed out of the cruiser, stood, and took a few steps down toward the stone. Southwest of it, perhaps two meters distant, I could see in the heather what looked like the body of a rat with a body comparable in size to that of a gray squirrel. It was lying on its left side. Shad flew up next to me. “Okay,” he said as he landed, “at least we have a corpse.”