Chimera (29 page)

After three transfers and a mile walk, we arrived at Eddie's house. No one answered the bell. I put my thumb to the plate, and the door opened. To Zoe's glance, I said, "I took care of his dog last fall."

The first thing I did was use his phone to call him. I got his voice mail and said, "Hey, Eddie. Su casa es mi casa. Also, your car, so don't worry if it's not in the garage when you get here. I won't need it long. Thanks."

The second order of business was getting clean. I let Zoe have the main bathroom while I used the guest shower. She didn't suggest I join her. I cleaned my indenture grays in the shower, then put them back on and stood under the dryer. Then I found a black jacket of Eddie's that was big enough for me and looked fine over the coveralls.

Third came food. I build monster sandwiches on onion bagels—tuna fish, cucumber slices, and lettuce for Zoe, Double Gloucester cheese with cucumber and lettuce for me.

Zoe entered the kitchen as I cut the sandwiches in half. She wore a white cotton shirt and blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up twice. They fit her much better than they'd ever fit Eddie. Only her shoes, indenture gray canvas slip-ons like mine, suggested what she'd been through. She said, "I feel great."

"And look it. Do you want anything on the tuna?"

"A dash of pepper, and you've made me one happy cat."

Over supper, we talked about Mycroft's theory that Singer Labs could be covering up a failed AI experiment. I wanted to call Vallejo and Chumley to ask what progress they'd made, but they might've felt obliged to bust a contract breaker.

When night fell, we took Eddie's vintage racing-green Miata to the storage company where my life's possessions waited. The main gate and the door to my unit both opened under my thumb. No one's supposed to be able to monitor renters going in or out of their units, but being there still felt risky. We moved quickly.

I gave Zoe her computer, replaced O'Grady's Isher with the SIG, tucked the black opal earring back in the Infinite Pocket, and changed into an aquamarine suit with a white shirt and my best shoes. The clothes felt good. The SIG didn't. In a society where anyone might be armed, it ought to feel great to be lethal again, but the pistol only made me wish I had found another way to stop the orca.

Still, cruising the 405 a few minutes later in the Miata, I caught myself grinning for no reason at all. I hadn't done that for months, maybe years. A small bit of it was the joy of driving with the top down. Eddie had a toll pass in the glove box. Since rush hour was over, we rolled through the express lanes without even slowing down.

Zoe smiled into the wind as it whipped her jaguar hair back from her pointed ears. She bobbed her head to a NeoRegency dance tune on the radio. I thought we looked like any couple on a date, and my grin grew wider. Then I remembered that a human and a chimera didn't look like any couple, and couldn't.

Zoe caught my gaze. "What?"

It was time to tell her it was too dangerous for us to stay together. If I was caught, I might only get six months added to my one-year contract. If she was caught, she could get fifteen years added to her thirty-year sentence. Alone, with her hair dyed black or brown, she might disappear into the underclass. But a female chimera with a human male would get a second look wherever she went. I wanted to think she would be willing to risk that for my sake. But I knew that I couldn't for hers.

And there was nothing I could do. I'd given everything I had to Brady Xi, who was at least as good a detective as I, and Mycroft, who had resources that neither Zoe nor I could begin to hope for. I'd followed every lead that came from that first online search—

I opened my mouth, then closed it. The cautious thing to do was to get safely away. After that, I could pass suggestions along to Brady or Mycroft.

Zoe said, "Did you just eat a bug?"

"Turn on your computer. I had a thought."

"Well, that's rare enough that it should be encouraged." She took out her PowerPad, and the display appeared before her.

"Sign on as Cordelia Delano Maxwell, password 'gee double-oh dee underscore ess oh en exclamation'" Zoe glanced at me, then typed on air as I added, "I got her an email account for her birthday when I was eight. If she hasn't changed it—"

"Name one mother who would change a password like that?"

"You haven't met mine."

"Well, mother love won this time. We're in."

"Gold and Tauber both got Chain Foundation Fellowship grants, worked on machine intelligence, and consulted for Singer Labs. Who else fits those specs?"

"Global?"

"Yep."

Zoe typed. The display showed text and an older man with a dark tan and white hair. Zoe read, "Pietro Di Bresci, Rome Periplex. Died two months ago."

I recognized the next face on the display. Zoe said simply, "Doc. Died last month."

The third I also knew. "Tauber. Ditto."

Then the display showed a thin woman in her fifties with blue-black hair, green eyes, and a serene smile. "Willa Catherine Vaughn, Pasadena, South California. Not dead. Yet."

"Vaughn? Not—"

Zoe scrolled through the text. "Macsey-Borne Prize for Genetic Engineering. General director, Bionova SA. Yep, that Vaughn."

"Why'd one of the inventors of chimeras get a grant to work on AI rights?"

"Any reason not to charge a call to your Mom's account?"

"Nope. Then we'll order pizza and invite the gang over."

Zoe tapped the phone icon by Vaughn's picture. The subject of the photo appeared on-screen, looking more distracted than serene. "I'm working late. Please leave a message."

Zoe glanced at me. I shook my head. She hung up and said, "It'd be nice to tell her that she may've reached the top of someone's murder list."

"And it'd be nice to know if she knows something we'd like to."

"Then shouldn't we—"

"Take a drive out to Pasadena? Exactly my thought."

Zoe grinned. "We're getting proactive."

"Within reason. We see what Vaughn says. If it looks like anyone's tempted to call the cops, we fly."

Zoe clicked off the PowerPad, frowned, pulled out its data cable, and looked at the plug. "Max. Earring."

I popped the black opal from the Pocket and passed it to her. She rolled it between her fingers and found a tiny hole in the base of the gem. "If this is a data port—" She snapped the cable into it and clicked on the computer.

The viewing field filled with a black opal rotating in space. Text replaced the image: "The Chain intelligence was not found on this computer."

The text faded. Zoe said. "An intelligence owned by Chain, based on him, or both?"

I shrugged. "Hiding tracking software in an earring must mean Gold knew the AI didn't want to be found."

"There was nothing on my computer. I could try it on the net."

"And find out it wipes out the IRS files?"

"We'd be heroes."

"Sure, everybody else wants to kill us. Why leave the feds out of the fun?"

I took the express lane to Pasadena, burning credits on Eddie's toll pass. Within ten minutes, I parked the Miata on the shoulder of a road by Bionova SA's North American headquarters, an industrial complex of two and three story stone and glass buildings.

Zoe said, "Why not park in the lot?"

"So you can clear out unnoticed if I'm not back in half an hour."

"You're not ditching me."

"Our escape might've made the news. People would be less likely to recognize me than you."

"I don't like sitting here."

"If I'm caught, I'll do a lot less time than you. Just go back to Eddie's. He'll help you."

She nodded reluctantly. As I reached for the door handle, she said, "Max?"

"Yeah?"

She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. "Good luck."

I nodded. "Ditto."

The feather-light touch of her lips lingered all the way to Bionova's front steps. In the main lobby, two guards, a young Hispanic man and an older black woman, sat at a desk near a pair of black glass doors. I smiled politely. "Dr. Vaughn, please."

The female guard answered. "She left orders not to be disturbed."

"It's urgent. She'll want to see me."

The male guard said, "Then she wouldn't have told us not to disturb her, would she?"

"Well. You can't say I didn't try."

I went outside and crossed into the cluster of trees between Bionova and the Miata. Zoe was napping. I looked back at Bionova, then at my watch: I had twenty-five minutes before Zoe was supposed to leave me.

I circled through the trees and waited as a small bot vehicle patrolled the back of the main building. After it passed, I stepped from the shadows with my dress shoes slung by their laces around my neck.

I ran across the lawn and climbed the stone-block wall freehand. This was a different kind of work than I'd done in the camps. A taller building would've called for different muscles and different calluses than I had, but I'd scaled far more challenging buildings during UNSEC training.

Which may've made me overconfident. Just short of the roof, I missed a handhold and slipped. My other hand held me safe. But my shoes slid off my neck and fell.

Below me, the guardbot rolled up and stopped. I hung still, expecting an alarm. The bot took my shoes to the intersection of two walkways and dropped them in a trash basket. I wanted to shout that only a tinhead would think three hundred K shoes were litter, but I simply sighed and pulled myself onto the roof.

The edge of the Pocket sliced easily through the thick steel grating at the end of a ventilation stack. I slipped inside, sliding deep into maintenance ducts lined with cables and plumbing. Dust clung to my clothes. My desire to do a good deed would cost me another suit. I wondered what kind of clients I would get if I billed myself as The Nude Detective and decided I didn't want to find out.

I stopped at an intersection and looked for clues for which way to go. If there were any, I missed them. A motor sled for maintenance workers was clamped to the wall, but taking it without an authorization code would alert half of Pasadena that I was visiting after hours. I crawled onward until I reached a mesh-covered access hatch. The room that it opened on was dark and quiet. Nothing looked more promising further along the duct. I pried open the hatch, lowered myself to the floor, brushed off my suit, and peeked into a bright, boring hallway.

The place was deserted. I couldn't have asked for more. With fifteen minutes to find Dr. Vaughn, I started down a long corridor, turned a corner, and saw my luck implode.

Kristal Blake strode toward me, smiling sweetly. She said, "Hi, Lover."

I glanced over my shoulder. We were alone, which wasn't especially comforting. I couldn't outrun her robot body. I said, "Tell me you're the human Kristal Blake."

"There isn't one. Just a series of custom-built bodies."

"You were Doyle, too?"

She answered with a man's voice. "Yes." And then, like the quintessential housebot: "And Jefferson 473, at your service, sir." And, finally, returning to Kris Blake's voice: "But then, we all look alike to you."

I snapped my right arm up. Before I could open the Pocket, Blake grabbed my wrist. I knew she was based on a human mind when she smiled and said, "This body is faster than my last one."

I turned and flipped her against the wall. I had time to think, "Not as well balanced," but I didn't slow down to say it. She was already rising to her feet.

Four doors behind me, a small sign promised "Chemical Storage." I bolted down the hall, kicked the door in, and ran into a dark room where steel shelves held neatly labeled bottles and boxes.

Blake followed a moment later. Before she could enhance her vision or find the light switch, I rose from behind a shelf, SIG in hand, and held down the trigger, spraying bullets. She reeled back with an eye gone. Sparks flew from the damaged socket.

She swung around and shoved a shelf on me. It hit hard, knocking me to the floor and sending a sharp new pain through my still tender left arm. Only the next shelf behind me kept the first from crushing me.

I didn't stop firing. When Blake's second eye went, she reeled back. I thought she would fall then. Two shots in a copbot's optics would do serious damage to its motor controls.

But Blake was better built than a copbot. She stood between me and the door, turning her half-ruined head from side to side. "You can't hide, Max. Unless you can stop your heart."

Her head stopped turning. A blind face of shredded skin and gray metal locked on mine. Steel knives snapped from her finger tips. "Shall I do that for you?"

I fired again. Blake raised her arm to shield her gaping optics and advanced. I scrambled behind shelves, looking for escape or a better weapon. Light from the hall fell on rows of bottles of powders and liquids. My favorite was labeled "Nitrobenzene. Danger. Explosive."

As Blake paused to listen for my location, I threw the bottle. It shattered in her ruined face, splashing over sparks that fountained from her eyes. I don't remember the explosion. My last thought was that her warranty had expired. I hoped mine hadn't, too.

I remember lying on the floor of the dark room and wondering whether I should move anything. Then I remembered that Zoe was supposed to leave soon. I pulled my legs up, rocked forward, and stood. Everything worked. Blake was a mess. The king's men wouldn't put her back together again, not even if their damn horses helped out. I needed my SIG, saw it, reached for it, and fell over.

Guards came, quiet and efficient men and women whose faces I can't remember. I said I had to see Dr. Vaughn, that her life might be in danger. I may not have expressed myself clearly. There was blood on my suit and face, and when I touched the back of my head, it hurt.

One guard called someone on a cell phone. Then they hauled me into a large windowless laboratory, stuck me into something like a glass sarcophagus with power and data cables attached, and waited. I suppose I was waiting, too. Sometime later, I realized I was staring out at nothing in particular and checked my watch. Thirty-five minutes had passed. I thought,
Goodbye, Zoe. Have a good life.