The Automatic Detective (16 page)

His eyes flashed again.

By now, Knuckles had creaked his way to his feet again. He barked three aggressive pings in my direction.

"That's enough," said Grey. He reached into his suit and pulled out a thick envelope, which he handed to me. "Compliments of Mr. Greenman. Now, I'd advise you to get a new apartment, get back to driving a cab, and forget about any of this business."

Grey and Knuckles climbed back into their rotorcar. I tipped my hat to the Condor as it soared away.

The envelope was full of cash. Not bad for my first day's work as a detective. I could only hope tomorrow would be as lucrative.

I'd tried to find Julie and the kids, and I'd actually come closer than I'd expected to, which wasn't very close at all. Tony Ringo was gone now, and I had no way of finding Abner Greenman. Even if I did find him, I doubted I could convince him to give me the information he'd sucked out of Ringo's head. Information, in all likelihood, not worth much anyway because Ringo had been a small-time loser. Someone would have had to have been an idiot to trust him with any secrets.

There were the other two goons, Harelip and Dome Head. I hadn't gotten the chance to talk to them, and by now, they'd probably had their brains emptied, too.

But I wasn't giving up yet.

The cash in my pocket, though I hadn't bothered to count it yet, was thick enough to pay my power bill for a few weeks at the very least. Freed from the burden of daily employment, I could blow off my job and keep looking. I didn't think Greenman would appreciate me using his payment to continue wedging myself into the gears of whatever sordid goings-on were taking place, but maybe he would. Chutzpah, he'd said.

Continuing toward this objective would almost certainly lead me back into confrontation with Greenman's goons. As long as Grey had me by the on/off switch, I was at a severe disadvantage. My own diagnostics had turned up zilch in my electronic brain. I had no choice. I needed an expert.

My shrink wasn't too happy to see me at her apartment door. I attributed this to the lateness of the hour. She adjusted her flannel robe.

"How did you get this address?" Doc Mujahid asked.

"Phone book," I replied.

"How'd you get past the doorman?"

"He was asleep. Might've woken him still, but that's some thick carpeting in your lobby, Doc. So are you going to invite me in?"

"Do you know what time it is?"

"I always know what time it is, Doc."

A curious smile crossed her face. "Was that a joke, Mack?"

"Might've been." I shrugged. "Even I'm not always sure."

The almost-joke was enough to get the doc's interest up, but she didn't step aside yet.

"I know it's late," I said. "And I know you don't want patients bothering you outside of the office, but—"

"Actually, Mack, this is the first time I've ever had a patient stop by my apartment."

That made sense. How many emergencies could pop up in a cybernetic psychologist's patient roster? Robots were usually polite enough to wait until office hours.

"Nice suit, Mack."

She showed me to her living room and excused herself to make some coffee.

The doc had a nice place. It wasn't as nice as Lucia's, but not too shabby. The living room was big enough for a sofa and a couple of bookshelves. There were some paintings and
knickknacks, but nothing to draw my attention. It wasn't that big, but I assumed there were other rooms behind the various doors.

Doc Mujahid came back with her coffee. "Why are you here, Mack?"

"I need your help. I need you to check out my electronic brain. There's something inside—" I tapped my gut. "—something I need removed."

She raised an eyebrow. "A corruption?"

"Yeah."

"And what makes you think this? Have your diagnostic functions detected anything?"

"No. Nothing detected."

"Have you been acting peculiarly?"

"Sort of."

"How so?"

"I can't explain, Doc. I just need you to take a look, find and remove it. I can explain then."

The doc quietly looked me over.

"I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't important."

"Follow me, Mack."

She led me into another room occupied by a large black plastic desk and a solid row of blinking consoles. The furnishings took up most the room, and I occupied 66 percent of the rest. The doc had to sit at her desk just to fit in the room. She pushed a button. The machines hummed to life. A monitor crackled to life.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's a computer," she replied.

"In your apartment?"

"One day, every apartment will have one. Perhaps more than one."

"Sure, Doc."

It sounded specious to me. Even in Tomorrow's Town, I couldn't think of anyone wanting to shell out the dough and sacrifice elbow room for their own computer, a device which by and large couldn't end up being anything more than an expensive calculator. For the doc, it might be worth it though.

The doc opened a drawer and thumbed through a selection of data tubes, picking out one labeled "personality decryption utility" and shoving it in a slot on the desk and locking it in with a twist. The computers seemed to like that because they started making a lot of beeping and whirring noises.

She handed me a jack. "Plug yourself in, Mack. I don't suppose you can tell me what I'm looking for."

"Wish I could, Doc."

"A mystery then," she said. "Well, let's see what we've got here."

She pressed a few buttons, and my digital consciousness streamed across her monitors. She didn't take her eyes off them for three solid minutes, leaning back in her chair and drumming her fingers on the desk. Sometimes, she'd tap a couple of keys and nod to herself.

"So, Mack, is there anything you'd like to talk about while we wait?"

"No, Doc. I'm good."

"Nothing?"

"No."

"Nothing concerning Lucia Napier?"

I replayed the question a few times to make sure I'd heard her right.

"She called me earlier today," said Doc Mujahid, "and mentioned you'd paid her a visit."

I shouldn't have been surprised the doc and Lucia knew each other. They were both smart ladies. Probably got together every Saturday for the Weekly Super Genius Cotillion Brunch.

"She mentioned you were looking for someone."

"Yeah," I replied vaguely. "Personal matters."

"I see."

I waited for her to press the subject, but she let it drop. It wasn't like she had to ask any questions. My electronic psyche lay bare before her on her monitors. She could always open a few memory files and know everything she wanted. The doc wasn't likely to do that. Went against her code of ethics, she'd once explained. The basic programming, the inner workings, those she studied by necessity. The memory matrix she considered off-limits as a matter of patient confidentiality.

"You made quite an impression on Lucia," she said.

"She's just got a thing for robots," I said.

"Is that what you think, Mack?"

"It's true, isn't it?"

"Mmhmmm," she said, more to herself than me.

I filtered that sound through my analyzers and came up with nothing worthwhile.

"And what did you think of her?" she asked.

"I'm not here for analysis, Doc."

She pushed a few buttons as more data poured through her monitors.

"Not that kind of analysis anyway," I said. "Can we drop the subject?"

"If you insist."

"I do. I do insist."

Forty-five seconds passed before I found myself incapable of keeping my vocalizer deactivated. I usually excel at shutting up, but some compulsion seized me. I blamed it on all the time I was spending with biologicals.

"It's nothing. I'm a machine. Couldn't go anywhere."

"Don't you have biological friends?" asked the doc.

"Yeah."

"And is there any reason you can't have another?"

I removed my bowler and fiddled with it to give my hands something to do. Another bad biological habit. "No."

"Is there any particular reason that you can't be friends with Lucia Napier?"

"She's a technophile," I replied. "I'm pretty sure anyway."

"How is that an obstacle, Mack?"

It was a good question, and I didn't have a good answer. This time I managed to stay quiet.

"Would you like my opinion, Mack?"

"Not really, Doc."

"Too bad, because I'm going to give it to you anyway. I think Lucia could do you some good. She might be able to help you with your assimilation issues."

"I don't have assimilation issues."

"Yet you continue to isolate yourself through categorization. You insist on calling yourself a 'machine,' for instance."

"I am a machine."

"Yes, you are. But you are also an intelligent being."

"I'm just code, Doc." I pointed to the monitor. "Ones and zeroes, that's all I am."

"Mack, if you were to extract a human brain and open it up, do you know what you would find?"

"Goop."

"Exactly. The consciousness, the personality, the dreams, desires, and phobias, they're all there in that goop, but it's only a great big wad of fat in the end. The soul is not found in the flesh."

"What, Doc? Are you telling me I have a soul now?"

"I don't even know if there is such a thing, Mack. But I do know that thought is thought and that nobody truly understands it."

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe I'll snap one day and kill everybody."

"Happens every day, and not only to machines."

The doc's computer made a soft ping, and she started typing.

"Find something, Doc?"

"Interesting. There appears to be some foreign code intermingled with your behavioral routines. Is this what you're looking for?"

"Maybe," I said, knowing full well it must've been. "Can you purge it?"

She leaned closer to the monitors and spent four minutes, six seconds typing rapidly. The computer would beep irritably an average of every eleven seconds.

"It's there all right, but I've never seen anything quite like it," she said. "It's a worm, but it's divided and dispersed in various files. It shouldn't be able to have much of an effect."

"It's doing something, Doc. Trust me."

She shrugged. "I can't remove it. Not without risking damaging your core programming."

"I'm willing to take the chance," I said.

"I'm not." She pushed a few buttons. "There's good news though. Your maintenance protocols seem to be removing it on their own. Fascinating development, really. I've never seen an electronic brain so adaptable."

"Yeah, I'm a walking miracle of superscience, Doc."

She either didn't catch the sarcasm or failed to acknowledge it. She rarely did.

"I think, given enough time, you'll purge the corruption on your own."

"How long?"

"I can't say."

"Well, thanks, Doc." I put my hat back on, trying to not sound disappointed. "Appreciate your time."

She kept her eyes fixed on the screen, engrossed in the new data. She was lost in a sea of binary code.

"I'll let myself out," I said.

She turned her head a few degrees so that she could still look at the screen, but kind of glance at me at the same time. "Mack, I meant what I said about Lucia. I noticed some definite improvements in your socialization functions."

"Maybe it's not her," I said.

"Perhaps not. Would you care to tell me what you've been doing?"

"Rather not, Doc, if you don't mind."

She didn't push because she was too distracted by the monitor readout. "Fine, Mack. Whatever you're doing, I recommend you continue. I think you might be on the verge of a breakthrough." There was a beep, and she nodded very slowly. "Fascinating."

"Yeah, Doc, great stuff, I'm sure. But I gotta go."

Then I beat it before she got the bright idea to hook me up to her computers and take a more detailed look at my digital subconscious.

I needed a recharge. The battery the city stuck me with was good for about twenty-six hours, depending on my levels of activity. When I didn't move more than I had to and basically let my electronic brain run on autopilot, I could stretch it to thirty-two. But getting mixed up with gangsters and brainy dames had burned the juice faster than normal. I still had three hours left, but I never liked to run with less than five in reserve.

I could also use some time to recompile and defragment. I was a learning machine, but all the data I'd absorbed today was
mostly a jumble of information until I shut myself down and allowed my electronic brain to sort and file it into manageable bits. I was hoping that after a good night's recharge, I'd figure out what to do next.