We Install (11 page)

“I'm no expert, but I wouldn't think so, either,” Kling agreed.

“Then why do it? Why not put the poor thing out of its misery? Why not make sure its distorted genes—and with Scrambled Egg 7, they are—never enter your gene pool?”

“Well, I wonder if they're doing the kid a favor, too,” the detective said. “But if there's a sound mind inside that—”

“That mess of a body,” the Snarre' broke in.

The alien wasn't wrong, either. All the same, Kling said, “Machines—and maybe helper animals—can do a lot. The kid'll never be pretty, but we don't get rid of people for being ugly. If we did, there'd be a lot fewer humans than there are.”

“I hardly know where to begin,” his opposite number said. “What you call helper animals … You don't know the meaning of the words.” That was bound to be true. Humans trained animals to help the disabled. The Snarre't didn't just breed them for that—they bioengineered them. This Snarre' continued, “As for ugly … well, each species has its own standards. But if you are saying you don't deliberately improve your own looks and smells—why not? We've been working on it for thousands of years, and the results are striking.”

You still don't do a thing for me, sweetie
, John Paul Kling thought. But the Furball was right; that went species by species. He said, “Each race has its own customs. Different societies in the same species can have different customs.”

What came from the Snarre' was unmistakably a sigh. “No doubt.” That had to mean he—she?—figured these human customs were odious or stupid. Well, too damn bad. The alien said, “We should discuss this all another time, at leisure. In the meanwhile, tell me about the people who came into contact with either the male or female parent at about the time the latter discovered she was pregnant.”

“Here's the list.” Kling sent it to her phone. “As you'll see, most of them are human, but some are, uh, Snarre't.” Calling Furballs Furballs in front of a Furball could and would damage your promotion chances.

He watched his opposite number's big, bulging eyes go back and forth as the other detective read the names. The Snarre's phone was supposed to render not only the Roman alphabet but also Snarre'l characters. He hoped it was working up to spec.

After going through the list—or so Kling presumed, anyhow—the Snarre' said, “This is exceedingly comprehensive. How was it generated?”

“Partly by questioning the Cravaths. That wasn't such a good bet, though, because so much time's gone by. The rest came from going through surveillance camera records.”

“That must have taken a lot of time.”

John Paul Kling shrugged. “A lot of computer time. Not so much for me. The real art is generating the algorithm that makes the computer identify the victims' faces and body dimensions. We had a few false positives a real, live human had to sift through, but not that many.”

“False positives?” the Snarre' asked.

“People who looked like the Cravaths to the computer but turned out not to be.”

“I see. If you added a smellchecker, you could reduce those to zero, or very close to zero.”

“Maybe,” Kling said. “We haven't had such an easy time getting our hardware and software to handle smells, though.”

“You would do better not to involve machines at all,” the Furball said. “If you're trying to detect organic compounds, you need organic detectors.”

“Oh, yeah, like I'm really in a position to change policy,” Kling said. “We've got a job to do here, not fix the damn world. Suppose you question the Snarre't on the list, and I'll take care of the humans. Then we can talk again—compare notes, you know? Do you think you can do it in four days? You don't have as many of 'em as I do.”

“I'll try,” the other detective said. “I will speak to you then.” The screen on Kling's phone went blank.

Dealing with her own species, Miss Murple at least got to keep civilized hours. She could go out and talk to people while it was decently dark. She didn't miss eyecovers, not even a little bit.

Most of the stalls in the garage of the fancy apartment block where Sharon Rock and Joe Mountain (again, the names are approximate, but they beat the hell out of transcribing funny noises and trying to transcribe smells) lived had caitnops or drofs in them, the way they would have on a Snarre' night back on the homeworld.

But the shiny new scooter in Sharon and Joe's stall would have announced that they dealt with Bald Ones, even if Miss Murple hadn't already known as much. Everything about their apartment screamed
money
, from the scooter to the way the front door dealt with her.

On the homeworld, a servant might even have opened that front door. But that sort of thing hadn't come here. Miss Murple didn't miss it a bit, either. But she
was
surprised when a voice spoke in English after she used the knocker: “Hi! With you in a minute!”

She had to wait for the worm in her brain to translate before she understood. Almost any Snarre' would have. Did Sharon Rock and Joe Mountain have more human guests than those of their own kind? Or were they just infatuated with everything the Baldies did? Miss Murple knew which way she would bet.

The door opened. There stood Sharon Rock. Miss Murple had experienced her in any number of lifeys. The real thing was even more depressing. Nobody in real life ought to have such big eyes or such soft fur, or to smell quite so sexy. How did this female get through the night without distracting everyone around her?

“You must be the detective,” she said, and her voice really was like pearly bells. “Come in, please.” She raised her voice: “Joe! The detective's here!”

“I'm coming.” Joe Mountain had been retired for fifteen years, but if you paid any attention to sports you remembered the days when he wasn't. He'd put on a little weight since his athletic days, but not a lot, and he still smelled like a younger male. That was distracting, too.

So was their flat. It was full of human-made gadgets, many of them replacing perfectly ordinary Snarre'i equivalents like heat sensors. There was even a television set from the Bald Ones: a demon's tool if ever there was one, as far as Miss Murple was concerned.

“You're fond of humans, aren't you?” she remarked.

Sharon and Joe looked at each other. “Yes,” Sharon answered. “And do you know why?”

“Tell me, please,” Miss Murple said.

“
Because they leave us alone
.” Both Snarre'i celebrities spoke together. Sharon went on by herself: “When we deal with the Bald Ones, we're nothing but funny-looking aliens to them. You have no idea how wonderful that is.”

“We have privacy with the humans,” Joe agreed. “They aren't always sniffing and touching and staring at us. It's—”

“Peaceful,” Sharon finished for him. He splayed his fingers in agreement.

“All right.” They'd led Miss Murple straight to what she wanted to ask: “Is that why you purchased a scooter from the human named, uh, Jack Cravath most of a year ago?”

“If that's what the human's name was,” Sharon Rock said. “We like the scooter.”

“We really do,” Joe Mountain said enthusiastically. “It's faster than a drof, and cheaper to maintain, too.” He'd done a lot of selling pitches, capitalizing on his fame as a sports hero. This sounded like another one.

“Do you know that Jack Cravath's mate was just the victim of a hoxbombing?” Miss Murple said. “She gave birth to one of the most scrambled offspring I've ever had the misfortune of seeing.”
And they're trying to keep it alive, too. I don't begin to understand that.

“How awful!” Sharon Rock breathed. She really sounded and smelled shocked and dismayed. But how many lifeys had she made? She was used to having other people looking over her emotional shoulder, so to speak. Lifey performers got so used to projecting emotions, some of them even gave sniffers trouble.

“We had no idea,” Joe said. Miss Murple had to remind herself that he was an experienced actor, too. “Why would anybody want to waste a hoxbomb on a Bald One?”

“That's one of the things we're trying to find out,” Miss Murple replied.

Sharon Rock's voice took on a certain edge: “Why are you asking us about all this, exactly?”

“Because you bought your scooter from the male of the family at about the same time as the female became pregnant,” Miss Murple said. “This is all routine. You aren't suspects, or even persons of interest, at the present time.”

“We don't know much about hoxbombs.” Joe Mountain spoke with more than a little pride. He might have said,
We don't know much about anything
. Some people suspected that athletes
didn't
know much about anything.

“I was in a lifey about them once.” Now Sharon Rock sounded almost apologetic, and smelled that way, too. “I liked the plot outline, and the payment was good, so I did the production.”

What was
she
saying?
I do know something about hoxbombs, but it's not my fault?
It sounded that way to Miss Murple.

“Your statement is that you weren't involved in conveying the hoxbomb to the human?” the detective said.

“That's right,” Sharon and Joe chorused. They didn't sound like liars. They didn't smell like liars, either. Miss Murple sighed. They were performers. If they were performing now …

Shoe leather. John Paul Kling looked at the soles of his own shoes. They weren't leather, though the uppers were. Leather or not, they'd taken their share of wear and then some. He tramped along the streets of Latimer's central business district, the part of town that catered to both humans and Snarre't. It was daytime, so not many Furballs were out and about. He did see a few, the way he would have seen a few humans at two in the morning.

He would have wondered what the humans were doing up at two in the morning. He did wonder what the Snarre't were doing now. Unless it looked obviously illegal, it was none of his business.

He checked the map unscrolling on his phone. He needed to turn left at the next corner. After he did, he nodded to himself. There it was, in the middle of the block on the far side of the street. SUNBIRD SCOOTERS, the sign said. He crossed without getting run over by scooters or trampled by caitnops (which tended not to pay attention to humans) or drofs.

A very pretty young woman smiled at him in a friendly way when he walked into Sunbird Scooters. “May I help you, sir?” she said.

“You're not Petros van Gilder,” Kling said regretfully. He displayed his badge, after which the young woman didn't look so friendly any more. He sighed to himself. It never failed. Well, he'd stick to business, then: “I need to ask him a few questions.”

“Hold on. I'll get him.” She paused. “What shall I tell him this is about?” Kling didn't answer. No, the woman didn't seem friendly at all now. He shouldn't have been surprised. Hell, he
wasn't
surprised. That didn't mean he was happy.

She went into the back part of the building. When she came back, she had a short but well-built man not far from her own age with her. “You're Petros van Gilder?” Kling asked.

“That's right. And you are …?”

“Sergeant John Paul Kling, Exotic Crimes Unit. I'm here because of the hoxbombing suffered by Jack and Beverly Cravath.”

“I heard about that. Terrible thing. But what's it got to do with me?” van Gilder said.

“Maybe nothing. Probably nothing, in fact,” Kling said. “Just routine right now. I'm trying to contact everyone who had anything to do with either one of them around the time Beverly Cravath got pregnant.”

“If it's a hoxbombing, shouldn't you be concentrating on the Snarre't?” van Gilder said. “I mean, they're the ones who're mostly likely to do something like that.”

“Believe me, we're looking at that angle, too. So are their own police officials,” Kling said.

Petros van Gilder had a fine—almost a professional—sneer. “Oh, yeah. I'm sure they're looking real hard.”

“We don't have any reason to believe they're not,” said Kling, who worried about the same thing. “Catching whoever did it is in their interest, too.”

“It is if a human did it,” the scooter salesman said. “One of their own people? Fat chance.”

“I'm not here to argue with you. I'm here to ask you about the time you saw Jack Cravath.” Kling gave the date and time, adding, “I gather you were both coming home from work.”

“I've got to tell you, I don't remember this at all,” van Gilder said. “Maybe that makes me a suspect or whatever, but I totally don't.”

“You were stopped at a traffic light, together. You said something to each other and shook hands, and then the two of you separated,” Kling said.

“How about that?” van Gilder said. “Well, if you've got it recorded, I can't very well tell you you're wrong, but it sure doesn't ring a bell.”

“You had your hands in your pockets before you shook hands with Jack Cravath,” Kling said. “Why would that have been?”

“Beats me. Probably because it was cold. What's the big deal?” the younger man asked.

“The big deal is that that might have been when you delivered the hoxbomb.” Kling took a print from the surveillance footage and showed it to Petros van Gilder. “Do you recognize this jacket? Do you still have it?”

“Is that me?” Van Gilder eyed the photo. It was him, all right—no possible doubt. “Yeah, I've still got that jacket. It's back at my apartment. How come?”

“Because we'd like to examine it for possible presence of the hoxbomb agent called Scrambled Egg 7,” Kling replied. “We could get a warrant, but it would be simpler without one.”

“You wouldn't have any trouble getting a warrant, either, would you?”