

The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue

Louis Shalako

Copyright 2014 Long Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-25-7

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The following is a work of speculation. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination. The author's moral right has been asserted.

The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue

Louis Shalako

Chapter One

Constables Darnell Wood and Randall Zonaras sat in the squad car, holding at a south central location. They were monitoring radio traffic and updates on the onboard, centered on the dashboard between them. It had already been a long shift.

"Huh." The huskier of the pair, Randy Zonaras was in the passenger side.

He pointed at the screen.

"Unit Twelve is on the scene of that missing robot."

They had laughed on hearing it on the radio.

"Hmn." Darnell, thirty-four years old and the archetypical buzz-cut blonde jock, glanced over.

It was a slow night so far, yet it just wasn't worth committing to some small-time play when sure as shooting something more interesting would break three minutes later.

"They're asking for assistance. She says the thing just walked off. Ah, not too long, a few minutes ago." Randall read further. "It's in the three-hundred block of Jefferson."

Randall turned and tilted the screen back on its adjustable column so his senior partner could get a better look at the details.

"All right, we're near there. Tell them we'll keep a lookout." Darnell barely glanced out the window, giving a disgusted snort.

It was pretty good policy, one where they didn't have to do anything in particular. Saunders, senior cop in Unit Twelve, along with Young Miss Bradley as everyone called her, might be kind enough to put them in their report. It helped to account for their time on shift. The fact that it was a slow night didn't help. Slow nights were all too rare and ought to be savored.

Darnell's eyes slid down and he took another look.

"That's a robot?" His eyebrows rose. "Holy. She's not bad looking."

"I don't know if you saw that thing on TV the other night, but they make these robots nowadays..." Randall was going on but Darnell waved it off and the other trailed into silence.

The fact was that he had seen it, and it was still kind of disturbing to the slightly jaundiced eye of a cop. He knew himself that well.

Darnell reached for the ignition.

"Might as well have a look around. Hey?"

Randall grinned.

"Yup."

Spinning the computer, he typed in a quick text message to Constable Bradley that they were mobile and in the area.

He could have just called them—most cops had personal phones, but this way it was logged.

They'd never apprehended a robot before, but there was a first time for everything.

In the event, they circled and circled in an ever-increasing radius, block after block after block, along with one other stray unit. It was a bunch of rather bored cops. With all of their combined efforts, they found exactly nothing.

"She'll turn up somewhere, and we are killing some pretty good time." The taxpayers hated seeing the police sitting around in their vehicles, doing nothing, when in fact that was when they should have been the most grateful—surely it was a sign that things were going well, i.e. no crime and folks really ought to try and be a little more happy about it.

Half of their time in the car involved writing, and reading, endless notes, memos, bulletins, and reports. It was the sort of work that you couldn't jam in a briefcase and take home with you. It all had to be done right now.

Randall nodded sagely at this observation. He typed a few notes in, made a mention of the other units, and eyed up the calls list without much hope of action. The thieves and the pimps and the pushers were staying in tonight.

An oddly cheerful lot they were too, but the folks about at this hour on a cold and rainy night in mid-spring hadn't seen too many lady robots around. They probably would have remembered that sort of thing if they had. That was the big consensus so far. Pretty much everybody had seen one on TV, or knew some little thing about them. They all knew what they cost, or had some idea of the moral dilemmas.

It was a deadly slow night, and Darnell realized that you couldn't possibly have seen it all because it all hadn't been invented yet.

You couldn't possibly have seen it all.

Life was just too damned short to ever have to worry about that happening.

***

"I must thank you young lady. You really are most kind." The gentle voice, rusty and unused to much company, was slightly apologetic.

Scott had been blind for over ten years, legally blind that is, although he had ten percent vision, maybe a little less in the right eye. He'd lived alone since long before that, up three floors above an old laundromat on the east side of Onion City. He had the white cane and everything, as he was wont to say.

When a pleasant young woman had offered to help him home with his groceries, he was initially nervous but then thought why not.

Why not?

What have I got to lose.

It had happened before, more than once, not that he expected such help. Scott had become hardened, used to shifting along all right for himself. This one seemed so young and pleasant.

He never knew what to say, perhaps that was his problem. What did he have to offer in the way of conversation? He had nothing but pride and deprivation to talk about, nothing witty, or smart, or positive to say to anyone these days.

A conversation composed entirely of social pleasantries got pretty boring after a while and then you were in for it. He was afraid of saying something really off.

It was usually older people, although there was this one really big dude who turned out to be a preacher. It was a certain sort of person, and you recognized that after a while—some big dude with something to atone for, in other words. He was making amends for something nameless, and long, long ago. Scott didn't give a shit, really.

Eager to please, that was it. She put his groceries away and bustled around. She grabbed a broom and swept the floor, which probably did need doing. She washed up his one plate, a cup and a fork or something. He hoped she was putting everything back exactly where she found it, but he didn't want to say anything. All of this house cleaning, now this had never happened before. It was like he'd just been adopted or something. He couldn't quite account for how that had happened. She had said nothing about herself, and social workers didn't do that sort of thing.

It was a feeling he wasn't used to. No one had ever cared what Scott thought, or what Scott wanted.

No one had ever worried about what Scott needed.

But he was having a hell of a hard time getting rid of her. Rudeness was beyond him, apparently, and she didn't seem to be able to take a hint. At some point he just gave up and wondered when she might wander off on her own. He would simply wait her out. He felt bad inside for thinking that, he really did, but...but.

She seemed kind of vulnerable herself. How he knew that was a question for some other time.

He just felt it. It was somehow self-evident. They sat at the kitchen table, having a cup of tea.

Betty was terribly quiet, with long gaps in the conversation when neither one of them knew what to say, although she did ask quite a few of the more obvious questions at first.

With his limited vision, he had the impression she was rather tense, preoccupied. Her voice was dead neutral, though. That was a little different, but then he didn't get out much. There was nothing artificial or insincere about it.

It was like she was listening, for something, a knock at the door or something, and she had absolutely no idea that this was someone's private home and you couldn't just come walking in and take over like that.

He had this crazy idea that she was drop-dead beautiful. Somehow he just knew it.

"A blind man would be glad to see it." The bleak tone shocked him, but it was out there and there was nothing else but to own up to it.

"Pardon me, Scott?"

"Never mind. Just an old saying."

She smelled lovely, that almost went without saying.

Betty Blue, or whatever she said her name was, sure sounded nice, and the dim silhouette up against the kitchen window certainly bore that out.

She must have some kind of a story.

Sooner or later, she was bound to spill her guts.

Chapter Two

"You're tired. You've had a long day. Perhaps I could draw you a bath?"

It completely went over his head.

Draw me a bath?

Never mind the obscene mental picture; someone sketching a tub full of suds and water for the perusal of a blind man—what, was she blind too? What? What?

And why wouldn't she leave.

He could accept someone helping him home with the groceries, maybe even coming upstairs for a moment, but this. This.

It was like she was never going.

"Miss. I—"

She was in the other room. The taps were turned on, with a squeak and a thud from just inside the wall, just as it always did, and then came the sound of running water.

Scott suddenly became very fearful.

She was obviously nuts, or bucking for sainthood...? Or what? What?

He heard footsteps, and craned his head to try and get some sort of a clue. Her shoes scraped on the old boards, tapped across the intervening linoleum, and then she was right beside him. Her aroma enveloped him.

"Ah, listen. Ah—Miss."

"It's all right, Scott. I don't mind." Her hands were on his shoulders. "Everything will be fine, Scott. I'm a friend. And please call me Betty. A little bath isn't going to hurt you."

His guts withered. She was serious, and he didn't know how to stop her.

She could drown him in the bathtub. Something cracked inside of Scott and he was inclined to let her.

For fuck's sakes, why not, eh? Not after all these years.

It's not like he hadn't prayed for death, or at least release, a time or two.

He shoved the chair back a little, putting his hands on the edge of the table, preparing to rise.

"No." Her voice was gentle and soft, up beside his right ear.

She must be slightly bent at the waist to do it, a simple deduction, one based on old memories. For some reason his eyes watered but he blinked it back and watched his breathing for a moment.

Nary a hint of the longing inside escaped, he was almost sure.

Goose bumps and shivers were beyond his control. It was a kind of electrical shock—what pure fear did to a man. Her hands were on him, up close to his throat.

She began to knead and massage Scott's shoulders. At first he resisted, and then with a recognition that nothing like this had ever happened in his life, not in his entire stinking life, Scott gave in again.

He sat there and let it happen.

Psychotic or something, he decided. She could have gutted me first thing if that's what she really wanted to do. It's not like there were going to be any eyewitnesses.

Yeah, but who in the hell is she?

And why.

The realization that she could have done anything she wanted with him was no comfort. Thank all the psycho-slasher melodramas on TV for that. He'd listened to one too many.

He slumped in his chair.

"That's better. I promise, a nice hot bath will make you feel a whole lot better."

"Betty."

"Yes, Scott?"

"Why are you doing all this? Please don't think that I'm not grateful—" He left the part about not being a charity case unsaid, hoping that she would get it.

He left out all the stuff about a man's dignity.

She had done enough for him. He understood and accepted her need to do this. And yes; he needed someone to do something nice for him once in a while. As well. And that should have been that.

"I don't know why, Scott."

It seemed like a pretty good answer, all things considered.

Scott hadn't done the laundry in three or four weeks. He hadn't actually showered this morning, having slept in a bit, and then he was feeling very tired for some reason. Then the cheque came in the mail, and if he was going to the bank he might as well get it over with. His breath was bad after ten cheap, off-the-cuff contraband smokes and a coffee. His feet stank. Blind as he was he had no illusions about his looks and certainly no unrealistic expectations of the crummy Salvation Army and thrift store attire. The kitchen garbage was beginning to smell. He'd been cramming as much as possible into the bag, which cost six cents each, before taking it out. It was probably the soup-can of bacon grease in there, and his place was often quite warm.

He hadn't shaved in four or five days, when last it was, he couldn't quite recall. While he still had a stick of deodorant in the bathroom, it was like he hardly ever used it anymore. He was trying to make it last a while.

Scott became very aware of all shortcomings in that exact moment. He really had let himself go—and to hell with it.

What in the hell was wrong with this woman?

The one thing he dare not ask was, why me?

Please don't say it. Please don't tell me.

Why me?

***

"Would you...would you please step out of the room, if only for a moment, Betty? Please?"

"Don't be silly. I've seen plenty of men's bodies."

Scott gave a funny, high-pitched little moan as her strong fingers took his upper arms and spun him twenty degrees to the left or so and then she was unbuttoning his shirt.

"Betty, I mean really."

""It's okay Scott. Don't worry about it. I'm very glad to help." He lifted his arms and she got his tee-shirt off.

He heard it hit the floor somewhere off in the background.

"At least you're calling me Betty now." There was a brightness of expression in there.

He still couldn't really read her emotional state. She was too new.

Maybe she was just happy or something.

He sensed her kneeling, and very fluid and graceful a move it was. This was the brightest room in the place, facing south over the alley and towards a gap in the tall buildings to the southwest. The last of the sunset was coming right in. It was all he could do to keep up with her.

"Lift your left foot."

"Ah"

"Come on, Scott. You can do it. Don't be a fraidy-cat."

She was chiding him like a little kid or something. His face was suddenly wreathed in a smile.

Just the tone in her voice was what did it. Unbelievable. You really had to admire her gall.

The smile faded.

"Oh, God." He shook his head in despair and submission.

He was a little kid again.

Holy, Jesus, who is this girl.

He lifted his left foot and she steadied him with one hand clamped on his other leg while she peeled it expertly off.

They repeated the process with the other foot.

This is where he baulked.

"No, seriously."

"What, are you shy? But why?"

"Yes!"

"That's okay, I'm not." He could almost sense her impatience. "Come on, Scott."

He could feel the heat of her body, barely a foot in front of him.

Scott hastily backed up and she had to grab him and steady him because he hadn't been standing exactly where he thought, and he hit the laundry hamper by the door.

"Come to mama."

"Oh, Lord." He protested feebly.

She held him up, steadying him.

She dragged him two steps forward.

Finally he gave up. She was tugging at the top button of his jeans.

"Aw. No. Let me do it, for Christ's sakes." He wasn't helpless.

What had started off as fear had transformed itself into anger, something he hadn't felt in a very long while—perhaps too long. His jaw worked back and forth uncontrollably. It was like a little red switch being flipped in your head.

So you want to be like that, eh?

You have no idea, baby? No clue? Really?

Face hot and red, although he was completely unconscious of that, he pulled off his jeans. They were a bit tight but they still fit. He stumbled and hopped for a moment but he did it alone and without help. The exertion and the anger had him gasping for air. There were going to be some consequences.

Little lady.

What was coming along pretty well in terms of erections un-snagged from the top of his underwear, and popped up as if to take a long deep breath of fresh air. He stuck his jaw out and kept his mouth stubbornly clamped shut. He threw the underwear aside angrily, but she just ignored it all as far as he could determine by sound.

Fine. Be that way.

He didn't say it.

What did you expect, anyways?

He wasn't trying to impress her. He was damned angry, right about then. And yet...he supposed he didn't want it to end, either. She smelled so good, and what in the hell was she doing here?

"All right, let's get you into the bath then."

That was all she said, curiously deflating it was, for which he was grateful in some ways. His boner subsided, only slightly. The edge of the tub was up against the side of the calf of his right leg and he stepped into nearly-scalding water with her hand on his lower back and his lower bicep hard in her other hand.

He found the usual places to put his hands and cautiously lowered himself down into the water.

"There. See."

"Ah." The water stung in a ring around him as it rose up on his flesh.

The air was steamy and the room nice and warm. The sound of light jazz came from the radio on the hall table. He hardly ever turned it on anymore.

He heard her moving beside him.

The colour of the water, barely visible to Scott, and the feel of it, told Scott that she had found some kind of bath foam under the sink. There was some stuff there from a previous tenant, which he had ignored until today. He couldn't actually read the labels and yet there was stuff in it—he'd opened one and had a good sniff at it, a few weeks after moving in.

There was a curiously feminine scent coming up off the water.

"What the hell is that?"

"Pardon me?"

"Sorry. What's that smell?"

"Oh." She went over to the wastebasket and pulled something out. "It's called Ginseng."

He snorted. A freakin' aphrodisiac. Who needs it?

"Yeah, right."

So she said she needed somebody. Or no. She said she didn't know why. The lady didn't know why.

He wondered just exactly what the lady meant by that.

She seemed awfully intense, and painfully naive or something. She must be insane.

It was just his luck.

***

Scott bent his knees and eased himself a little deeper into the water. He was a terribly shy man, and what in the hell were you supposed to do about it?

Normally he would take a shower, and this was an unaccustomed luxury.

He was just trying to think of what to say when she turned abruptly, opened the door and left.

Betty went out into the kitchen. He heard glass clink out there.

She came right back.

"Here."

"What is it?"

Rather than answer, she lifted his wrist and then something hard and cold brushed his fingertips.

His hand closed on a glass. Bringing it up to his face he recognized it. It was the last of the London Dry Gin. Of all things. He was sort of keeping it in reserve, as he didn't usually drink gin.

Gin had to have the proper mixers and he usually just bought a six-pack and drank two or three at a time.

"Thank you. Betty—"

He didn't get to finish as the sound of her zipper going downwards along the lithe curve of her spine caused his brain to completely lock up on him for ten or fifteen seconds or so.

His ears weren't fooling him.

He took a quick slug of the gin. It definitely helped.

A bare leg came over the side and her foot probed the foamy blue waters to find where his legs were under the surface.

He sat up and pulled in his feet as best he could. Scott wished he could see what the hell was going on. Betty settled into the water, he thought facing him from the sound of her voice.

"It's okay, Scott. I just needed somebody."

Her wet hands clasped his knees.

His jaw went back and forth in deliberation and his penis went up like a periscope.

"Oh, my God."

What she did next seemed almost inevitable, judging by the last ten minutes or so, but even then it still came as something of a shock.

There was still that hint of terror, deep down inside, but some other part of his mind retained enough objectivity to realize that what he really ought to do was to try and relax and enjoy himself.

While it was true the building superintendent, Mrs. Jarvis, who lived down below, was a bit hard of hearing, the one thing he must promise himself was not to scream or moan or thrash about too much if he could possibly help it.

It had been so long since he had touched another person, or felt their warmth up close.

***

The first morning was the best, the worst, and in every way terrifying. It was also elevating, exalting even. She had transformed his life, if only it turned out to be real. Hell, if only for a moment.

This new love in his life—Scott wasn't sure if he was entirely justified in calling it that, but he was sure as hell enamored of Betty. He could learn to love her if he wasn't so damned scared of what was happening.

If he could only relax a little. There were too many fears to overcome.

Who was she?

It couldn't last. There had to be some kind of a catch. It was all a big mystery.

But to wake up, have your eyes pop open, with a bit of a woodie in your pants, and to discover that it was real. To realize that last night had not been a dream or a hallucination. There was someone in the bed beside him. Someone soft, and warm, and beautiful.

Kill me now while I'm still happy.

Come on, God, you've never let me down before—you bastard.

Scott had been afraid to let on that he was awake for fear of ruining the illusion. There came a time when you had to pee and there was no more delaying.

He didn't know what to make of it.

***

Betty had the place all cleaned up, not that Scott really cared one way or another, but she seemed to think it was important.

Scott had been alone for far too long. At some point one had to ask some serious questions.

She was in the bedroom airing his clothes, folding laundry and putting his winter clothes away. They'd been heaped up there for a while. It was a tedious job, one requiring pure feel.

He had the TV on, listening to the on-air personalities talking on the Weather Channel. It was his routine, and routine was the one thing that had saved him from going mad. One of the things, anyway. So what if she was crazy—she was nice, and he knew how close he had been a time or two.

Going mad was just one of those things.

It could happen to anybody.

There was a rap of knuckles at the door.

"It's okay, I'll get it." His heart thudded in guilt for some reason.

It was probably Mrs. Jarvis, and yet here he was a grown man—he paid rent. She had always been somewhat solicitous, although royally ineffective at it. It's just that he had so few visitors.

She was governmentally ineffectual.

He pulled the chain free. Turning the little knob on the deadbolt, he opened the door. He couldn't quite see who it was, but there appeared to be two of them.

"Yes?"

"I'm Officer Bruce Nyall and this is my partner, Officer Diana Wilson. We've been canvassing the neighbourhood."

"Oh?"

Scott wondered if it was for a subscription to something, raising money for some local charity.

The cops were known to do that from time to time. Then again they could be creeps trying to fake out a blind man, gain his cooperation and then get him in trouble. He'd seen one or two bogus ploys over the years, as often as not someone who had befriended you right out of the blue.

"So, what can I do you for?" Scott played it cool.

All he saw were two vertical blobs, elongated but nothing more. They could be real cops.

"Ah, yes, sir. You are Scott Nettles, and do you reside here?"

"Ah, yes."

"Okay, sir. We're trying to locate a missing robot. She was last seen a few blocks from here. The robot is described as a blue-skinned female, about five-foot ten, with thick blonde hair and big dark eyes."

"Ah. Well."

"Anyway, sir, have you seen anyone or anything like that in the neighbourhood?"

"Ah. No, but—"

Officer Wilson nudged Officer Nyall with her elbow. She pointed, and following her glance, he noted the long white cane standing just inside the door. It was leaning up against a corner of the small front hall. It helped to explain the man's odd demeanor, blankly looking off over to one side above their heads and with his left ear lowered to catch the nuances, eyes wide and unfocused.

"That's okay sir, we're just checking around. Is there anyone else in the apartment with you?"

"Ah, no—just me and my, ah, girlfriend."

Officer Wilson's eyes lit up a little in empathy. It was sort of romantic for the poor guy to have someone. She'd never really thought about it. It made her shock at his blindness fade somewhat. It wasn't that bad for the man. Hopefully, maybe. Her heart went out to the more unfortunate of the city's residents; the bottom ninety percent. For her, this in her third full year of being a cop, the duty really meant to serve and protect. It's why she signed up. She hoped she would never become cynical. Some of her brother and sister officers sounded fairly cynical at times, but she often wondered if that was just some kind of emotional shield.

"All right, sir, we won't take up too much of your time. Do you have a phone?"

Scott's mouth was open in a half-witted grin.

"So you guys are looking for a robot?" His belly muscles, shirtless as he was, convulsed at the notion. "Heh-heh-heh."

"Ah, yes, sir." Diana spoke up now, with a smile evident in her voice. "Yes, sir. Please call us if you notice anything. Someone might mention something, you know?"

She pressed a business card into his hand, mentally cursing herself as she did so, but he took it readily enough. Maybe he'd be able to read it with his fingertips, she thought, the names and numbers were heavily embossed.

"Officers Nyall and Wilson. Okay, sir?"

He could always get a neighbour or the landlady to read it for him.

"Ah. Yes. Of course." Scott still had the ludicrous grin on his face.

Realizing a nod, or a tug at the cap brim wouldn't be of much use, Officer Nyall spoke up.

"Okay. Good night sir. We're leaving now, and we'll let you get back at it."

"Oh. Okay. Thank you, officers. Good night."

Scott closed the door and locked and latched it all up again. Dimly he heard them move on to the next unit, number six, and rap on the door. It was just down to the left and across the hall.

"Hmn. Don't that beat all."

Scott turned and headed back to the couch, still shaking his head.

"Betty!"

"Yes, dear?"

"You are not going to believe what just happened."

She came out of his dingy little bedroom with a white sock in one hand and a black one in the other, and an inquiring look on her face.

"What?"

Chapter Three

"I have to get out of here for a while. I try to get out as often as possible." It was an essential part of routine.

Single for all these years, Scott never bought more than the twelve items allowed in the express checkout. One or two small bags of groceries were all that he could reasonably handle, what with the stick and all.

"Are you okay on your own, Scott?"

It was kind of a dumb question, but it gave him an opening. It was an assertion of self, an act of assertion. It was an important thing to do sometimes.

"No problem."

Scott needed air and Betty thought it best if he went alone. She was planning to scrub the kitchen floor. Scott admitted it hadn't been done in a while, something she could see for herself.

"That way we won't be tripping on each other."

"Yeah. I'm a little too used to my independence." He smiled, getting the same feeling he'd had more than once in the last couple of days.

He had laughed, of course—over the years. He had a few friends, a few acquaintances. If someone told a joke, of course Scott would laugh.

But this was different. This was smiling. Almost as if smiling came naturally.

She kissed him on the cheek and the cane was pressed into his hand.

"It is kind of a small place, even just for the two of us."

"Is there anything we need? Milk, maybe?"

"Yes. We could use milk. And tea bags."

He nodded, and Scott smiled again. Fuck, what a thrill. His heart leapt. It had been doing that quite a bit lately.

"Kissy-kiss?" At one time he would have thought anyone who said that a proper fool.

Quite mad, really.

Not anymore.

She took him in her arms and Scott wrapped his free arm around her. Their lips met and Scott enjoyed some tongue and one or two thoughts for later.

"Bye, lover."

"Bye."

Fuck, I never thought I would say that again. Or maybe I never have said it.

The latch snapped open and then Scott was through the door and into the hallway.

Crap, with her there it was like he didn't want to leave, but routine had its role. She had to understand a few things about him. She'd better know, otherwise she would simply overpower him. Smother him, if he wasn't careful.

He laughed out loud on the thought.

As long as my head's between her legs when it happens, who cares?

He grinned from time to time as he walked.

Holy, crap.

Had his life ever changed.

And just this once, not for the worse. Scott, as often as not, enjoyed his walk to Mel's on the corner, where the stock was never moved. He'd stopped going to the big supermarket nearby when the new manager had gotten on some kind of efficiency kick and moved everything in the place. Moving the aisles and rearranging the shelves, the freezer cabinets and everything, might have found another couple hundred square feet of retail shelf space. Scott, he sort of took it as a personal insult.

He'd gone in, making it in through the turnstile no problem, and then walked smack-dab into some kind of a low display. He never did figure out what that was.

Scott caught a sharp corner with a hip. His pocket or his jacket snagged a tab of stainless steel, he over-balanced, and then he went down, falling on the slender stick and breaking it.

Being the centre of attention of a bunch of strangers that he couldn't even see was embarrassing. Their comments, their voices, were just a stream of meaningless noise. They all had something to say. It was a good thing he couldn't see them, he was sure he would have punched somebody. It was the voices of the little kids standing over him. That was all that stopped him. He hated humanity at that moment, and of course they had to help him up, all worried about him. The staff had to get someone to lead him around while he did his shopping—minimal as it was.

All of their fucking apologies grated on him, when all he wanted was to be left alone. The stock boy who took him home hadn't been properly briefed. Scott thought the kid had forgotten exactly where he lived, until a couple of days later when the store manager showed up at his door with a new white cane for Scott.

More apologies, and Scott had been barely polite to the man.

Fucking asshole. I'll never shop there again, Buddy. Give it up. And fuck you, too.

Fuck all of you.

If they were looking for some feel-good publicity, Scott sure as hell wasn't going to give it to them.

But today was a better day, in fact a wonderful day. It was a rare event in Scott's experience.

The breeze was warm, and the birds were noisy and cheerful, the air was wet and the smell of fermenting dog-shit everywhere you turned was a portent of spring. Whatever. The traffic was just as heavy as usual. Somehow the cars, trucks and buses didn't seen quite so threatening, not so cold and impersonal anymore.

The chess players, and the men with Italian accents playing bocce-ball in the park, ignored him. They never minded the weather either. Italians were full of life. No one ever heard of a depressed Italian.

Crossing the street held no terrors for Scott anymore.

He had acquired a kind of fatalism over the years. It was a way of dealing with things.

It would happen someday.

Once you accepted it, things got better. Scott felt kind of sorry, even ahead of time, for the poor bastard who was slated to kill him. Just make sure you do it right. Don't leave me in a fucking wheelchair, okay, Buddy?

Do it right.

Man, that is one dark thought, and yet he couldn't quite shrug it off, either. Scott tapped his way down the street.

Fuck, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. That is one burden I will never have to bear.

Yeah.

Now he had something to live for.

Why does the chicken cross the road, anyways?

Maybe he's hoping someone will kill him.

He'd done it a million times, and this time was no different. The 'pong' of the signal changing and the sound of cars accelerating was a reminder of pain, death and injury, but so far, he'd been lucky.

You had to admit that. So far, no one had run him over. Yet a forty-two year old man on a bicycle had been killed by a pickup truck at this very intersection just a couple of weeks ago.

Sticking close to the storefronts, he found the fourth doorway to the left of the intersection of Queen and Main streets.

The laundromat was busy, as always on a Saturday, with the smells of laundry, the voices of women and small children coming vaguely through the wall. There was the sound of rotating dryers and squelching washing machines, the latter of which, if you overloaded them, would leave a crust of dry soap on your clothes because the water wouldn't penetrate all the way through. On a tight budget, Scott had only done that once or twice, as doing the wash cost nine dollars and seventy-five cents per load.

It was a big city, after all.

Life might be cheaper someplace else.

Scott held the bag and the stick in the same hand. Going up was a lot easier although he had fallen once, losing his grip on the handrail. Sliding down six or seven steps, he was banged up on the shins, his left wrist hurt like hell. His bananas were squashed and there was one tomato that he never did find. His temper had been well and truly sparked that day.

He had said a few things, at least until Mrs. Jarvis came out and stood at the top of the landing, asking stupid questions and quavering, which he had always hated in a person. Of course the lady insisted on helping him. She came clunking down the stairs even as he told her not to.

That made two of them on the stairs, and it was all he could do not to tell the old lady to fuck off, get the hell out of my way—and leave me the fuck alone.

He was just passing the second-floor landing, tapping his way along, holding the handrail, as it was easy enough to put a foot wrong and go tumbling down the stairs.

There was the sound of a door.

"Mister Nettles?"

Go ahead, make my day.

It was a hell of a lot easier to be nice today. Just one of the many benefits of having a girlfriend, he supposed.

"Yes, Missus Jarvis?"

"Mister Nettles, I need to speak to you about something."

Scott didn't hesitate, although standing around in small talk could very easily disorient him.

He navigated the last few risers, tapping and banging the stick around so she would get back in her apartment and leave him room.

"Hi. So. What's up?"

"Well. It's just that I was worried about you."

"What? About me? Why?"

"Well. I heard some noises, and I wondered if you were okay."

"Noises?" The sounds of traffic came up from the street below and Mrs. Jarvis had the TV on in her apartment.

"Last night...er..."

Scott almost laughed aloud at the doubtful tone.

"Oh. I'm so sorry. It's just that the walls are thin." And his bedroom was directly above hers, most probably. "We'll try to keep it down, and I am sorry about that."

Scott took a step.

"Mister Nettles."

He stopped.

"Yes?"

"You're the only one listed on the lease, and you are supposed to inform me if your circumstances change."

"Oh, well. Yes."

No pets. No parties, no unnecessary noise after eleven p.m. While she had rattled off the terms of the lease when he rented the place, that was years ago. Yeah, no pets. He didn't recall anything about circumstances.

"It's just that I rented to one person."

"Ah, yes." Scott was the only one in the building who didn't have a dog or a cat.

The perfectly rational fear of tripping on the animal, falling and breaking the thing's back or leg was a compelling one, and he had never been able to bring himself to take the risk.

Of course he'd have to feed the thing and then there was the whole issue of them shitting all over the place. He'd have to go looking for it, a couple of times a week anyways.

"Well, okay. We'll have a talk and then decide what we're going to do."

"Thank you, Mister Nettles."

He could go on, but she had brought up an important issue.

Not unexpectedly, she took the grocery bag from him and then followed behind, breathing noisily and grunting as she took each step.

Argh.

Scott opened the door. He extended his hand and the weight of the bag dragged his arm down.

She wasn't leaving and he repressed a deep sigh.

I suppose I really ought to be grateful.

"Betty? There's someone here that I would like you too meet."

There was dead silence in the apartment. Fear stabbed at Scott.

He moved in through the door and of course Missus Jarvis had no option but to come in.

Scott had endured worse.

"Betty? Betty?"

"I didn't hear anyone go out." His landlady seemed mystified.

"All right, well, maybe she's in the bathroom, or doing laundry or something."

Mrs. Jarvis hovered right there at his elbow.

"Look, if she's not here then she's not here. I'll tell you what, Missus Jarvis. I'll bring her down and introduce you a little bit later, okay?"

"Well..." That doubtful tone again.

He grinned.

"Look, I'm a big boy, I can look after myself." He wasn't all that eager to show Betty off, as deep down inside he had some doubts of his own.

The odds were she'd be gone soon enough. The thought was enough to make him sag a little in the knees. There would be questions. Scott hated questions.

"Would you like me to put your groceries away?"

"Ah, no thank you, Missus Jarvis." The one time he let her do that, she'd cleaned out and rearranged his fridge, which meant that for weeks afterward, he hadn't been able to find a God-damned thing.

"All righty, then. I'll leave you to it."

Scott gently closed the door. The sounds of her stumping off down the hallway were plain enough. He pried off his shoes, the toe of one foot against the heel of the other.

He would untie them before putting them on again. A knot in a shoe-lace was disaster, and so he left them a bit loose. Sometimes he could squeeze them on without the bother of untying and tying them. Sometimes he got angry just trying to put his shoes on.

The toilet flushed, the bathroom door opened and then Betty's aroma was right there.

"Sorry, honey. She's not that bad. She's just curious."

Scott moved into the kitchen, after carefully leaning his stick in the usual place. He put the grocery bag on the kitchen table.

She took his jacket and he heard her go to the front hall.

"Betty? Are you okay?"

"Yes, Scott."

"It's just that you seem kind of quiet this morning."

She took his hand and led him to his lumpy old armchair in the living room. He eased himself down into it. She was standing right there.

"Sounds like we're going to get some weather."

"Yes, Scott."

The TV nattered away softly as the team on the Weather Network cheerfully speculated as to how bad the coming line of thunderstorms would be. The cold front was just to the west, minutes away by their urgent tones.

Some sort of weather apocalypse in the making, he gathered. He turned to Betty.

"She's just curious, more than anything. She's never heard a woman up here, I suppose. And as for the lease—after a year, that means nothing. I mean, it's only a twelve month contract. After that, all bets are off. Common Law. I don't think she'll make problems."

"Scott."

"Hmn. It's okay, Betty. I wouldn't worry too much about it."

"Scott. We need to talk."

"Yes?" Still smiling at his thoughts—Missus Jarvis was in her late fifties and it occurred to Scott that she might be a little jealous.

There was just a shit-load of lonely people in the world when you thought about it.

"There's something I need to tell you."

His mouth opened and the dull tone, the seriousness of it sunk in.

"What is it, Honey?"

His guts went cold and his heart picked up.

Of course.

There is something she needs to tell me.

The thought of losing her lanced through him.

He sighed, putting his best face on.

"Okay. Well. Sit down and tell me about it."

Chapter Four

Scott felt all hollow inside.

It was like he was going to be sick to his stomach.

"Scott. Please believe me. I am so sorry."

"Yeah."

So Betty was a robot.

Not only was she a robot, she was a runaway robot, one worth an estimated three-point-eight million dollars.

Betty was the finest robot that money could buy, and she had picked him. Her owner, Doyle Cartier, and his wife Olympia, were among the richest people on the planet. And one day, she decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence and walked off all on her lonesome. And then she spotted me.

She seemed pretty rational by any other standard.

In the surreal, topsy-turvy economic wasteland that the city had become, the Cartiers lived less than ten blocks away, having three floors at the top of the majestic State building. It was their little pied a terre when they were back home in the States and slumming, not far from where Doyle had grown up. The tough streets of Union City hadn't gotten any tamer over the years.

"Why me?"

"Scott."

"No, seriously. Why me?"

"Scott, they have seven other household bots, nineteen more conventional human servants, and quite frankly, they're never happy. Nothing is ever good enough for them. Those people piss and moan about every little thing. The sense of personal entitlement is appalling. I couldn't stand them for another minute. If they find me, I will destroy myself rather than go back."

"Well, ah, Betty—Betty Blue, my love, my ever true." Scott blurted all that out with nary a second's hesitation. "If I have to live without you, why, then, I'll just have to slash up, or, ah, you know, chuck myself out the window."

"Oh, Scott. No." Robots didn't sigh, apparently. "What are we going to do?"

"Them cops know you didn't get too far, not in that short a time. There are street and intersection cameras. There are store security cameras, and big front windows. Sooner or later, they will come back, and they will be knocking at my door."

"I know, Scott." On the bright side, she'd turned off her transponder.

He wished he could see the expression on her face right now. She might have just grabbed him, right off the bat, as a start—a place to hole up, with a defenseless man who, quite frankly, would have been easy enough to strangle at any time.

The fact that she hadn't, and then gone off over the rooftops in the depth of night when things were safer, was no real certification of her sanity or her intentions. But. When someone said they loved you...shit.

What in the hell were you supposed to fuckin' do?

Love is blind, and so am I.

He couldn't help or change the way he felt about her. That was just pure karma—for good or bad, and he had to roll with it.

What, am I supposed to do, just let go?

There was no way in hell that was going to happen.

Such is fate. Such is destiny.

Such is life, motherfucker.

"So."

"I was going anyway, Scott. And then I saw you and I wondered. I could never have stayed there."

She wondered.

Well, so do I.

I wonder what that means.

"Hmn." His guts roiled inside, his heart ached. "Well."

"Scott, I am so sorry for endangering you. But they will keep looking for me. Sooner or later, your landlady will wonder why I never go out."

Sooner or later, they would get caught.

It all came to him in a rush. Looking back, it was strange he hadn't caught on sooner.

They ate meals, and yet the food supply seemed like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. He really hadn't been spending any more on groceries.

She went to the bathroom, and yet her shit didn't seem to stink. When she peed, there was a tinkling, watery sound. But that would be easy enough to fake.

At night, in bed together, her breathing was a little too shallow and regular. She never snored, or mumbled, or made little noises with her mouth. Her stomach never rumbled, and the designers had seen no reason to give her even the ability to fart. She didn't drool in her sleep and make the pillow wet.

How stupid could a man be?

She didn't have a toothbrush—and Scott, blinded by his delirium, hadn't remarked upon it.

Nobody's perfect, he thought wildly.

"Please don't leave me, Betty." Tears sprang at last from his eyes, bringing a kind of madness with them. "Oh, God, please don't leave me."

She held his hand and comforted him as he cried on her shoulder, body wracked by spasms of grief.

"Betty. Betty. Betty."

"Scott."

"Oh, God, why me?"

"Scott."

She held him as he sobbed, stroking his hair and whispering his name.

Around them, outside of the open windows, curtains billowing in another surprisingly warm breeze, the sounds and the life of the city went on, cheerful, robust, and vigorous for all of its faults.

In here it was all pain, and poverty, and deprivation, and now it would get even worse because now Scott had a much better idea of what he was missing. Now he knew how much better life could actually be, if only a man caught a break once in a while.

A real good break that didn't kill you with happiness one minute and then cast you into the depths of hell the next.

If only a man had a friend, a companion—someone to love, for fuck's sakes. Scott had no one to talk to.

If only.

"Scott."

Those vacant eyes stared hopelessly where her face would be.

"Betty."

He tried to pull away, to sit up, and to just try and think it through.

It was obvious enough. Three-point-eight million.

"Yeah, they'll never stop looking for you."

He sniffled, back in control for the most part.

"Fuck."

She squeezed his hand, saying nothing.

"I need you."

"Yes. That was my original assessment."

He half-laughed, and half-sobbed at those words.

"Betty."

"Scott."

There wasn't much to say.

"I'm not letting you go. We'll think of something."

"Scott, the longer I stay here, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. I don't want to see you in trouble."

He sighed, unwilling or unable to accept it.

"Betty. I love you so much." How to say it? "I haven't loved anybody, not even myself, in too many years. I don't think I can stand it any more—not after you."

"Scott. I can't endanger you any further."

"Sure you can."

"Scott. What do you mean by that?"

"What are you going to do, just take off and leave me here?" Scott's face twisted in an agony of emotions, all of them feeding the big boil of pain and pus on his psyche. "I can't take it. What do you expect me to do? Just forget? Just get over it?"

"Scott. This was wonderful. Our time together is something I will always treasure."

He gripped her hands fiercely.

"We'll go together."

"What? Oh, Scott. My poor love. Scott. You don't know what you're saying."

"They're looking for one robot. We'll be two people together. We can travel. We can cook up a story. What we need is a plan, Betty."

He fell forwards onto her upper body, clinging to Betty Blue.

"Please, Betty. Please don't leave me."

There were some noises and Betty picked up the sound of the landlady's tread on the stairs.

She put a finger over Scott's lips.

"Hush, Baby."

Scott closed his eyes, tried to staunch the tears and the fear and the despair.

He had to get control over himself and make her understand what she was doing to him.

Weren't there three rules of robotics or something?

He'd read that as a kid, before he grew up and lost his vision.

Betty knew the facts better than he ever could. To her mind, it was impossible. What they had to do was irrational.

They had to do something irrational, in the face of impossible odds.

"Betty?"

"Yes, Scott?" Her voice was subdued.

"Do you trust me?"

She stroked his hair and kissed him and he fell silent.

The sound of Mrs. Jarvis and her vacuum cleaner, roaring and banging in the hallway outside, was of no great reassurance.

Sooner or later, Betty's luck had to run out.

As for Scott, it already had. Scott's luck had run out years before.

Wasn't it time he caught a real break?

For much of his adult life he had done nothing but think. Time had always been the one thing he had plenty of. Scott was a man with a little too much time to think.

If only he had learned what to do with it.

They could sure use some ideas right about now.

***

They had talked it out, and while it was desperate, it was completely unorthodox, upon which Scott had insisted.

"We have to do something they would never anticipate." Hopefully she could take it on faith. "We have to do something completely unpredictable, something they would never expect."

She had outlined all the methods which they would have to avoid, or evade, or elude, methods by which she and he could be seen, recorded and identified. They faced a daunting prospect. Betty was monitoring hundreds of channels at all times, but her own recent files were blocked by police and original company protocols. Having anticipated this, she had a backup file ready-made. It was disturbing to know they were probing not just for her, but at her and in her.

"You know they're going right by the book, and routine, on this one."

The state would be relying on manpower and technology, Scott told her. It would be relying on its very ubiquity. The eyes were everywhere. One of the reasons the cops weren't swarming all over the vicinity, was because they expected to solve the case by other means. They were counting on some data, a sighting, a recorded image, by the all-pervasive passive means at their disposal. Someone would find her facing into a corner in a blind alley, feet still going. He explained to her just exactly how they would think. Her battery must have died, her brain had a short circuit in it, or something like that.

Sooner or later someone would try to flog the parts, if nothing else. Sooner or later the cops or the waste disposal people would find a leg in a dumpster.

She took some convincing, but Scott could be persuasive, and he had a good mind when he focused on a problem.

***

The time had come and they were ready, with darkness falling and the weekday commuter traffic at its peak.

Scott would be lost in the crowd within two minutes, unless someone professional already had them under surveillance—in which case why would they watch and wait?

Why not just march in and grab her?

They had the right, as Scott put it.

She ruffled his hair and then smoothed it down again. She put his hat on for him.

"All right. Off you go. I love you, Scott."

They stood in the centre of the living room.

Scott was all outfitted, with his long cane and his dark glasses. He was wearing a white trench-coat to make him more visible. Scott was going to stand out like a sore thumb. He had his three shopping bags, two empty ones inside of the other. He had a small day-pack on his back. He had his bus pass, a sixty-dollar a month value as the government was fond of saying when asked why the disabled must live sixty-five percent below the poverty line.

Criminals lived better, and that was okay with Scott Nettles.

That's because he was about to become one.

We're moving on up in the world.

It's about fucking time, too.

Damn, but this felt good.

She had some money, but they had decided it was better if she avoided crowds and cameras altogether. This would not be easy but they had disguised her to some extent with different clothing, an old pea jacket, and a big red bandanna for a head scarf.

He could only imagine the effect.

Damn them all.

"I love you too, Betty."

He smiled. It was a beautiful thing to see, or so he had been told.

"Don't you worry about me, Baby. I've been doing this for a long time."

She did up the buttons on his jacket.

"I know, Scott."

"I'll be there." His smile was gone. "Just make sure you show."

A hard lump of concrete or something obstructed his throat, and while swallowing was hard enough, getting the words out was something else.

"Promise, Betty. Please promise me. Please."

She kissed him lightly on the lips and gave him one last hug.

"Don't you worry, Scott. I promise. I will never lie to you, Scott."

Her face was moist.

"You're wet—what is that?" In wonder, he reached up and touched her cheek.

He nodded, face pulling downwards, grim with the thought of separation.

The odds were worse than fifty-fifty, he thought.

There's no way she's going to show. It's a just a way of getting me out of the way while she bolts for freedom.

To start crying now would be too much for him. That would be it and it would be over.

He steeled himself with false hope and fake courage.

"All righty then." His head swiveled and then his body followed his decision. "Let's do this."

She held the door and carefully closed and locked it after his departure.

She had everything they might reasonably need or could possibly carry, packed in two pieces, mismatched as to colour and size, of hard-sided plastic luggage.

Scott had all the cash he could find in the house, including a fistful of change. Scott had a backpack. He had his bank debit card. He had his credit card, passport, birth certificate, anything they could think of. Betty's raw physical strength meant that poor Scottie would have clothes, socks, underwear, and they had a supply of food. Upon her recital of the items included, Scott figured it was good for four or five days, or enough to get them out of the city and most probably the state. Short and erratic steps all the way.

***

He was surprisingly cheerful, having made the decision.

Scott was buoyed up by the sheer novelty of it.

For whatever reason it felt right, and Scott had been plenty fed up with his lot in life for a very long time.

Maybe now we can get someone to kill me.

Scott laughed out loud at that one.

He liked the feeling of being bad. It was a ray of hope.

Is this guts? I always thought I already had them.

This is something new.

This was the chance to do something different, for Scott to reassert his manhood, although he would hardly put it in those terms. The sounds from directly ahead indicated that he had made it to the street, but then Scott wasn't the subject of the manhunt.

He paused, hand on the latch.

Off in the building, some people next door, to the west of Scott's place, were having an argument. They were one floor up.

There were eight million stories in the naked city. Betty and Scott's was merely one of them.

Scott opened the door, and stepped out into bustling pedestrian traffic. He turned right and began to walk.

***

Her internal clock counted off the seconds, the minutes and the hours and then it was time to go.

She made a quick review of the situation.

Mrs. Jarvis snored safely in her armchair and other people moved about in their units. There was nothing else happening. All she had to do was leave quietly.

Betty made sure to turn off the light and lock the door behind her.

Picking up the suitcases, she made her way down the stairs, the only sound of her passing the creak of oaken steps and the click of the latch in the vestibule.

Chapter Five

Olympia Cartier reminded herself that frowning gave one age lines.

"Darryl."

The servant inclined its head.

"Yes, Madame?"

"Get that policeman on the phone."

"Inspector MacBride?"

She nodded.

"That's the one."

"One moment please."

Olympia stood uncertainly in front of the panoramic view, the entire floor ringed by glass. It was one of the better views of downtown Union City, New Jersey, part of the Metropolitan New York area.

"Hello. Gene MacBride here."

"Inspector."

"Yes, Mrs. Cartier?" The fellow was desperately trying not to sound impatient.

She understood that.

She was desperately trying not to appear impatient with him and the police in general.

If only someone could tell her, for sure, what had happened. She was a bit surprised to get through so fast. People always complained about the service. Of course, those people weren't the Cartiers.

"I was just wondering if we had any new information. On Betty."

"Ah, no, not really, Missus Cartier. These things have a way of resolving themselves, one way or another." He paused. "If the thing fell in the river or something like that, it would float. It has a transponder and emergency beacons. But the opinions we're getting from the company and other experts is that it looks like some kind of malfunction."

They had told her, and her husband, the same thing. This was all based on her statements. What she knew—all she knew, really, was that Betty had been there a few minutes before, and then when next she thought of her, Betty was gone.

But why?

And how?

The hallway cameras showed her opening up the door and walking out as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which it was, as all of their servants came and went on a routine basis.

The only problem was that Betty didn't come back.

"The insurance company is going to be a problem."

"Ah, yes. Why do you say that?" The Inspector was sympathetic.

The Cartiers were important people.

"All you can do is to file the report, I mean the claim, and if necessary, get a lawyer. But they're just looking to cover their—ah, you know, backsides, Ma'am."

It struck him just what the problem really was.

"It's okay, Olympia. I understand. You're worried about her, of course. They're very human in appearance. It's no wonder people take a shine to them. Am I right?" The caller was very quiet, and her eyes were on the virtual floor between them. "You're sort of worrying rather needlessly about Betty, don't you think? And of course there's all this pressure, right?"

Pressure to settle with the insurance company, pressure to prove a warranty issue with the manufacturer, pressure to sue, pressure to make a complaint, provide information, talk it over with the husband, pick out the new model, maybe with a few upgrades or a new colour or hair-do or something. He understood the situation well enough.

She felt violated. There was something in this world beyond her immediate control and it could be very humbling, an unfamiliar mental state to one of her class.

She didn't know what to do about it, but time healed all wounds.

Put a little spit on there and walk it off, lady.

Inspector MacBride had seen a few little old ladies and their lost-doggy issues, she realized.

There was the hint of humour in her voice when she responded.

"Well, Inspector. It really is kind of a mystery." Olympia took a deep breath and then made up her mind as to whether to say it or not.

He would think her quite mad.

"ButI mean, why? Why in the blue blazes would she just up and walk off like that?" She was positively fuming over it.

The fact was that she had been hurt by Betty's leaving.

"Well. That really is the question, isn't it?"

The manufacturers would be asking themselves the same sort of questions, and probably not liking the answers too much. Too much at stake—too much market share, too much liability, too much that could go wrong in a hyper-paranoid world that was nevertheless addicted to what people called tech as if they knew how it worked or could actually grind out the smallest and simplest component in their backyard machine shop.

There were millions of lesser robots out there, and there had been recalls in the past. There were the inevitable horror stories making the rounds.

The Inspector's calm visage nodded thoughtfully in her panorama screen, as other detectives milled around in the background of the shot.

"That's definitely one of the questions we're asking, Olympia. But we're, ah, you know, a little bit out of our depth, and that's why we're talking to all the experts." When we get a minute, it would be better not to say.

Hopefully she got it in the diplomatic sense.

"I keep wondering if it was something I said..." There was a tone of wonder there.

She really was wounded.

He suppressed any quick changes in expression as best he could.

Lord, love a duck—and that time, he was afraid he wasn't quite fast enough in the controlling of his demeanor.

***

"Call from Mister Cartier."

Olympia looked up from the settee, overstuffed and upholstered in lush red velvet. It carefully replicated a piece that could have graced Versailles at the time of Marie Antoinette.

"Thank you, Darryl."

"I'm Stephen."

"Ah. Sorry."

"That's quite all right, Madame."

The screen flickered and lit up again.

Her husband, looking long and lean and all of his fifty-seven years at that moment in time, was in the back of his car. It looked to be somewhere on the Turnpike. Any turnpike. In any city of the world, and it probably was.

Quite frankly, she had forgotten where he was supposed to be, today.

"How are you, dearest?"

"Oh, fine. And how are you, lover?"

"Shit. The usual, honey. Gump's flying in from Rio. He says he has to see me straight away and that it's, and I quote: important and confidential."

"I wonder what that means."

"I wish he wouldn't call it a loan—it grates on me. That's all I'm saying. Charity I can understand. Gump just pisses me off with all of his gyrations. So how was your day?"

"It's still early here. But so-so." Olympia waved over a servant, pausing theatrically at the archway, the luncheon trolley all poised to strike.

"It's still early there? In other words one of those kind of days. Okay, listen up, Honey. I doubt very much if we'll get back tonight." Her husband was on a trade delegation to Sumatra or something, she recalled.

Somewhere like that, but she had her own interests and so she never had to be bored if she didn't want to. Doyle was a good husband, a good provider, and more importantly, as she was independently wealthy in her own right, he had never embarrassed Olympia. While he might have had the odd fling over the years, above all, Doyle would be discreet.

"Yes, not unexpectedly. We'll just have to do without you." Her favourite dwarf Sylphie crawled into her lap.

The young robot had a fetal-alcohol syndrome look about the eyes and forehead, and Olympia stroked her hair as the child looked up in a kind of cheerful worship which she would never outgrow or tire of.

Olympia was allergic to dogs and cats, and for some reason the artificial ones had never appealed to her.

The robotic boys and girls were different, so much more satisfying.

They were like dolls that could talk. And you could switch them off if they became insufferable.

***

Danvers was on the line again. He was pressing them to accept a replacement for Betty and sign off on the claim.

Robots and other chattels were covered under the household policy unless otherwise specified. The Cartiers had top-of-the-line coverage, as he kept reminding her.

"Well, then. Why can't we let the police have a little more time?" Olympia had always liked Betty Blue.

She was one of her favourites, if not the favourite, among her household servants. That one had always had a kind of personality, not like some of the others. Admittedly, the kitchen staff and maids were less expensive models. They weren't designed to interact in anything other than the simplest of ways. But Betty was a personal companion, designed and programmed as such.

And she really had been special, Olympia had to admit. Darryl, Stephen, Missy, they were all well enough in their own way. It was true they were very much individuals. Olympia wondered if any of them had ever thought of walking off, but she doubted it very much.

There was that ineffable something about Betty.

Betty asked a question once in a while, and while the others did that too, Betty's seemed a little deeper.

Betty was looking for meaning sometimes. Betty had asked why once or twice, giving the impression the answers were unsatisfying.

Betty was more of an intellectual challenge.

Some of the others were just looking for answers and instructions, or the simplest acknowledgement. It was a kind of artificial neediness. The robots were looking for feedback of an infantile nature.

They were looking for reassurance, so that they would be better able to anticipate—and to serve.

Poor Betty Blue.

Was it something I said?

She really couldn't think of anything, damn it.

***

Devon entered the room with a bright and cheerful look on his face.

"Devon! Have you seen James?"

"Ah, yes, Auntie. James is on the kitchen level, polishing silverware." He stopped there, looking puzzled. "Oh, yes. Scissors."

"Ah."

"He should be all right on his own for a while, Ma'am." Devon went to a side-table and pulled out a drawer.

"Hmn."

"What?"

"It's funny how you can never find things when you need them."

"Ask one of the servants, dear." Devon was a nephew, and a perennial visitor to the lair, especially when he wasn't in good odor at the Ivy-League school he had attended off and off over the last eight years.

Some day her nephew was going to be a doctor. As for Olympia and Doyle, they were childless by mutual choice. Pregnancy gave you stretch marks, sagging breasts and there was the whole diaper thing. All that was years ago.

***

Night or day meant nothing to Scott of course, and yet it was ironic.

All that technology. They could give a robot eyes and sell them to anyone with the price of admission.

"Women, eh—"

But you could not teach a blind man to see, and there were none so blind as those who would not look.

"Well. I really got to hand it to you, Buddy." The security guy was apologetic. "I admire you, I really do."

What a fantastic sense of humour.

Funny as fucking hell.

The guy really was priceless.

Fucking unbelievable.

This little side-branch station closed at eleven p.m. and the man had been sitting there patiently waiting for his girl for how long the guard didn't know. It hadn't escaped his notice that the man had a white cane and a rather forlorn look on his face.

"Well, what are you going to do, anyways?" There was a catch in Scott's voice, when he realized that this meant the station was closed and they were kicking him out.

Betty had specified this exact place. Hours had gone by. She wasn't there. Sooner or later, he had to move on.

It was a simple equation. Just a few symbols, all in a row inside of your head. It was a language that anyone could understand.

"I'm real sorry, man. There's a park just across the street. You can sit and watch the entrance and maybe she'll show." The guard's voice trailed off. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I'll be fine. At least it's not raining."

The guard had his doubts, as he'd just been out there and the fine pricks of wet coldness were unmistakable.

Rain was in the forecast, and rain was on the way. He could smell it.

"The traffic lights are down to the right about fifty metres." With an arm in the guard's careful possession, Scott had little choice but to allow himself to be led off into yet another unknown. "I'm really sorry about this, Mister. If you cross at the light and come back down the other side, you'll find there's a park bench right across the street."

For obvious reasons, the guard would be risking his employment for such a simple courtesy as taking Scott directly over there. That would be all of forty-eight feet.

***

Scott tapped his way along, killing time and avoiding the dreadful thought that Betty had deserted him. The alternatives weren't much better. She might have been caught. She might have given herself up in spite of her statements. She might have simply gotten lost, or detained, or fallen off a roof or something. It could be anything, really.

It was just as the man had said. He found the intersection, listened to the signals, and the cars.

There were few voices about, but the vehicles were idling tamely enough and he set across on the familiar pong-pong, pong.

Fifty metres north, and fifty metres south. He counted his steps. His questioning stick, held in the right hand and then the left, followed the gutter on his left and then hit something on his right.

He stopped, and slowly explored it. It was indeed a park bench. Across the street, he could sense the security guard's benevolent but ultimately impotent watch.

Scott sat down.

Why didn't Betty show up?

Think in the proper terms.

What I don't know I can't reveal under torture.

Scott smiled, for the first time in hours.

It was a bitter smile.

The realization that he could just get on a bus and go home held its own insidious logic.

The trouble was that he wanted to know what happened. And what happens next?

Good question, he admitted.

There was a peculiar whistle from the park behind him, cutting through the noise of cars, trucks, delivery vehicles and always that persistent hum of voices from somewhere.

The whistle came again.

He'd heard that one a million times.

It started off at a certain pitch, and then it went up, and then it went down.

It was like a bosun's pipe, only electronic.

Scott was being hailed from somewhere out in the darkness.

His heart thudded. It was closer, more insistent now.

Aw, fucking Jesus Christ, what do I do?

How do I know that's even her?

And yet it did make a weird kind of sense—she'd been watching the area for hours, most likely.

That had to be it. She'd been waiting.

For fuck's sakes

Ah, fuck it.

I need to fucking pee anyways.

I might as well get this over with—whatever happens.

He had the sudden urge to cross himself or something, in spite of a strong overall atheism.

The trouble with atheism was that it didn't make much provision for hating God. It had always been a bit of a contradiction for Scott.

Scott clambered awkwardly to his feet, taking his time about it. There were certain to be bushes and trees and arbitrarily-placed bedding plants and herbaceous borders.

Standing there, he sighed deeply.

The whistle came again, twice. He turned, with his guts feeling terribly loose, and wobbly in the knees after sitting around half the night.

He felt his way into the unknown.

***

Scott disappeared into the forbidding gloom.

The guard tore his eyes off the street and went back to his regular duty of checking all the rest-rooms for stragglers, and then making sure there were no other drunks or druggies hiding away.

He had the coffee-pot and his touch-tablet. What more did he need?

In another few hours, his relief would show up and then he could go home, the wife, the kids, the dog and the apartment filled with nine different kinds of noise.

Chapter Six

Someone coughed fifty feet to his left, oddly muted by the small lungs and ill health of a familiar type. It had to be a wino, someone living outdoors by the sounds of it.

Scott wondered if he was spending the night there, but shuffling footsteps indicated he was heading in the opposite direction. If that was a woman, she was in rough shape. A noisy group of people were somewhere nearby, a sports bar, he thought. A grille, with a barbecue and big-screen TVs all over the place. They were out on the patio.

The damp of the grass came in around the edges of his shoes, above the rubber soles. He must tread carefully.

Crickets muted momentarily and then rose in song again after his passing. The cool breeze stirred the branches and he ducked his head in reflex. Raising the stick, he found nothing there.

He straightened up. The branches might be five or ten metres up. The wind was very strong, and the trees were rattling and groaning where they rubbed up against one another.

He was afraid to speak, to give her away. She must be able to see him just fine. In which case, her silence was suggestive. It was a warning. The whole set-up was hoary—or hairy.

There were others out there, nearby, for he heard their cheerful, youthful voices. And yet he knew enough to be afraid. Fifty yards off the street, and it was a whole 'nother world.

It was a big city, its infernal hum all around. The parks, the little patches of jungle splotched here and there, were oases of sanity by day and a kind of insanity by night.

That was a fine way of saying it was just kids, mostly; getting out of stuffy apartments and away from soul-crushing, barren existences if only for a brief moment of play and hooliganism.

He stumbled over a small cut in the ground, and then there was soft dirt underfoot. The tip of his stick brushed something higher and thicker and stronger than grass. Flowers, he surmised.

He decided to go left, possibly around it. The smell of lilies arose all around him, thick and sweet. There was another smell there too, the smell of the earth. He wondered if there were cedars around here somewhere. He hoped so. He always liked the smell when he was under cedars.

He waited for a moment.

The whistle came again, from sort of ahead of him but off to the right, as if shaped and distorted by intervening landscape features. She was farther away now, it seemed. She was like a siren, a siren of the night.

Scott decided to pee right where he was. He could always plead insanity. If it was her, she'd wait, and if not...not.

He coughed twice, carefully, and then carefully put the stick under his arm, and proceeded to thoroughly relieve himself. The pungent steam was both a reminder of boiled cabbage and the fact that all men were animals.

***

In familiar surroundings, vertigo normally wasn't a problem, but with the uneven ground and the stumbling around in the blackness and the dew, Scott was grateful for an overhead lamp up ahead.

Its fuzzy globe of prismatic colour told him which way was up and how far he could safely wobble without falling over.

The moment passed.

"...Betty...?" Scott hissed into the darkness, ears straining for the hint of a footfall.

"It's okay, here I am, Lover."

Scott caught himself with a start.

He stood there, trembling, sagging in relief. There was the briefest of sounds and then her scent was there.

"Betty."

"Scott."

She held him and wetness filled his eyes as he clung to her. It was all too brief.

"We'd better go."

His heart raced and the blood sang in his ears. It was relief and the terror of what came next.

"Yes. It's just that I didn't expect it to be so late." Scott didn't bother to dry his tears.

He felt a little better now.

"Oh, Jesus. I was scared shitless, Honey." He let it all out in one big exhalation. "Oh, God. Thank God."

She took him by the hand.

"It's okay, Scott. Forward twenty steps, and then there's a small stairs. A bit to the right, and then we're going up."

With a grin as big as all outdoors on his homely mug, Scott plodded along, checking still, off to the right with his stick and trying to take regular-sized steps.

"Okay, slow down. One or two more...good."

Scott paused.

First one.

He lifted a foot and located the step with the tip of his cane.

"Upsy-daisy."

He found the next level and then began tapping his way up. The steps must be pretty wide. He negotiated the stairs with a silent Betty holding his hand for reassurance more than anything. Scott had gone up and down stairs a million times on his own. He just needed to know how high and how many. He'd gone up more than one set of stairs on all fours. It was better than dying.

"Three more, Scott."

"Yes." His questing cane had already found the flat and level.

If only they had time to talk, and the privacy. Other hushed voices nearby ruled that out. They were on the run and interactions should be avoided as much as possible. All kinds of people in the park at night, Scott thought. Betty had to avoid her fellow robots if at all possible, with their total recall and constant recording and feedback links.

There were plenty of other hazards.

You couldn't rule it out, anything from muggers to dog-walkers and joggers and teenagers drinking.

If they could just get out of the city undetected, they might have a chance. If nothing else, they might get a two or three-day head start while they figured out what to do next.

There was an abrupt burst of laughter, raucous and mean.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

"Say! Dewey! Would you look at that!"

"Ooh-ee."

***

The tone said it all, and Scott's neck prickled in sudden fear. Punks, and he caught the faint whiff of alcohol. Betty's sudden stop and the long silence implied much.

"It's a lovely evening, isn't it, little lady?" Someone spat. "Oh, such a little sweetie-pie."

The accents and emphasis were lewd and carefully offensive.

"Yes, it's very pleasant." Betty gave Scott's bicep a quick squeeze and then let go.

Scott's imagination ran wild. He could only try to visualize. There were at least three of them.

Shoe scuffs, breathing, giggles off to the right...someone in front and one off to the left as well.

"So, Baby, what do you say you ditch the loser and come along party with us?"

"Yeah!"

"That guy's nowhere, Baby." He had a real scumbag giggle on him. "Why, he can't even really 'preciate ya, can he?"

"We'll show you a good time!"

More laughs, and someone sloshed a bottle of something. That was the guy to Scott's immediate right front.

"I'm sorry. We have someplace we need to be." She was two feet away, a little in front and to Scott's left.

"We wasn't asking, lady."

"Leave her alone."

"Shut up, Mister Blind-Melon."

Scott turned angrily. He was about to open his mouth when a hard hand shoved him back. The guy was right there, and he caught himself, teetering on the brink of the eight concrete steps they had just come up.

He stood there unsteadily, knees bent. His feet were apart and he knew where at least one of them was. Hard breathing was right there. The guy was drunk and not in that good a shape by the sounds of things, but then Scott wasn't either. The stick was sort of trailing behind him now.

Come on, Pally...say something.

The guy sniffled and then a hyper-aware Scott had him dead to rights.

Thank you very much, sir.

Make the first one count.

Thanks, Dad.

"What made me do this?" His voice was clear and strong.

Scott imagined the puzzled faces all swinging to him.

"Huh? What?"

"This."

The cane hummed through the air.

Thwack.

"I wasn't always blind, you know."

You fucking bastard.

Scott's wicked, up, over and around-hand swipe with the cane must have caught the punk smack-dab in the chops. He went right down, although Scott heard him getting up again, too. There were unmistakable sounds.

He couldn't help but smile.

"Fuckin' son of a bitch!" There was blood in that mouth, if Scott wasn't mistaken.

Scott stepped forwards, following the squeals of rage as the guy scuttled backwards on his butt. He was swinging straight down from high overhead, two-handed, giving the man a good caning or at least giving all he had in the attempt.

If nothing else, put on a show—make them think twice about it.

He connected with something fleshy more than once and was hoping pure blind luck would give him another face shot on the guy.

The fellow bolted as grunts and gasps came from the other two. Betty didn't seem to make much noise.

Whatever she was doing over there sure sounded appropriate. Thuds and soft whumps pretty much said it all.

Yelps and gasps and cusses in an unfamiliar voice came from over there.

Scott's breath was ragged and his emotions were all over the place when he turned to help.

There didn't seem to be much he could do.

He didn't think he could do much damage to her. Feebly poking away was only going to do so much. One man said fuck, and then repeated it several times. Someone was groaning and gasping now. He heard a kind of a crack sound.

If only he could get a clue from the sounds of the scuffle. One of them was cussing, on the ground a few feet away, just a bit to his left.

As for the other one, he might be made of sterner stuff.

There was a snap, a crackle and a pop. There was a scream and then a thud, like when someone drops a bag of cement onto a wheelbarrow. Whoever that was, that boy hit metal when he landed.

It was all very quiet now. Someone warm and soft in the grip took his hand and led him rather quickly away.

Walk, don't run, right?

"Betty?"

"It's okay, Scott." Her voice was distant and unperturbed.

He sucked in air. He smelled her, and then she paused. She was taking him in her arms.

She gave him a quick peck on the lips.

"Are you okay?"

He cracked a wry grin.

"Yeah. You should see the other guy." Now that he thought about it, there was a stinging sensation on the left side of his neck.

He put his hand up there but couldn't find anything wet.

The other guy, or somebody, had managed to connect after all, and Scott dimly recalled feeling something like that in his berserker rage. Something had definitely brushed up against him.

Her soft fingertips touched the wound.

"Am I bleeding?"

"It's not bad. Just a scratch. A scuff, really. But we'd better go." She didn't mention that it looked like a very sharp blade had missed his jugular by a millimetre or two.

She picked up the pace. They walked for five or six minutes. She was taking him to a dark and very narrow trail leading down into a ravine. She briefed him in a cautious voice. All he had to do was to wait.

His neck burned along in a stripe. He dabbed at it gingerly, exploring. Now it was definitely sticky. His pulse soared. It was all he could do to be silent. What a horrible feeling.

"I'll just go and get our suitcases. I'll only be a minute or two—they're right there, okay, Scott? I promise."

"And I really am sorry about before— " She would explain later.

"Yeah." He listened intently.

The wind in the trees covered a multitude of sins, and that was a good thing sometimes. He was getting his breath back now. The adrenalin would subside, or so he hoped. He was a bit wobbly in the knees, perhaps more so. It was best to think about something else.

It was a good idea to pay attention.

He had the impression there was no one about, at least for fifty, or seventy-five metres. Their would-be assailants had been easily tracked, with his not particularly exceptional hearing, back out to the streetlights and some other solace. First-aid of one kind or another would be in order, at least for one or two of them, but the yelps and heartfelt curses indicated that the body count was low.

"What did you do to them?"

He heard an adult woman calling a dog, and more barks as if in answer from somewhere behind him. That one lady was off in front somewhere. The highway must be nearby. There was the constant thrum from the northwest, or so he thought.

He heard a creek or rivulet down below, directly in front of him.

He could always turn and pretend to stare off in another direction.

It was like getting on an elevator and facing the back.

What difference did it make?

Betty had slipped off and wherever she was, she wasn't answering. He had the impression there was a fog rising. Whether or not it was starlight, or moonlit, what difference would it make?

A bit of fog would be good cover.

Scott stood there, with the end of the cane firmly planted as an anchor against an uncertain Fate and listened to the sounds of the night, both up close and personal, and far off. There was something funny going on. He lifted the end of this constant companion and felt it. It seemed like a couple of inches was shredded, and maybe a bit of it was even missing.

Hopefully someone had that embedded in them. This complicated matters. He relied on that thing, at least when out of doors. Now the length would be all wrong.

That was the thing with robots, no heavy breathing.

"Scott."

When she spoke, a short, sharp burst of adrenalin went through him. His heartbeat subsided, and then she was talking him along a path through the park. They were still in a patch of forest and brush of some kind.

He had to listen hard, as she had both hands full with the luggage. She was quiet enough, just sort of muttering encouragement as they went.

He walked along at her right side.

He'd never been in that particular park before and it was all very well.

It was better than sitting at home listening to the boob-tube. Scott would have given his left nut to see the look on that guy's face.

The cane came around and he realized what was happening.

Chapter Seven

Things could have been worse, although they were wet, and Scott was getting ravenously hungry. He was thirsty as hell and kept dreaming of a cold beer, which she had promised him at some point to keep up morale when he flagged. The water gurgled all around them.

Scott was getting tired, and he told her so.

She digested that bit in silence.

"Scott. There's something I want you to know."

"Sure, Honey. What is it?"

She was lost in thought for a second, but Scott wasn't going anywhere.

"I can have babies, Scott."

That was right—it was on the TV and everything, all about artificial wombs and how robots could be surrogate mothers for folks who were infertile, or sterile, or perhaps couldn't see their way to adoption. There was a big demand for certain types of babies. Adoption was tough because demand was high. Everyone wanted the blue-eyed, blonde-haired archetypes with plenty of ambition and an IQ of a hundred and forty.

"Well. So can I. Big deal."

She tried to chuckle but it didn't come off very well.

"But underneath, I really am just a robot. Scott. You don't have to do this if you don't want to. I mean, really, Lover."

Scott thought about that for all of thirty seconds.

His words, when they came, were oddly serene, calm, even.

He grinned crookedly.

"Oh, no, Baby. This is the perfect revenge." He bit his lip, and bit back some tears as well.

The perfect revenge for a forgotten life.

A couple of spasms went through him, and he took a big breath.

Fuck the world, anyways.

"Where in the hell have you been all my life? Wild horses couldn't drag me away at this point, Baby...Betty Blue."

He sang a little tune.

"Betty Blue, where are you? Get it, Honey? Betty Blue!" He laughed. "Baby, baby baby...Betty Blue, where are you?" It had a kind of ship-shap, retro-doof beat to it.

"Boy, you really are getting tired. Anyway, we'd better..."

"Yeah."

The sounds of an unfamiliar location were all around. They had followed the paths to the end of the park.

Scott had endured a terrifying descent into the ravine, hanging onto saplings and roots all the way. Into the water, slipping on rocks and sinking into the ooze, followed by the entrance into the culvert, and then across under the highway. First, they had followed along a deep ditch, half a kilometre or so of that, and then some more fields, woods, and brush. It was all wasteland and industrial decay.

Pop open the nearest manhole cover and you're home-free, Baby.

He was taking it all on faith.

They were in the warehouse district. Whether on her own, or when they were together, they had to avoid cameras and drones. While Betty's transponder was switched off, she could still be pinged passively at almost every street-corner, and she couldn't shut that part down. It was a fail-safe from the manufacturer. The pingers were mercifully of very short range. The trouble was that there were billions of them.

The parts were inside of her, they were very small, and Scott obviously couldn't do the work of cutting the fine wires even if they did get a chance to get her access panels open.

His mind reeled when she said that. Betty would block out the pain, or so she said, but under her natural skin was a chassis.

And a very nice chassis it was, too, or so he assured her.

But there was just no way, and hence their stealth. All of this creeping about in dark sewers.

According to Betty, they were in a culvert. Also according to Betty, there was some kind of rave party going on up above. It was on private property, but the cops were all around. She'd spent twenty minutes or half an hour scouting the place while he rested as best he could in ankle-deep water.

"So. What do we do?"

He sensed her quick grin.

"I'll bet I'm going to love it."

"Of course you are—George."

"Huh?"

"George, and from now on my name is..." She hesitated a moment too long.

"Giselle—no, Gigi."

She chuckled, the sound sepulchral in the enclosed tubular space.

The whanging and banging up above, the sweet and saccharine sounds of some real oldies, Agnes L. Dildoe, and Beyond Belief, and Baby Goo-Goo or whatever her name was, dispelled any fears that they might be overheard.

"I would prefer Sushi, or almost anything, rather than that."

"Okay, what name do you want?"

"Lori."

He laughed. Somebody somewhere was missing a purse.

"Sure. Why not."

Scott, now George, sort of saw where this was headed.

"So—we pop up and then just walk right out the front door. Right?"

"Better."

"What?"

"Better."

"I'm listening."

The pair squatted in six inches of unpleasantly warm sewage. Luckily, this was a storm sewer, but even so.

There would be everything in here, everything from gasoline, motor oil and brake fluid, to dead squirrels, dead birds, rotting debris, all kinds of stuff coming down off of the streets.

Considering human propensities, and the inevitable dogs, cats and urban wildlife, no doubt there would be some piss and shit in there as well. It didn't smell all that bad, and unlike a film version, there were no shrieking, squeaking, highly-aggressive rats to be heard in the wings. Also unlike the film version, no one threw a cat at them at an opportune moment, of which there were one or two. It was best to be grateful for small mercies. Conveniently, there was a smaller, dry culvert coming in right there at waist level, or the bottoms of the suitcases would have been soaked. The smell was fetid, but not quite enough to make a person gag. That was mostly the imagination.

She held his head, kissed him on the lips, and then he saw a flood of warm light in his eyes as she worked. Betty's eyes were good enough for most purposes in low light, but for this job proper illumination was best.

"This is an earpiece."

Her warm, gentle fingers pushed it firmly into place.

She took off his ball cap and threw it away. She took his sunglasses for safekeeping. He changed coats, finding the thing a bit short in the arms. It smelled of another man's aftershave.

"You look a bit like him in the photo on the driver's license."

"If we get asked for I.D. we're done anyways."

She ignored it. It was obvious enough. The odd light in his eyes went off.

"So what's going to happen, George, is that you are going to walk out of here. All on your lonesome."

His jaw dropped.

"And you're going to talk me through it?"

Scott shook his head.

"Nah. I mean, I don't think I can do it."

He didn't think it was humanly possible. It sounded pretty damned crazy up there.

"Scott."

He sighed.

"Of course I'll do it. Anything for you, dear." It made a weird kind of sense. "Hey. It'll be fun."

The logic was good. The cops couldn't care less what happened to him.

But if Betty was spotted on camera, anywhere, they were both goners. And they'd be watching this place like a hawk. In that sense, they were coming out of the Trojan Horse. They were coming out openly, out of the ass end to be sure, but it was the wrong guys, from the cops' point of view. It made a weird kind of sense.

"So...ah, how is this supposed to work?" Scott pulled her in close. "Don't worry, Baby. I ain't skeered a nothin'. But..."

"I'll be right with you at all times. At least until you get outside the gate. Here's your ticket stub, here's your wallet and I.D." The real problem with the lapel cameras was the small lens, and in low light, with a lot of distractions, Scott had better be prepared for anything.

"Didn't he have a chip?"

"Yes, Scott. But the venue is temporary—and they don't have a reader. I checked."

The rave was a once a year thing, only for the weekend. There would be some sort of shady promoter involved, he realized. With all the dope on hand, booze, the inevitable underage kids, no one saw much percentage in having security too tight.

"Hmn. Good girl."

Scott might be on his own, and all too unexpectedly. As soon as he started to move the plan would go right out the window.

He just knew it.

The wallet felt fat and heavy in his hand. He could literally smell the thing, even in here. He opened it up and had a quick riffle through it.

There was some money in there, a couple of thousand at least. Kids these days.

"Nice." Scott wondered what the guy's credit limit might be.

"Put it away."

He stuck it in his pocket. He gave her his wallet. She'd have all of their luggage to deal with. What he had in the small backpack wouldn't get him very far. He had ditched his empty shopping bags a few blocks from home, just cover to get him out the door. All Scott would have would be water and the minimal hard-ass rations. This was no place to munch on a cheese sandwich anyhow.

Scott nodded in contemplation. The plan would get him out the gate. They were safe enough at this exact moment. The cops wouldn't come on private property without a complaint, for one thing. And for another, they would probably just let the party go on. They would sit down the road and pull over cars coming out, looking for prohibited drugs, off-the-cuff booze, contraband of all sorts. But he, and Betty as well, would be clean. Betty had boundless energy and could go across country for days. It had interesting possibilities.

"How are you getting out?"

"Down the tunnel, my dear."

"So who's this George guy?"

"He's sleeping off a good drunk, quite the chemical cocktail, actually."

"Can he dance?"

She laughed. The humour in her voice belied her own worries. If the cops knew her and Scott were together, they'd pick him off by retinal scan or remote facial recognition via the ubiquitous overhead cop-drones, flying pigs people called them. And if they had Scott, then they had her. But they would only zoom in close for the retinal scan if something triggered their suspicions. There were civil liberties and privacy issues involved, as Scott recalled. They were still taking a chance, going out right past their noses.

"I'll believe it when pigs can fly."

She slapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, George. I promise not to tell your mother about all this."

Scott snorted.

"Yes, she would definitely worry. All right. I go up the ladder."

"That's right. I'll lift the cover for you, or at least help lift it. You step out. You'll turn exactly eighty-seven degrees to your left." She had pinned a miniature cam-phone-GPS pin to his lapel.

It was an open frequency that she could monitor. All the kids had them now, that and the Googgles. Apparently they could play games, chatter back and forth constantly, and drive in a never-ending Disneyland. Shit like that. Betty would follow the drainage tunnels, the ditches, and meet him somewhere away from all the cameras. If only he could get there on his own.

Once they were out of the city, it will be like we never left it...because there is no record....

Right?

We're gaming the fucking algorithms.

He'd heard somewhere that it was at least possible.

Not being sighted himself, the whole subject of gaming, and augmented reality, had always been a crashing bore to Scott. He'd heard all about it, of course. People loved that shit. They lived in an illusion. He'd been walking around in front of those cameras for his entire life. He figured he was pretty much invisible, as long as he had the stick and couldn't participate.

"And then I just walk out the front door."

"Yes. The cab will be waiting when you get there."

By her own information, streaming in constantly over the net, the car was a scant six or seven blocks away.

"We'd better get going."

She took his hand and the pair straightened up. Scott allowed the stick to fall from his hand. The current, slight as it was in the dry season, carried it off.

She lifted his left hand and put it on a rung, half an inch thick and with the paint worn off from the tread of a thousand work-boots. His right hand found the rung above it.

"Twenty-seven rungs, straight up."

Scott, or George now, lifted his right leg.

"In for a penny, in for a pound." He began to climb. "What the fuck, eh? Life is beautiful."

"Scott." She was climbing right along with him, so close that if he fell back, he was essentially trapped by her body. "Everything is going to be all right."

"You mean George, don't you?"

No answer. He'd stumped her algorithms.

He could almost hear it in his head.

"...in today's top story, Mister Scott Nettles and his girlfriend Betty Blue escaped from the city..."

There was no way she was going to let him fall. She was strong enough to make it work. She'd just wrap an arm around him and carry him back down, one-handed. The funny thing was, he really wasn't scared.

This was necessary.

It was even a pretty good plan, although he had no real idea of what came next. They'd talked about it, of course. His ideas were wilder than hers. She was the one with all the information.

His heart rate settled and he had to be about six rungs from the top. Even the sound of his breathing was different. Scott was in a vertical tube now, a steel one. He was right there.

"It's okay, Baby. Can you back off a bit? You're crowding me." He climbed another rung.

He supposed it didn't pay to get too cocky, but—but.

The truth was, that they were really doing this.

Scott Nettles and his girlfriend Betty Blue were really doing it.

They were escaping.

Ha!

Would you imagine that?

Me. With a fucking girlfriend.

Escaping. From Onion fucking City.

"George. I have to be able to help you lift it, it's really heavy—" Ninety kilos of high-grade bronze is what it was, the city sparing no expense when it came to sewers in borderline-suburbia.

This was no inner-city outreach program for the disabled, the mentally-ill, the homeless and the permanently unemployable.

***

"Holy, Jesus! Where in the fuck did you come from, man?"

At his feet, the manhole cover settled quietly back into place.

The noise, perhaps music was too kind a word, was horrendously loud. He cringed and grimaced.

There was no way to run.

Scott straightened fully. He waved his arms a bit and shuffled his feet as much as he dared.

He made his head go back and forth like a chicken. The shoes were squishing with water, which could be a dead give-away if anyone really looked. He had to blend in. Composing his features as best he could, he pondered the question.

"Yeah. Where did you come from?" The voices were everywhere.

He seemed to have popped up right in a clump of dancers, mostly female.

This one was a guy. The young man's breath stung his nose.

The rushing as of winds was all around him, and the smells, of cannabis, alcohol, perfume and sweat and piss and shit and candy-floss, if one might believe it, were all mixed up into one unforgettable fugue.

"I'm not Jesus, although the mistake is a natural one."

Those nearest or paying any attention at all laughed. Scott, or rather George, practically had to bellow to be heard.

"Yeah, really, it happens all the time." More laughs.

In his ear, Betty's clear voice was calm but insistent.

"Don't get distracted. Just say excuse me and try and go north...to your immediate left."

"Excuse me." He raised his voice. "Excuse me...coming through"

Trying desperately not to fall on someone, making inevitable body contact here and there, with flailing arms and limbs moving the air in tight little zephyrs up around his face, and even with the odds and ends of someone's hair in his mouth as he opened it to speak again, he tried to force his way through on lumpy, uneven ground.

"Hey, man!"

"I am so sorry."

"Watch where you're going!"

"I am really sorry. You have my deepest apologies."

The tone of that voice was really angry.

"You fuckin' doof!"

"It's just that I'm blind, you see, and I dropped my cane, and I just want to find the gate."

"You're what? What, are you fucking blind...?"

The tone was incredulous, and Scott wondered just how fucked-up this person was.

The time for bellowing was now.

"Yes. Yes, sir. I'm fucking blind—now do you get it, Buddy?" Scott almost said 'asshole' there but stopped himself in the nick of time.

There was no such thing as silence to be had in such a venue, but Scott had the impression the guy hadn't gone away.

"My name is George. Can you please help me get to the gate?"

A hard hand clamped on his upper bicep.

"All right, Bud. Sure, no problem."

In his ear Betty was encouraging him, and the music was much too loud, and for a moment Scott felt real fear. More real fear. As if he hadn't had enough.

"My name is George."

"Yeah, I'm Sluggo. I'm real glad to meet you, George."

They must have gone fifty or sixty metres, with Sluggo, what kind of a name was that? Sluggo was leading him along, friendly enough now that he understood the situation. His new acquaintance was drunk as a skunk, high on everything, smelling of sweat and a few other things, but helpful nonetheless. The guy's breathing was loud enough. He must have been dancing up a storm.

"I really am sorry about that."

"Yeah, well. I guess. You don't look the type."

Scott couldn't help but smile. Sluggo was referring to the fact that Scott had inadvertently patted him on the bum while trying to negotiate a way through the frenzy of drug-fueled whirling dervishes, several hundred or even a thousand of them between him and the exit to the park.

Betty was right there in his ear.

"George. You're right there. Say thank you to the nice man."

"Okay, Bud, here we are...this is the gate. These guys—" Presumably he was referring to security, of which even raves had some, as tickets and alcohol were sold and things could get rowdy sometimes. "These guys will take care of you, okay, Mister?"

"My name is George. Thank you ever so much—" He stuck out a hand but the other guy didn't take it.

That's life, eh?

"Yeah, whatever. I'm Sluggo. And stop grabbing people's asses. That sort of thing will get you in trouble someday."

Scott grinned. Something poked him in the chest and he figured that was just Sluggo's way of saying goodbye.

There were people right there, he could hear them talking.

"Excuse me. I'm a blind man and I've lost my cane—"

"Oh, dear! Yes, sir, what can we do for you?" Again, someone took him by the upper arm.

He sensed he was the centre of attention, out there on the fringes of the insanity, where the music was a little more bearable in terms of volume and somebody had to stay sober, or relatively sober in order to justify their wages...as opposed to merely partying with the rest of them. That's not to say they weren't dancing, or just grooving to the music a little, because for some reason Scott rather had the impression they were.

He smelled several different kinds of dope too.

"Just point me to the door, my good fellow."

"Actually, I am a trans-gendered individual."

Scott grinned in appreciation.

"See—I knew that. I just wanted to hear you talk."

The small crowd out there laughed and made a few comments which they both ignored as best they could.

"All right, sir, we're just going to take your hand. The exit is right this way."

"Thank you."

"Can I call someone for you, sir?"

"I believe I have a taxi coming."

Betty was right there.

"Union City Cab, Car Eighteen. The number's on the door."

Scott relayed the information as confidently as he could.

"All right, sir, we'll just stay with you until it arrives."

There was a crowd outside the gates as well, which served as something of a distraction to his benefactors.

This was a good thing. They answered questions from youthful voices pretty good-naturedly and their attention was elsewhere.

All Scott wanted was to hear the sound of a car arriving.

"It's got to be right on you, Scott."

He lifted a wrist and pretended to check a non-existent wristwatch.

"Where is that pesky fellow?"

No one laughed, or even noticed, judging by the response.

"Ah. Here we are." The hand squeezed his arm and led him forwards.

"Is that number eighteen? Someone else might have called for a cab."

"No, this is yours, sir. Have a pleasant evening." The security guard opened the car door and helped him find his way in. "We hope you enjoyed the music."

Scott paused on the brink of slamming the door closed.

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure."

"What...what do you plan to be?" It was obscure, but the guard knew what he meant.

"I hope to be a girl someday. Have a pleasant evening, sir."

It was absolutely deadpan and pretty darned perfect as well.

"Ah. Well. Good luck and all that sort of thing." He paused again. "Who's your friend?"

"Dave." This was a new voice, one even deeper than the first guard.

"Dave? How come you never said anything before?" It was weak stuff, but presumably, he was drunk, stoned and just being silly.

He sensed the tolerant looks they exchanged, how he knew that was pure cliché of course.

"Dave's the strong silent type. Anyhow, thank you."

"Thank you, too." Scott closed the door.

Yeah, good luck with that, Buddy.

"Hi, I'm Melvin, your friendly neighbourhood Union City Cab driver. Where would you like to go, sir or Ma'am?" The car's voice sounded like someone had poked holes in the speakers with a piece of wire or a knitting needle or something. "It's a pleasant evening, isn't it?"

Betty was right there in his ear, and she had an answer for that one, too.

***

Inspector MacBride was at home, in bed, with his wife sitting upright, propped up by pillows, reading beside him. He was just in that fuzzy, cottony-soft state where he was convinced that sleep was indeed possible, this in spite of fifteen cups of coffee over the course of the day, and a flaming row with the eldest son on the inspector's arrival home from work. Lately his legs ached. The only time he noticed it was when he got into bed. It took a couple of minutes and then it was there.

It was the end of a long day and he'd earned his rest, and it was right about then that the telephone buzzed.

It was on her side of the bed.

"Shit. Honey."

Inspector MacBride opened his eyes, sighed deeply and rolled over.

"Oh."

He took the phone.

Argh.

He was used to such calls, never welcome but usually important.

"Yes. MacBride."

"Dave Parsons. Eighth Precinct."

"Yes?" Gene MacBride struggled with his one free arm to sit up in the bed.

He snapped on the bedside light on his side and reached for his pen and note-pad.

Parsons. 8th.

"We've got a funny one here. Assault in a park. Victims say it was a blind man—and a robot."

"Uh-huh."

"A robot with long, sexy legs."

"Ha."

They were getting all kinds of crank reports on this one.

"Yeah, well, eh. I just thought you'd like to know."

Up until now it was mostly just sightings. Crackpot sightings.

An assault. He liked it.

"So what happened? I mean, allegedly?" That was a rough neighbourhood down there.

Parsons laughed.

"Yeah, I hear you, man." The voice, a man Gene had never met, although he might know the face to see it, went on. "Apparently these three punks were innocently minding their own business—which in my humble opinion, involves petty drug sales, petty theft, assault, petty extortion if there is such a thing, not above the odd dope-fueled date-rape, making bad porn and grand theft auto. Gang-bangers, anyway, you get the picture. But they say they were jumped by a blind man and a robot, who beat them up pretty bad. Oh, yeah. All for no reason at all."

"Really? How bad?"

"Broken collar-bone, broken humerus, broken wrist, fingers, two victims there, a broken orbit over the left eye, broken cheekbone, broken jaw, broken noses, two, ah, fat lips, black eyes, cuts, scrapes, abrasions and contusions—the one guy says, 'she's real strong, almost strangled me to death'...it goes on, mostly nonsense about how they weren't doing nothing to provoke it."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute...how many victims?"

"Three, sir. Apparently the blind guy can fight too. They say he's like fucking Bruce Lee—sorry, sir, that's a direct quote from one of our, ah, victims...sir."

Parsons went on.

"This is straight from street intelligence. They had to find a doctor and like the fools they are, they went straight to the nearest emerg and started making a lot of noise."

He digested that thought. A blind man and a robot with long, sexy legs, beating up three hard-cases for no reason.

Street intelligence.

A smart citizen with big ears and an ongoing account with Crime Shoppers.

Drop a dime and earn a ten.

But that was the story.

Yeah, sure they did. I'll just bet they did.

If nothing else, it was unusual. And the victims couldn't help but talk about it, of course.

That was their turf and they ruled it. They'd be going around making a lot of loud talk now, wouldn't they?

Not.

They'd be a laughing stock.

"Where did this happen, exactly?"

"A park across from a subway station. The incident happened earlier this evening. It was around eleven o'clock, a little after, maybe."

"Okay. Any leads?"

"I can ask around. You probably don't remember me, but you did me a favour a couple years back."

"Well, I sure owe you one now." Such promises were easily enough made, and kept surprisingly often.

Otherwise you would be a fool to make them.

"Other than that, it's worth checking out. It's an interesting problem, you know? But they swear up and down it was a robot. I can have a couple of my people ask around. We'll roll all the recordings from the immediate vicinity."

As far as MacBride was concerned, this was his only real lead in some days, and that made Parsons his best friend of the moment. He also seemed willing to do a little work.

"Thank you, I would appreciate that very much. Where are you again?"

"Patrol Sergeant Parsons. Eighth Precinct."

"Give me a call, okay?"

"Yes, sir. Good night, sir."

"Good night, Sergeant."

Gene thoughtfully hung up the phone. It wasn't like he didn't have a hundred cases ongoing and a thousand more unsolved if he cared to think about it.

Which he didn't at this exact moment in time. But this one was just a little bit different.

That made all the difference in the world sometimes.

'...she's real strong...almost strangled me to death.'

Gene MacBride bit his lip.

Hmn.

Interesting.

Chapter Eight

Gene was barely at his desk. As a youth, he had never been a morning person, but as a mature man he saw the necessity. That's what he tried to tell himself. His grey eyes watered at the sight of his desk, plastered with notes and reminders all over the place.

Lately he felt tired a lot of the time, and he really couldn't account for it. He'd be lucky if a doctor could find anything wrong with him; an odd thought but entirely apropos to the day and the mood. Another rainy day in the city; and idle hands were the devil's tools. There had already been a few calls, and most of the team was out investigating this dead body in an alley or that other dead body in a car...three dead bodies in a hotel room...the desk phone buzzed.

"Hello?"

"Inspector MacBride?"

"Yes." The voice seemed oddly familiar, and yet he couldn't quite place it.

The readout on the phone told him this was Parsons from the 8th.

Oh, yes.

His pulse quickened.

"So."

"Yes. Inspector—"

"Call me Gene." Parsons wouldn't have called him back unless he had something real.

"Yes, sir."

MacBride almost laughed but didn't. It was helpful, though. Today might actually hold some promise. That one came out of nowhere.

"Anyway, we have some sightings on record. Can I send them over?"

"Sure."

"Okey-dokey—it's in your inbox."

MacBride touched the icon. His internal memos popped up and he saw the Parsons one right at the top. Touching another inset icon, he brought Sergeant Parsons up on screen, seeing a thin, ascetic face, with a scar on the upper lip giving it some strong character-indices.

The file name was clean and sensible.

Possible Robot Sighting, and the date, the time, the officer's name. Precinct and badge number. All with an eye to an eventual prosecution.

"Okay, what am I looking at?"

"Shot one. A blind man in the station. According to a security guard, he was waiting for his girlfriend."

"Okay."

"Subject has been identified as a Mister Scott Nettles. He has no criminal record, and has never been arrested for any reason." Parsons read off an address. "Check that out, eh. That's about six or eight blocks from where our hot little robot lady disappeared."

A further series of shots were all lined up in a row, stills from cameras along Nettles' route. Point A to Point B stuff, the stuff convictions were made of. There was little doubt about the identification, or the point of origin. It was a series of sequential pictures, all time and date-stamped. An apartment building squeezed in between other buildings, sharing walls with other relatively nondescript buildings. There was a self-serve laundry on the ground floor, with lofts and commercial offices above. Upper level windows had gold lettering on the first two stories above the street level. Those without gold lettering were either residential or storage, some kind of sweatshop up in the attic maybe. Nothing they hadn't seen before.

"Okay."

There was a link to Nettles' lifetime file, where his entire record would be laid out, from Point A to Point B. The most recent entry was from a social worker, who merely noted that Mister Nettles was still claiming benefits, hadn't died, hadn't missed his monthly employment income reports, which always read 'zero,' and that there were no grounds for review. Mister Nettles was off the radar for another two to three years, in Gene's estimation.

"Unfortunately, Mister Nettles doesn't have a mobile, and he was one of last children to be born without being chipped." Parsons' voice had an ironic tone.

Nothing they hadn't seen before.

"Ah. Nice."

"Okay. Next shot. Gang-bangers in the hospital."

"So, what's the significance?"

"They talk about the robot, and there's just more there than I have time to give you over the phone. Next shot. This is one of the few cameras left in the park. It's real heavy gang territory, and cameras don't last long in that neighbourhood."

Gene cursed gently under his breath.

They had taken the time, spent the money, found the political will, and wired up the whole blasted planet it seemed, and yet, life being what it was, they had used eight-cent cameras for all but the most prestigious locations.

"I'm always impressed when a jury of their fellow citizens convicts someone based on these..."

There was a snort. Yeah, but people wanted justice. In recent years, prosecutors and even judges had banded together, lobbied governments at all levels, and founded any number of innocence projects and integrity review boards. An estimated ten to twenty percent of all prisoners had not only been unlawfully convicted, but were likely innocent of all wrongdoing. This was according to several exhaustive studies, studies which hadn't been discredited in something like the last thirty or forty years. There had been numerous attempts, of course.

Where there is smoke there is fire, thought Gene.

Gene watched a man and a woman, a man with a long white stick, a small backpack, and the woman with two suitcases, striding down a paved trail lit by cast iron, ornamental lamp-posts right out of Jack the Ripper's London, and then into the inky blackness of the night. The male subject was tall and thin, wearing a long white trench-coat. He had a ball-cap and white running shoes, cheap-looking. The woman, their possible robot, certainly looked very athletic.

All they had was an oblique side-view, transitioning into a rear view.

"Hmn."

Shit.

"Not much to go on, I admit. But our perps, sorry, I mean victims, described her as wearing..."

"A slinky blue silk dress....and so was our missing robot, as I remember." Missus Cartier had described it as a kimono...slinky, cocktail dress, kimono, it was all the same thing by a different name.

Gene nodded at Parsons.

"Anyway, these are our official suspects, the only ones, in the assault." The victims had been, predictably enough, hard to find, but one of them had answered his phone.

From the pictures, he had confirmed the suspects, seemingly very sure of it, and in the recorded conversation, he was streaming curses and profanities. The gangstas wouldn't give a hoot about charges and court, thought MacBride.

All they would want would be names...and addresses. The gentleman seemed quite perturbed by the polite notion that the police were working on it and had no further information.

He had a few things to say about that, too. He didn't look too good with the face all puffed up. Even the gangstas wanted justice.

"Okay, where could they go from there?"

He pulled his second screen into position.

Maps. He zoomed in and linked Parsons to his desk. Parsons took over and a red dot appeared.

MacBride sat back, blinked a bit, not really seeing much, and listened.

"Yes, sir. That's where it gets a bit weird. That path goes to the north end of the park. Then it branches off to east and west in curving, winding trails. Theoretically, they should have either taken another trail, or they should have arrived at the street. Any street, sooner or later. The cameras along there are a bit spotty. However there are one or two left intact—on the tops of fortified buildings and such where the gang-bangers can't get at them."

"Okay. No one came out. What about the other paths?"

"As near as we can make out, most of the cameras on Basil Street were operating at the time of the incident. Nothing there. Some of the other side streets, not so many good cameras available, but again, you'd think sooner or later they would have to walk past one that was good. No such luck, uh, Gene."

Gene thought about it.

"Where else could they have gone?"

"We've swept the park, and they're not in it, unless they're in a hollow tree or maybe we just saw some winos. But no one we spoke to answered to our profile."

"What does that leave?"

"There's a ravine there, and a culvert under the highway." Parsons thought. "If they turned back and beat it southwards, strictly staying in the brush, sooner or later they would have to come out on a street. To the south and west, those are better neighbourhoods. Better lighting, more cameras. We can say with at least some confidence, that they probably didn't do that."

Parsons went on.

At the south end of the park, there was a heavy steel grating over the culvert, which went under Appleby Road. The grate at the north end of the park had been removed by vandals years before. It was a quick way to get across the highway. This was typical enough in certain neighbourhoods, where every avenue was an avenue of retreat for any number of reasons. Some of those reasons were legitimate, as people simply evaded violence or crime in their neighbourhoods. The nearest overpass might lie in another gang's territory—it was strange, but when not wearing obvious colours, gangstas rode the bus and the trams all over town with little conflict. Every town was different. It was like an informal little agreement they had. Everybody needs a night off once in a while, he thought.

"Okay. So we have an assault, and two people—or one person and a robot, unaccounted for."

"Yes."

"And if they disappeared, we must ask ourselves why." And if they were the victims of an attempted robbery, why not report it?

Unless they had something to hide themselves. And how would they know just which way to get out of the park without being seen? Something smacked of real planning there. Some real knowledge. The punks were just a coincidence, and a lucky break for the police.

"That's about the size of it."

"All right. What about highway cameras?"

"Not if they went under it. And the other side is all post-industrial wasteland. Only major intersections have surveillance, mostly for traffic, people running red lights and such."

Automatic robo-tickets, a valuable source of revenue for the cash-strapped city.

It didn't actually slow traffic down very much, the ostensible purpose. There were collisions there every day at morning and evening drive-time.

"I see."

There was a silence. Parsons had done his job, and if there was nothing there, then there was nothing there.

What they needed was a plan.

"All right. I'll have a couple of our people check out this Scott Nettles." Nettles lived in this precinct, as did Betty Blue, their missing robot. "As for grounds for a warrant, I don't think we're quite there yet."

When I get a minute.

If they did get inside, they could try lifting some prints left by Nettles and then they would have something for comparison. The numbers onscreen showed a ninety-seven percent probability of identification in Nettles' case, as the commuter station was relatively well-lit, and had cameras intact. Their guard had identified Nettles' PPP, the Public Profile Pic.

Yet experience showed that even an identification of one hundred percent probability could be mistaken. Too many innocent civilians had been cut down by nervous or over-zealous officers, to place too much credence on the computer files and their remotely-sensed biometric identification programming. Good old fashioned fingerprints, up-close retinal scans and DNA were more reliable, although never really a hundred percent. Eye-witnesses were notoriously unreliable.

"Is there anything more we can do here, ah, Gene." It really wasn't a question, neither was it a statement.

"Don't know. Can I call you back? I'd like to study this guard's statement."

"Sure. Absolutely."

MacBride got it then. Parsons would like to get out of the Eighth and into someplace a bit more civilized. Good people were hard to find these days and it might be worth a minute of his time.

"So what's on the other side of the highway?"

"Desolation, Inspector."

"Do you guys go there?"

This was a good question. Since the city had started rounding up the homeless and sticking them in for-profit jails for vagrancy, squatters, shanty-towns, or unofficial settlements, had sprung up on the outskirts of every major city. While this annoyed the residents of gated communities, often right next door, and commuters from the suburbs to no end, there wasn't much the big-city police could do about it.

A person with a tent by the side of the road, or sleeping in an alley, could be rounded up as a vagrant. Squatting was a civil crime, an injury of property, and civil and human rights, due process still came into play. An action needed a person of record, but absentee or overseas landlords were notoriously lax when a building's costs sky-rocketed. Tenancy rates were often low to begin with, people skipping out on unpaid rent, the cost of evictions, and petty crime and property-vandalism rampant. Court procedures were still unreformed. Cops could go from door to door and knock, but without a warrant, asking to see a copy of the mortgage or lease was strictly a no-no. It was safe to say it wasn't usually the highest priority. Proper squatters didn't answer the door anyway, they all had peepholes and escape hatches these days. Buildings that had truly been abandoned were riddled with squatters, to the extent some of the buildings had been rather distinctively renovated, using scrounged materials and going by the unique needs of their inhabitants. Some buildings were linked by tunnels, and some were even fortified.

"Yes. In daylight, and with proper orders and everything."

"I see. Okay, I'll get back to you. Other than that, good job, Dave. I'm going to call the makers and see just what the capabilities of that robot girl actually are."

"If that's her, she's tougher than effing whale-shit."

MacBride grinned from ear-to-ear.

"Thank you, Sergeant, for my first good laugh of the day."

MacBride and Parsons rang off, Parsons to go home, long after his shift was officially over.

Looking at his watch, MacBride tapped his name into the computer.

Parsons was divorced, had two kids, and would have been considered overdue for promotion in almost any other precinct. Carrying six and a half-million in personal debt and with alimony and child support running at about forty-k a month, a promotion would be very welcome. His motivation was clear enough.

The Eighth Precinct was definitely special. It was an urban hell out that way. They would take anybody, and if they had any talent or integrity at all, they were just as loath to give them up.

From across the room, his partner Francine was waving imperiously, as was her fashion.

MacBride waved back and shut the screens down, as it sure looked like they had another body.

With his rank and experience, it was the only thing that really interested him these days. He looked at his watch, a private joke between he and Emily. It was a countdown watch. There were four years, six months, nine days, and a few hours, until he could take early retirement. He swallowed the rest of his coffee hurriedly, made a quick note for later, and then got up out of his chair.

Detective Suleiman was the investigating officer of record, and this one was her baby. She gave the Inspector a wintry grin and then cleared her throat. That's what you get for answering the phone sometimes.

Wait a minute. He nipped back to his desk. Grabbing a pen, he made a quick notation.

Drones. Flood the area with drones. Somewhere. Some area.

He really couldn't think of anything else. It was like his mind went blank. He shook it off and joined the others.

They were all in the huddle, looking expectantly at Francine.

"All right people, listen up."

***

Scott awoke with a start, shivering.

It might take a while for it to pass.

While he hadn't slept outdoors in years, but the dampness in the air and the fitful chirping of robins told him that it was dawn or shortly before. With nothing but pitch blackness, and the place beside him cold, he knew instantly that Betty was gone.

"Fuck."

His own voice startled him, and he resolved to shut up in any such future situations. It was a risk he didn't have to take. The sounds of the wilderness were all around him. Betty had said they were in an old auto parts plant.

He had to accept her word for it, but the sounds said otherwise. The wind luffed in the treetops, and he imagined them in his mind's eye, growing out of broken windows and holes in the roof. There were crickets and spring peepers—how many years had it been since he'd heard them?

There was always the sound of distant traffic off in the background. That part was familiar enough, although not very reassuring.

Scott's lower back hurt from sleeping on the ground. He had to go to the bathroom, and there was no sense in just lying there frozen in fear.

It was no pleasure lying on the hard ground, but he was reluctant to show himself. He had money on him, he was alone, and he was blind. He didn't even have the stick. The sounds were reassuringly natural. It was interesting not to hear voices. It was so quiet he could hear a solitary jet airliner coursing from east to west overhead at something like ten thousand metres. It didn't mean much, but it was something.

He sat up, carefully taking stock of his situation. If he wandered too far, he'd lose the blanket and the backpack, the food, the water.

"Damn."

The little flutter in the region of the heart wasn't very nice.

All right. Time for a pee. He got up creakily, and thought it through. Walk a few steps, pee and then return.

No stick. That was bad. There might be some obstacle directly in front of him. Tottering there on one leg, he poked with a foot. Nothing. He took a step, prodded with his foot again. Nothing there, and he cleared his throat. There was no real echo.

"Shit." The thoughts of another fucking ravine, or a steep drop like a loading dock, made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

Shuffling onwards as carefully as he could, he went about three metres and then relieved himself. It sounded like it was splashing on concrete, but the ground under him was still soft, dead leaves, moss, maybe even grass and weeds. Something scraped his hand, and he felt small, soft leaves and shrubbery to his left.

Feeling a little bolder now, he turned and felt his way back carefully to their sleeping area.

A smoke, some water, and maybe some candy or something from his backpack would keep him going, at least for a little while.

Feeling around, the suitcases didn't seem to be right there.

That made a lot of sense.

He began to feel better about things.

Betty had left him somewhere safe. He had to believe that. She had gone on, not needing nearly as much sleep as he did.

She must be scouting ahead and she'd be back as soon as she could. That didn't do much for the fear.

Scott stretched and his jaw worked back and forth. His mouth tasted like a garbage can.

He'd poke the Devil's eye out for a good cup of coffee right about now, that and an actual chair to sit on.

His sensitive fingers fished out a cigarette and the lighter was in his jacket pocket.

"Come on, Baby. Don't leave me here waiting too long...please." Oh, God.

Betty.

Where in the hell had she gotten off to?

They weren't even really out of the city yet.

Travelling in daylight was going to be a problem no matter where they were.

Chapter Nine

The briefing ended and the gathered detectives were grabbing jackets and briefcases. This particular killing was nasty enough. A woman and her two little girls were watching TV, when her husband answered a knock at the door. Hearing an altercation, she was just hustling the kids to a back bedroom when her husband was shot with an automatic weapon.

She made the girls go down in the basement, picked up a knife in the kitchen and then her husband bled to death in her arms even as emergency responders arrived.

"Francine."

"Yes, boss?"

"I don't think I really need to go down there. You guys can handle this."

"Sure. Okay."

"I need to call the chief, and then I might have to pull you off too."

"Sure. Whatever." Detective Francine Suleiman gave him a wry look, patted him on the bicep and then did up the final fasteners on her vest.

"If I can get us in there, we need to know a lot more about that damned robot."

"Still on that bullshit, Gene?"

"Yeah. I got the lucky tap from above, and the Cartiers are VIPs."

"So where is this place?"

"SimTech. They're in Buffalo."

Her shoulders tensed. She was winding up, thinking of babysitters, endless calls and texts, another monkey wrench thrown into her day.

"Okay. Try and give me a little notice, okay?" It was three hours by high-speed train.

It was two and a half hours by air. Too much of it spent in terminals and waiting on the ground in the aircraft.

"Why do we got to go up there, anyways?"

"Because. I like to look people in the eye when they lie to me."

His frosty smile took some of the warmth and humidity out of the air. There wasn't that much to begin with.

She nodded ruefully, inclining her head.

It was true enough, she supposed.

"Thanks, Francine."

He watched her turn to go. The last of them filed out of the room. They were loaded for bear and carrying far too much electronic gadgetry for his liking. The helmets alone weighed eleven pounds each.

So far the lady of the house wasn't talking. She claimed she had no idea of who had shot her husband or why anyone would ever want to do so.

The only thing she had admitted, was that her husband might do a little ADHD from time to time. The lady denied ever doing it herself, and no one had the heart to test her blood just then as it would just rub salt in the wounds. Privately, a lot of cops thought the kids were better off with the parents, rather than being seized and re-assigned to other parents. She was pretty sure there were two males out there on the porch. As to whether her husband Dwayne had been buying or selling, or maybe he just owed the wrong somebody a little too much money, she claimed not to know.

The trouble was that no one ever did anything for no reason.

She knew more than she was letting on. It was a question of whether she would cooperate, or did they have to do everything the hard way.

***

Gene MacBride and Francine Suleiman stood in awe.

The great room stretched off into a haze of atmospheric perspective. The air was blue with soldering fumes, and rows of heads, all robot girls, bent in fixed concentration upon their tasks.

There must have been ten thousand overhead lights, sodium or halogen, all hanging on metal tubes and looking like rocket engines more than anything else.

"Our products are the finest on the market today." Mister Burch was in full sales pitch. "Right now we are at only twelve percent market penetration. With full amortization, certainly within the next twenty years, we foresee the cost coming down somewheres in the range of thirty to forty thousand a copy for the base models. Think of it, a household servant, one that does windows, walks the dog and can even home-school your children."

He beamed at them, and then extended an arm in invitation. Gene wasn't quite sure if Allan Burch was selling 'bots or selling shares. He probably did both, when you thought about it.

Sell, sell, sell.

That's just the way of the world.

Allan Burch led them on to another workstation. Here a torso, with gaping holes for the waist, neck and arms, had a pair of hatches on the back. It was clamped to the bench and separate robotic arms were working on the placement of small components. There was a more complex robot involved as well. This one was moving around, looking at a screen for specifications if Gene was interpreting correctly, and adding in accessories. Just like a new car, he thought.

"What are we building here?"

"This is a typical ambulatory robot." Burch stepped in, leaned forward, and read off the screen. "It's for commercial applications. Oh. This one will be driving for United Postal Service."

"Ah." Francine's eyes met his, eyebrows raised in amusement. "At least he's not flipping burgers for Mickey D's."

Gene nodded.

The machine would have to have some independent reasoning skills. The nature of its job and the modern traffic landscape meant it would be presented with unforeseen circumstances. This might include anything from traffic snarls to customers refusing to sign, ducking payment or even just the usual, more run-of-the-mill psychopaths. They would have to defend their cargo from thieves and high-jackers on occasion. If nothing else, they would have to find someone or something of record to accept delivery.

A gynoid, a lady robot designed to mimic human form, albeit in a shiny blue-chrome and featureless way, was just attaching a small chip or something into a set of sockets deep in the interior of the machine. Her hands, very deft and sure, were amazing to watch. It reached into a plastic bin and picked out more parts. It soldered them into place, with tools all lined up neatly. It took a wire harness and began snapping the leads into place. There were plastic ties to bundle the wire harness. Gene felt smarter just watching this.

There were more bands of wires bonded together in wide straps, brightly coloured and plugged in here and there.

"Yes, this is all very interesting." Interesting, it was fascinating as all hell, thought Gene. "But more to the point—"

"Oh. Yes." Burch cleared his throat and looked a bit uncomfortable.

In accepting an appointment from two senior cops, out-of-towners, naturally his able (and fully robotic) secretary had asked what it was about.

"Well, anything, really."

"Anything?"

Burch was more confident now. Taking Francine's arm in a proprietorial manner, he led them on.

Standing there, the factory was curiously quiet, but all the stamping and welding were done elsewhere.

They watched as the legs were attached to a ball-joint and actuator arms were attached to pins at gusseted hard-points.

"Originally, our 'droids were designed for military, police, and security use. Then we branched out into mining, nuclear waste handling, all kinds of hazardous occupations. Fire-fighting and forestry for example, when you need boots on the ground, ones with autonomous capability and not too large, if you know what I mean."

Francine piped up.

"No. What do you mean?" She wasn't necessarily being snarky, but the whole picture was overwhelming.

What was fascinating was that robots could do such work, and yet some very highly-skilled humans couldn't seem to find any work at all. It was a moral question, and one that didn't reflect well on the servile classes.

"Well. Nuclear plants were designed with doors and hatches for human access. Fighting forest fires can be done with thirty-tonne automated bulldozers, but our bots have less impact on the forest floor. There are all kinds of concerns."

They didn't need to breathe, and could stand all kinds of heat and smoke.

She nodded, and Gene noted the robot in front of them had no mouth aperture and didn't look up from its work.

"Yeah. What we're interested in, are those autonomous functions. Especially as it pertains to our missing robot. They tell me that never happens, incidentally."

Executive assistant to Mr. Burch the plant manager, Felicia Emery, the picture of sternly-repressed sexuality, a nineteen year-old librarian in appearance, stared at Francine through her flat lenses.

Standing slightly behind and to her left, Gene saw the multi-coloured display carets on the inside of her eye-wear.

His own display had lit up with all of her relevant information upon entering the room. She was extremely well educated, but more of a surprise was the Doctor himself.

Rudolf Piqua had originally conceived the PAL 9100 series of gynoids after seeing a need for sex toys that transcended currently available models. In the early days, the available products were crude enough. It was Piqua who had integrated chassis and skin, eyes and software, bringing the whole product up to consumer standards of appearance and utility. Taking sex out of the equation and putting the whole thing in terms of household usefulness had been a stroke of genius. They even made ugly robots for those families where one or the other partner tended towards jealousy and sexual peccadilloes.

"Well." This was the first time the doctor had spoken, up until now seemingly content to let lesser mortals speak for him. "Briefly, from the chassis, to the power systems, balancing gyros, awareness, autonomics, to the nominal IQ of each model, the goal was maximum adaptability."

This made sense. It was like a series of automobiles, outwardly different but sharing commonalities. A chassis and running gear might serve cars, and light trucks and vans, for example.

Gene nodded in comprehension.

"They are designed to operate independently for long periods, to extrapolate, to identify new tasks, to plan, to prioritize..."

His eyes held Gene's for a moment, and then he turned to Francine.

"Betty Blue is the first malfunction of this magnitude in the history of our program." The doctor stabbed the plant manager with a quick glance, and then went on. "All of that is worked out during the testing phase. Naturally, we are most eager to have her returned to us. Without making too big a deal of it, ah, there are concerns."

"Yes, public safety, among other things." Francine found the pallid skin and dead eyes of un-activated gynoids unnerving, creepy even.

The robot building robots in front of them was completely expressionless. This was another in the shiny chrome, a different chassis as this one was clearly not intended to have skin. It pressed coloured squares on a keypad and the neck and head of a 9100 model went through a series of facial expressions as the group sauntered past.

"Ugh." Francine shook her head and hugged herself as if she had a sudden chill.

"All very fascinating, I'm sure. But it would be helpful to know a little more. Does Betty have military capabilities?" Gene was prodding, but gently.

"Ah." The doctor pursed his lips. "The basic programming, of course. She has no specialties, no weapons onboard, outside of her own very considerable physical skills."

"What do you mean, the basic programming?"

"Well. It's like you and me, Inspector. Neither of us a soldier, or a pilot—and yet we have the basic programming in our bodies to do it."

"Ah. Now I get it—I think?" Gene blew air out threw loose lips. "I got a weird one for you—do robots have fingerprints?"

Gene had tried to hurriedly read up on the subject. If they did, one would think that he would have been able to find it with proper key word searches. Unfortunately he hadn't.

"Not in the sense you mean. Their skin has grain and imperfections. They don't have whorls and such. As for the actual skin itself, it's very soft, smooth and finely-textured."

Doctor Piqua grinned and patted Burch on the shoulder, giving him another of those quirky sidelong looks.

"Felicia."

The young lady stepped forward and gave Gene a data-chip.

"The 9100 series are designed to be one hundred percent autonomous." Miss Emery's bright blue eyes were on him. "For that reason, they have access to the entire internet, wirelessly."

A hundred percent autonomous.

That one gave him a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. Gene didn't want to give too much away, but he had to give them something.

"So she would know the bus schedule, things like that?" That's right, I'm just a dumb cop.

Felicia nodded. According to her PPP, she was forty-three years old, and she would pretty much have to be, to have had the time to acquire all of those degrees and certifications.

Gene could only conclude gene or glandular therapy, something else he'd never seen up close. The results were compelling. She looked, sounded and smelled just exactly like a nineteen year-old, a mixture of bubble-gum and hair-spray, new shoes and deodorant. It was the gravitas, that and the most swaggering walk he'd ever seen on a woman wearing high-heeled shoes. Her sternum was held high and the lower spine had the perfect S-curve. There was an implicit challenge here for any man. The attitude had always made him uncomfortable. The ankles weren't bad either. Gene wondered who had served as the original model for the original model so to speak. Someone had to draw the thing. Some of those sex-bots had been drawn by fifteen year-old schoolboys with severe mammary-fixation. He was almost sure of that.

"She would have city, state and national maps. She would be able to pinpoint any GPS point on the globe, and any LPS on the moon."

"I see." Gene nodded and gave Francine a bright look.

"Well."

Francine nodded. She couldn't think of a damned thing to say. They'd all seen them on TV and marveled, but looking at row upon row of assembled products and rack on rack of parts lined up for the assembly line put the thing in a whole new perspective. They were stamping them out like so many hot rolls.

***

He must have waited all day. The hours crawled, and after a while, he wondered if going mad would be somehow preferable. Scott feared pain and death too much to give it a try. The temptation to smash his head in with a rock was strong. Sitting still was sheer hell, though. He'd eaten a little bit here and there, but water was going to be a problem so he was saving the last of it. He'd had to pee three more times and was just wondering about taking a shit. Sooner or later, it had to happen. To say he was pretty miserable would be an understatement.

The suspense really was killing him.

The sound, when it came, was unmistakable. In spite of the crackle of distant thunder, he heard it.

Scott's heart leapt, and then the fear came and his heart almost locked up in his chest.

There was a vehicle, not far away. It was coming this way, and while it clearly went behind buildings, even fading out completely for a full minute by his internal reckoning, the next time he heard the tires crunching on gravel, it was closer. Much, closer.

The vehicle slowed, creeping along now, as the characteristic whine of a power steering pump indicated it was turning. The deep, booming rumble that cut across the sky obscured the sound for the next thirty seconds or so, and then came rain drops hitting a tin roof. No water hit him, and he thought he was sort of half indoors at least.

Scott lay flat on the blankets. It was more than any man could do to lie on his back. He rolled over onto his stomach, facing the threat, praying that it was Betty, or that whoever it was would just go on past. Scott had no idea of the surroundings, the locale. An abandoned auto plant, that's all he knew.

As usual, there was nowhere to fuckin' run...

Scott always stood his ground and, over the years, one or two people had told him how brave he was. Assholes. The vehicle stopped, and his heart-rate soared. He could literally hear the shifter cables pulling the lever on the side of the transmission into parking gear.

Ka-chunk.

It idled softly, just on the far side of a screen of brush, which he knew was there from the rustles and the chirps and the heavy, drowsy buzzing of bumble-bees. The rain came then, sweeping in from somewhere behind him in a wall of sound that closed off everything but the immediate world. There came the louder sound of a door opening, and yet no corresponding thunk of it being closed again. He was petrified in case it wasn't Betty, and the scrape of something a few feet to his right sent barbs of pure, distilled adrenalin through his guts and his thoughts.

"Scott."

"Oh. Jesus—"

When she grabbed his left arm, just under the armpit, and began turning him over to see if he was all right—he figured that out, lying on his face wasn't the best idea after all, it was all he could do not to gasp or even shout.

Something snapped in Scott. He had a moment of stubbornness, refusing to get up in a childish reaction. Something let go inside.

"So." That was it, nice, and tight, or taut, and his jaw worked back and forth.

Don't say it.

Don't say it.

Don't even think it.

She continued pulling on his arm.

"What. Not even a, Honey, I'm home?"

"I'm sorry, Scott. I really am. But we have a car now. Come on, let's go."

He stumbled to his feet, rocking slightly, his head all woozy from the sudden exertion. His face tingled.

"Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute." He sucked in oxygen.

With her helping him, he grabbed his packsack and she led him to the car.

He sat on the seat, his door open, as she went back and checked for anything they might have left behind.

Her smell was right at the door again. She threw the blankets in the back. He wondered if she was nervous, but her voice didn't give anything away. She patted him on the shoulder and he belted himself in as she slammed the door and went around to her side.

There was the deep, cold burn of fear, possibly even anger, in Scott's lower abdomen. It was like a puddle of something in the trough at the bottom of your innards sloshing around like the bilges of a fishing boat in the perfect hurricane.

It was all he could do not to puke. He fought for calmness.

Come on, no big deal. His thoughts raced then slowed down. The vehicle moved along, Betty's situational awareness helpful as she had a picture of everything articulating in a wide radius through passive means.

Scott felt heat on his face. It was warmer for some reason and a lot brighter around him now. The vague shapes of buildings and vehicles weren't much reassurance.

Shit.

"We're outdoors now..."

"Yes. The sun's finally come out. It won't last long."

"Ah."

He felt the machine accelerate.

"What about drones?"

"They have a terror alert uptown. We should be all right for the moment."

He nodded.

"Yeah, the drones will be all over that like shit on a baby's blanket."

Another pissed-off dad of a homeless family, making a crank call. They'd catch him, and he'd spend the rest of his life in a recreation camp. That was Scott's assessment.

She reached over and gave him another little pat on the shoulder.

"There's a cold beer in the bag at your feet." Her scent washed past him and he heard the rustle of the bag.

She placed it on the seat beside him.

He nodded.

"Thank you. That was very thoughtful of you, Honey." He pondered the significance. "Did you call it in?"

He meant the terror plot.

She made no answer. He shrugged.

I wouldn't put it past her.

Now that he had time to actually comprehend it, there was a hot roast beef submarine in the bag as well—and going by that smell, she had remembered to load it up with extra onions and the juice, that thin, runny pale juice that the Greek boys always squirted on there just before they were done.

Everybody liked the juice. They never would tell you what was in it. Scott hadn't seen it lately, nor even tasted such a thing in years.

He heaved a deep sigh and reached for the bag.

Who knows, maybe it was all worth it.

Up until then, he'd never really thought his life worth risking for anything. Anything at all.

Or anyone. Maybe that was what he meant to say.

This was a whole new way of looking at things.

Scary shit.

He turned to face Betty for a moment.

"My life is worth risking. That means something, Betty." Then he turned away. "It means something."

Throw that into the mix.

She gave him a look, of which he was distinctly oblivious.

He snapped the can open.

"Oh, Lord." He slugged it back, almost half a can on the first drink.

He thought about it for a minute.

She obviously thought there was something worth risking. There was something worth running away for. Or maybe he meant to say there was something worth running away from. Not that that made any sense at all.

It was all he could do, just to try and gag down that first bite, and maybe try and get some kind of a handle on all of these sudden and rapid mood-swings.

"Hold onto your sandwich there, Scott. We're entering the traffic stream."

"What kind of a car is this, anyway?" There was a crack of thunder and then another sound, a distinct roar, drumming on the roof of the vehicle.

Their timing would appear to be impeccable. She turned down the radio a bit. It was raining heavily now, and their faces would be obscured for the traffic cams. As for the vehicle, he was afraid to ask, although he certainly meant to.

They had about twelve minutes on the freeway going by the weather radar, and then she had another place to go to ground all picked out. She took it up to one-thirty-five.

"It's a Ford, a station wagon. A nice medium blue colour—there are a million of them out there, and that's just this model year."

"Station wagon? When did they come back?"

"Yeah. They've been popular for four or five years now, Scott."

"Well, you learn something new every day. So...ah, what else? It's obviously stolen, right? I mean, you didn't use my credit card...?"

She snickered.

"No, you'd never get that paid off, would you?" She went on. "It's a stolen car, Scott."

"See, I knew that."

There was a long silence.

"There's more."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Scott slumped up against the window. After sleeping on the ground, and going hungry for eighteen solid hours, all he wanted was to feel safe, to be in a room. To be indoors.

"There are fifteen Filter King vacuum cleaners in the back, Scott."

He snorted.

Scott reached over and gave Betty's knee a squeeze.

"I sense a story."

"Well, I saw a guy stealing it, and then I kind of took it off of him." Her voice was warm and mellow. "He was very good with security systems. I'll give him that much."

"Well. That sucks."

Her laugh made up for one or two things.

Maybe not everything, but one or two things.

Chapter Ten

At one time Gene and Francine had been as thick as thieves. That was before his promotion and the pull of higher administrative duties. They had gone through a lot of doors together, and while the bond was still strong, as friends they had drifted apart.

The conversation was lagging. She looked tired more than anything, although there was still a chance she could get home by six-thirty or so.

In which case, why call a babysitter at all? Gene could sympathize, but no real harm done.

"The chief thinks I'm sort of dispensable." Gene chuckled self-consciously. "It's like, you're just sitting there watching the people work. I swear, it was on the tip of his tongue."

The chief wasn't exactly known for tact in the department, and all press announcements were carefully crafted. All but the most sensational announcements were made by junior press officers, but every once in a while a hostile journalist got the chance to ask the wrong question of Old Blood and Guts. It didn't take too much to set him off.

"Yeah. I wondered about that."

"The damned thing is worth millions. What interests me is key words." He blinked, thinking back on their visit to SimTech. "For one thing, we were presented with three, pretty heavy hitters if I am not mistaken. And then they really didn't say much, did they."

They wanted a good long look at us.

Her eyebrows rose, although normally she was the patient sort and a good listener. Her thoughts were on home and a couple of energetic teeny-boppers who could get in all sorts of trouble without ever leaving their bedrooms.

"No, seriously. What were their key words? I mean, specifically...that crazy old man."

"Who? You mean, Doctor Piqua?"

"Yeah—the doctor."

She stretched out her spine, rising up in the seat. Two more hours to go.

She looked over.

"Shit. He said this is their first major malfunction."

"Uh-huh."

She stared at Gene.

"Well. That's just bullshit...right?"

His eyebrows went up.

"What do you think, Francine?"

She gave a sardonic, quirky twitch of her mouth.

"Hah."

She thought some more.

"So where's the key word?"

"What if it's major?"

Francine's dark eyes glazed slightly and her gaze drifted to the window behind Gene's profile.

Thin scrub, brightening up nicely with mid-spring temperatures and all the rain, sped by in a blur.

"A major malfunction? What else did he say, in terms of key words."

"He said it was their first. He said they're eager to get her back."

Gene's voice was soft and far away.

"Would I ever like to be a bug on the wall in one of their meetings..."

He chewed on his lower lip. A hand came up and stroked the bristles on the chin.

"And that Burch character mentioned public safety and liabilities."

"I suppose I can see their point. I mean, they must have all the usual problems with anything wireless and computer-based these days. Constant upgrades to beat the constant attempts at hacking. A constant stream of cyber-attacks from overseas...bugs, glitches, viruses, and there were the recalls of the early household models." Francine really only knew what she had been told, read or seen on TV. "No doubt they have to be careful what they say."

"Yes." The trouble was they did say it, and they weren't real shy about it, either. "Exactly. But they have to say something."

He thought about that for a while: they were stating the obvious.

They were being helpful, and cooperative, which was a wise policy, if it was real.

His earpiece vibrated.

Francine ignored him, sagging further in the seat and with her chin lowering perceptibly by the second.

Gene touched the tit on the side of it.

"Hello."

He kept his voice low. A nap on company time might do her a bit of good.

Gene wasn't wearing the Googgs as he wanted to relax. They were away from work and in an unfamiliar environment. Just this once, there was time to think. This was often conducive to some kind of inspiration, although there was little sign of it yet.

There was a bit of a crackle in the earpieces.

"Who is this, please?"

"This is Patrol Sergeant Parsons. Eighth Precinct."

Gene's voice picked up in volume.

"Yes."

He sat up a little straighter, reaching for his briefcase and his notepad.

"We have a sighting of Mister Scott Nettles. He took a taxi, and it's only about three kilometres from where our mystery couple disappeared."

Francine made a sound Gene associated with sleep apnea and her chin bobbed up and down.

Her eyes opened, and she looked up in apparent confusion.

"Hold on, please." He nodded at Francine. "We've had another sighting of Mister Nettles."

She nodded, sitting up and mouth working.

To no one's surprise, she looked at her phone and uttered a deep sigh.

***

Images appeared on Gene's large tablet.

"Mister Nettles."

Gene and Francine took a good look at the man in the back of the taxi. The sound came up and then they heard the machine ask for a destination.

Their jaws dropped when Nettles gave a series of coordinates.

"What?" Francine was alert now.

"It's okay. It's just GPS. We've located that, and it's only about sixteen k's up the road. They, or I should say he, headed almost due west from a rave party that was going on at that location."

The interesting thing was that it wasn't an address in the conventional sense. Why not just say drop me at the Seven-Eleven on Twenty-Seven Mile Road? Whatever. It meant something special.

Gene just didn't know what.

Point A to Point B. Nettles got out of the car at an intersection, and as soon as the car moved on, he went out of the field of view of the rear-view camera. The car had turned left to make another pickup.

"That's it?" Gene's voice rose slightly in dismay.

"There were no live cameras at the intersection at the time. There still aren't, incidentally. Those ones have been out for a while." Parson's dry voice came after he cleared his throat. "They've been having pretty good luck with that."

At this stage of the game, Gene wondered if there was any real significance in Mister Nettles' movements.

"What's important here is that they're not together."

"There's another thing."

"What's that?"

"The probability has dropped on our identification."

Gene studied the readout as Francine tried to find it on her own device. Like Gene, she'd taken the Googgs off and was reluctant to put them back on as they (or something) had been giving her migraines lately.

"Sixty-seven percent."

"What do you mean?"

Parsons hastened to explain.

"Huh! This guy hasn't been seen in years, literally years, without the ball cap. He left the house without his dark glasses exactly two days in a row, eight and a half years ago. That was the end of February, and he must have replaced them—broken, probably, on cheque day."

To the blind, it was part of the uniform. It made people aware of them, and drivers needed to see the white stick and the dark glasses. It opened up all sorts of doors in the pedestrian sense. It made things easier for those around them. While the stick was also practical, the white colour was a universal symbol.

Parsons went on to explain that every person's behaviour generated a digital fingerprint. While the Nettles profile was a little sketchier than most, a regular assortment of passive sightings and archived recordings indicated that he lived his life, all of it, within a radius of less than a kilometre and a half.

He was out of his usual neighbourhood, and therefore out of character. It was akin to a person in medieval times, living barely at subsistence level, with the whole family working six and a half days a week, picking beans and dragging a plow behind an ox, and then suddenly taking a vacation at the beach.

There must be a reason for this behaviour.

Gene nodded and Francine said nothing.

The train whistled along, perceptibly bumpier now, and there were voices in the hall running along outside their compartment. Life went on all around them.

"So, who was the lady in the park, ah; is this the same guy, and why is he alone now?"

"Yes, sir."

Francine made a noise which Gene interpreted as agreement.

He gave her a look. She shrugged.

"It does appear to be the same man." That was as far as she was prepared to go.

"So."

"That's the real problem, Inspector. The really neat thing about Mister Nettles is how he seems to appear and disappear. He came out of the rave. If that's him, he did change his appearance. But. Did he go in? No record of that. That's what makes this sighting interesting. He gets in the car. He gets out of the car. Then he disappears, completely off the radar for the last day and a half so far. He paid cash for the taxi and mentioned nothing of consequence."

Gene nodded firmly.

"Okay. I see your point."

A day and a half was a long time. At home, in his apartment, that was one thing. But out in the world, that was another.

"Okay, Sergeant. I'll have someone interview the landlady at the Nettles address." He wrote that down as he still hadn't gotten around to it. "I'll have them share any information that they get there with you."

"Ah, thank you." Parsons still had a series of assaults on the books.

His mouth curled a bit and Gene grinned and nodded. The punks would forget about it soon enough, but Parsons obviously sensed an opportunity.

"And, uh, we'll keep working on this."

"Yes, sir."

Gene sat back and hit the icon. Parsons was gone again, although his inbox was lit up with something additional from the sergeant.

His head twisted and he took in Francine with a glance.

She nodded.

"I've got a good feeling about this one."

***

"Okay, Scott. Bingo. There's the doorman, right in front of you. One metre."

He spoke up right on cue.

"Excuse me. Is this the Red Dog Saloon?"

"Ah, yes, Ma'am. It sure is. What can I help you with?"

Scott stood there, wavering a bit to and fro. His hippie glasses dangled languidly from his left hand.

"It's just that I'm blind with these contacts. I'm waiting for my date." Betty had applied the makeup, and he had a wig and a small clutch type purse. "Nick will be along soon...I hope."

He positively tottered there on what she said were patent leather high-heeled pumps. There were low voices all around and yet he had avoided stepping on anyone. It took fierce concentration to rule one's emotions. Someone nearby giggled. He hoped they were taking a good look. Time hung heavy, and his pulse was still racing. He struggled to keep his breath calm and smooth, blanking out a little and just going with it. A cheap buzz, he thought.

That's what I need right about now: an anxiety attack. He gulped and tried to sort of purge the CO2 from his system.

That's what it was. It wasn't the lack of oxygen that killed you, it was the CO2. It was a good thing he had the purse to hang onto. A revealing insight about women. They at least had something to do with their hands when they got a little nervous.

Listening to the chat about him settled him down. No one had accosted him, no had remarked upon him. They were just ignoring him, and he tried to locate them by sound as best he could.

This was said to be the biggest bar in the state, a real turnpike-style roadhouse, away from the city and its satellites, and set in an unincorporated township. It was open 24-7 with continuous live entertainment of an eclectic nature. The wine would flow and the blood did spill. It was like every state had one these days. The dress, a little shorter on him than it would be on Betty, would be ruined by the huge globs of sweat running down from Scott's unshaven armpits. His girdle was killing him. It wasn't so much about passing as a woman. It was about passing for anyone, anything other than what he was.

"Here I am, Lover."

Betty and Scott engaged in a quick peck, Scott enjoying the fact that there was a small crowd hanging about the entrance. Oh, the irony of it all.

"Where did you park?"

"I found a good spot."

It was a short speech, strictly for public consumption.

Scott nodded approvingly. They'd actually walked the last three kilometres, with Betty hanging back around the corner and Scott being talked into position, over the last few yards, through the earpiece. This was all for the eye-witnesses. All of this to get a hot meal and a drink. Scott also wanted a bed for the night something awful. A bed and a bath.

Betty had chopped her hair into something more resembling a page-boy cut, and was clad, according to her amused description, in a charcoal-grey zoot-suit, very androgynous as she put it.

Somebody somewhere had made a good sale.

They held hands as a couple ahead of them murmured back and forth with the doorman. The people were admitted, a blast of real sow-belly music coming out the door as they went in. She gave a quick pull and Scott stepped forward hesitantly.

Another strong hand grabbed his right elbow and gently steered him into position.

"You guys are next. You're lucky, it's not so busy tonight." Apparently, the bouncer was talking to him.

Betty's deep basso-profundo voice, put on especially for this occasion, thanked him gravely.

Scott had been thinking about all of those cameras.

If you couldn't get away from them, then maybe you might as well join them.

Or something like that, but he'd heard of privacy freaks buying expensive masks and wearing them in any public place they went. It seemed a bit much to him at the time, hearing about it on the TV, but he could appreciate the point now.

The smell of food, real food, wafting out from the saloon, more of a head-banger, speed-metal, family-style bar and grille by the sounds of it, was driving him nuts.

More of a short putt, as someone had once said.

Chapter Eleven

"There are no guarantees in this life."

Scott sat in what felt like a dentist chair.

Not used to being touched or handled in any way, his recent relationship with Betty notwithstanding, it was oddly arousing in the physical sense. It gave him someplace to put his thoughts. The young woman went on.

"It's a good thing you have somebody to help you." She had shaved his skull, and pulled a tightly-constricting latex mask over his head.

Now she was applying putty and makeup around the edges, after lifting the cheeks and putting small pads of putty in strategic locations.

"His face seems a bit lopsided." Betty was right there with him.

Hopefully no one would notice the slight bulge in his pants.

"No one's face is truly symmetrical." The technician hummed softly as she worked.

He and Betty had been expected, somehow. Upon their arrival at the Red Dog Saloon, she, in her temporary disguise as a retro-metrosexual, led him to the bar. He heard her exchange brief words with someone.

A few minutes later, the result of some signal which he didn't quite catch, she took him by the arm and led him to what must have been the hallway where the restrooms were located. The smell was a dead giveaway.

"So?"

"If you get caught, it's a hundred-thousand dollar fine for obstructing the course of justice."

A hundred grand! For wearing a mask. The world had certainly become a crazy place. Scott wondered if it was worth it sometimes.

A recent news story, the typical horror story put out by the mainstream media, had documented a case where someone had gotten an illicit nose-job. The lady didn't have the money for the medical fees and the permit required from Motherland Security. She had faked the documents (badly), vanity being what it was, and the self-objectification of women being what it was...she was caught, inevitably it would seem.

Now she was doing fifteen years in a work camp. She would get out of jail by the time she was thirty-five. This was one of the northeastern states, as he recalled. Down south she'd be doing three life sentences.

Scott hoped it was worth it to her. License fees for cosmetic surgery were a major source of revenues for the state. One of many new sin, or as Scott called them, vanity taxes. Harsh penalties were an incentive to save one's pennies—and pay your fees.

"Huh."

Her deft fingers smoothed the putty around the edges of the mask. Fine sable hairs tickled his face, as she applied some kind of powder to blur the lines where skin met rubber.

Scott had never really thought about it, but he pondered the question. What about women and their makeup?

What about the female penchant for new hair styles? What about people who changed their clothes, every day, what about people who got a hair cut, or wore sunglasses?

But apparently the programming was sophisticated enough to recognize these changes, for according to the published theories—Scott called them 'justifications,' the facial recognition algorithms were only a part of the picture.

Biometrics included height, weight, eye colour, body type, silhouettes, and a person's characteristic walk. Sociometrics included daily habits, the PPP, known associates, family circle, place of residence, work, license plates, make, model and colour of vehicle...social and employment status. They knew who you were when you walked past a scanner and the machine read the chip. When in doubt, suck some blood and run it for analysis.

It was all about digital characterization from records and constantly-updated documentations in the course of one's daily peregrinations.

Nowadays crime could be predicted, even intentions could be predicted—hopefully Betty and he stood some kind of a chance. Even this present situation could be predicted to some extent, although he had the feeling he was a few steps behind Betty every inch of the way. Hopefully they were one or two steps ahead of the cops.

Much food for thought there. If only he knew where to begin.

"So, what about the I.D.?"

"Everything's going to be fine, Scott."

Betty was reassuring, although she was in her own chair and her own technician applied himself to the job at hand. His voice was soft and yet deep when he spoke, but that one kept the talk to a minimum.

His girl wasn't much more talkative.

He might have been wrong about that.

"What do you think of the Mets this year?'

"Not much." Scott rarely listened to baseball.

"You're not a fan?"

"Not for many years."

Not since he'd lost his vision and therefore most of the pleasure in watching a game. While aware that people had listened to baseball, football and other sports on the radio, going back a century or more, those people were of course not aware that they had missed anything.

In a subconscious habit, Scott turned his head towards Betty.

"So. Who are you going as?"

There was a chuckle.

"Your mother."

He laughed, a sour laugh but a laugh none the less.

He hadn't seen his family in ages. It's not that they had abandoned him. Far from it. It was just that he had felt like a burden. In the early stages of losing his vision they were all in denial.

There was some kind of blame-game going on there, an unspoken one, one where they kept asking stupid questions.

Isn't there something somebody somewhere can do?

And the trouble was that there wasn't. Not that they were in any position to go looking for treatment. They couldn't deal with it any better than he had.

The lady was speaking.

"Okay, I want you to lean back and open your eyes very wide."

Scott complied, blinking uncontrollably as she dropped liquid into his eyes.

He gasped.

"What's that?"

"Okay. We're just putting some drops in there."

"Ah...ah." In for a penny, in for a pound. "What...?"

"This is the hard part, but I'll be very gentle. I'm going to put the contacts in now."

Betty explained.

"We're giving you some new retinas—to go with your new I.D."

They had to break the chain of sightings and documentations.

Yet another person, probably the male voice in the room, grabbed him firmly by the head and held him still as the lady worked.

New retinas. Of course. A blind man didn't have to see through them. She'd been doing some thinking. He wondered how long that had been going on. Did she really love him or did she just need a blind man?

Was Scott just an accessory—unfortunate word, but she was obviously holding a few things back from Scott.

"Argh." The first one, the left one, was in.

It felt like someone had shoved a damned dinner plate into his eye socket.

"Betty."

"Yes, dear?"

"You and I are going to have to have a little talk."

The makeup artists laughed, and then Scott's head was clamped in place by strong hands, tucked into the guy's armpit by the smell of it. His one ear felt moist.

"Ah—ah!"

"It's okay, we're done now."

They were done all right, there was no way he was going to go through that again anytime soon.

He couldn't believe people did that to themselves out of choice.

The lady gave him some instructions on the care and keeping of lenses, but Scott was hardly listening, completely focused on the nagging sensation in his eyes. It seemed kind of ironic, putting lenses on a blind man. He couldn't think of a line.

Maybe it was better left unsaid.

His heart sank. He'd had a few ups and downs over the last few days.

This was what he had been aching for—adventure, he told himself grimly.

His life really had changed. It couldn't be a whole lot worse than how his life had been so far.

It might even be worthwhile.

Scott was all too aware of what had been taken away from him. If truth be told he now hated sports, and even more he hated people who gushed and raved about their local sports teams as if this was any real substitute for having an actual life.

The door latch clicked, the noise from outside got louder and someone stuck their head in.

"How long?"

"Two minutes."

"The sooner you guys are on your way, the better off everyone will be."

"We understand." Betty spoke for them.

The door closed.

The male voice spoke.

"Okay, hold still. We need some pictures for your ID."

The next step was fingerprinting him, also for the ID cards.

So. Betty had a plan, then—and not necessarily the one they had discussed back home, before setting out. Scott hadn't been asking enough questions. That was the price of desperation.

More than anything, he was curious as to how all of this had been set up. He was curious as to how Betty was communicating with other robots, and especially how all of this was undetectable to the authorities.

How much was all of this costing? How did she know where to go? How long had she been planning this?

What did she need him for?

That was one loaded question.

And where was Betty getting the money? In other words, who; or how was all this being paid for?

Expert criminal advice never came cheap.

He knew that much from T.V.

Scott had always found it a bit strange that they still couldn't put photos on credit cards. The reasons were supposedly technical, which was pure bullshit. Scott had concluded that fraudulent purchases made with stolen cards were all paid for by legitimate cardholders. The price was hidden or at least, no one ever thought about it in those terms. It boosted gross sales, which was good for everybody—except perhaps for all of those legitimate cardholders. It was a volume industry, scraping along on a slim margin of forty-nine and a half percent per annum.

***

The silence was funereal as Dr. Piqua snapped shut the heavy oaken slab. One or two even twitched as he flipped the thumb-piece on the deadbolt. His shaven head gleamed in the overhead pot lights.

A minimum of staff had been invited, nice word, to the emergency meeting.

Doctor Piqua moved to the head of the room, where his chair sat vacant. Features obscured with the strong light of the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, he regarded the group, examining each face, one by one. He stood with heavily-tattooed hands on the back of the chair.

Clearing his throat, he began to speak.

"I think it is time to invoke Plan Nine."

They all knew what that was. Plan Nine was a backdoor into every unit built.

His plan was limited to passive surveillance.

"Basically, nothing changes. Our units go on as before. We just take a stream of data from each one, and run it through the machine." When he said machine, he meant more than one.

This was going to take up a lot of machine-time.

All faces were turned to him.

"Are we sure?" Company president Renaldo Gage was an aquiline man in his mid-fifties, suave and sophisticated.

Renaldo took a deep breath.

"Once we are blown, we will stay blown."

"Yes, that's very true. But we cannot rely on the police to find Betty Blue and we must have her back. It would be preferable if we were the first to examine her."

Plan Nine was only for the direst of emergencies. With foresight, and a knowledge of the heavy liabilities involved, it was only to be used in a worst-case scenario. This was one of those cases.

Steve Hobbs, senior software writer, cleared his throat.

"Yes?" Piqua gave him his opening.

"We are already aware that some units have been hacked. If we can isolate those units, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees."

All in the room were aware of the problem. Once a unit was hacked, its security was forever suspect.

"It's a risk we are going to have to take."

Hobbs nodded.

"I would prefer almost anything but that..."

Hobbs turned to program security chief Letitia Bennett. She was opening up her file, as if seeking reassurance, although she could talk on this subject without notes. Her small eyes surrounded by wrinkled flesh looked bitter at the best of times. She was as tough as they came and her husky shoulders reeked of physical training. It was habitual for Letitia, completely unconscious of it, to cross her legs under the table and dangle a clog off the end of her foot.

"With all eyes looking for Betty Blue and this Scott Nettles character, we have a better than even chance of finding her before they do."

This was confidential information gleaned from police sources. Bennett was very good at that sort of thing.

'They,' of course, referred to the authorities. 'Eyes,' of course, referred to every robot built in the last few years by SimTech and anyone else who built 'bots with proprietary systems and components under license.

"If one of our friendly neighbourhood hackers detects our presence, there may very well be hell to pay." Hobbs, a slender man in his early thirties, nodded. "Or a hell of a lot of money."

He blinked at them through wishy-washy, pale blue eyes that always seemed a bit too moist.

Piqua had other ideas.

"I was thinking we might use Plan Nine a little more creatively than originally anticipated." He nodded at Hobbs. "Once we activate the plan, we not only have more eyes looking for our runaways, but we might be able to locate some of the missing units, and bring the perpetrators to justice."

This was a loaded question as they all knew. There was pretty good speculation that one or two would-be competitors had grabbed some of the missing units.

Bennett shook her head.

"What?" Piqua knew what she was going to say, but it must be said and she might as well be the one.

"Assuming we do that. We're going to have to account for the information. How did we get on to them? What was the source? And, furthermore, the courts are a matter of public record. Once the genie is out of the bottle, we can never put it back in."

Piqua nodded. The others nodded. Bennett looked around the table and nodded.

"There are ways and then there are ways."

Several looked down at the table but he heard no objections.

"So we are agreed on that much." Piqua looked at his chair but didn't sit down.

He wasn't anticipating a long session, or even a particularly stormy one. They all knew the stakes and the risks.

Norbert Krumholtz, the company's resident legal specialist, shook his head. His jowls were blue with a five o'clock shadow and his brown suit shone. He always sat there with his hands folded in perfect repose and monitored the conversation, rarely sticking in his own oar.

"I'm not too worried about the courts. We recover our property, lay a charge and the only thing that is made public is the fact that a charge has been laid. We can word it in such a way as to give virtually no information, to the press, the public, law enforcement, or to our competitors."

Legal precedents for this sort of thing went all the way back to the good old days of fracking, according to him.

"So, you are saying...?" Hobbs raised an eyebrow.

"We use our own security teams to recover our hacked machines; ah, units, and make citizen's arrests. Once we have these turkeys behind bars, the vast majority of them will lawyer up and make no statements they don't have to."

"What if they can't afford one?" Bennett's question was a good one. "What if they waive their rights? What if they're an idiot, in other words?"

Krumholtz grinned, giving Piqua a look, and receiving a nod in return.

"Don't worry about that—one of our pet foundations will provide them one. If necessary, one of our pet psychiatrists will certify them and they can do their time upstate on the funny farm."

Piqua stepped in.

"Assuming they don't waive the right to an attorney and handle their own defense, that will have to suffice."

This was a smoke-screen of sorts as Piqua and Krumholtz had been over this before, privately. But it was the one thing that could go wrong. The idea of an idealistic hacker with information that just had to get out was a troubling one.

So far, the real issue had not been raised, and Dr. Piqua was content enough with that.

With bonuses running into the hundreds of millions each year per person, there was no great incentive to ask too many questions.

His guts always tightened up when he contemplated the unthinkable. To show that sort of concern to the troops was a bad idea.

Confidence was everything, or so he had always believed.

Chapter Twelve

Scott and Betty lay entwined with one another. They were in a cheap motel in rural north-western Ohio. The place was a Mom-and-Pop operation and seemed a bit behind the times in terms of customer surveillance, or 'security.'

He was on his back and she was curled up at his side, lips close to his left ear.

"You were wonderful..." Her fingertips raked the curly hairs on his lower belly, causing a spasm to go through him. "...last night."

His knees came up as he tried to get away from those fingernails.

"Ah-ah!" He grabbed for her wrist but she was too fast and too strong for him. "Holy."

Her arm snaked over. She lifted a leg, and threw it across him. With a quick slide up, she had him pinned, hair falling across his face.

"Oh, come on." He smiled sheepishly. "It's all right for you. But I'm only human."

"Scott. Scott."

"No. Seriously."

"Oh, darling. It was ever so romantic."

"Yeah."

She giggled.

"...poor Scott, drooling and moaning and making me promise to stop at midnight. Oh." She did a perfect rendition of his voice. "Oh, Betty—you've got to promise not to hurt me."

"I was not drooling."

"Were so."

She laughed, her head going back and forth as she whopped him in the face with her hair.

Oh, God, how I wish I could see her now.

"No. I really mean it, Betty." He sighed. "Please?"

She was insatiable. While it went without saying that robots could and would be built to accommodate the sexual needs of a rich and varied cross-section of humanity, it had never really occurred to him that they might like it for their own sake. Or for its own sake, however one preferred to say it.

"Aw. What's the matter, Lover?" She pecked him on the lips, sitting up and pinning his biceps against the stiff and apparently squeaky clean linen.

His forearms came up and he held her near the elbows.

"Betty. We have to talk. I'm scared shitless. I can't think straight—and, ah, some of this wasn't exactly in the plan." He clung to her. "I'm like a bag of nerves. Sooner or later, I'll go and do something stupid."

"Aren't we doing something stupid right now?" She stayed there, thinking. "Don't think I'm not scared either. Because I am."

If they were caught, she wouldn't have any rights at all, and neither would Scott. Him they would probably ignore or slap on the wrist. They would make excuses for him, and try to be humane in their punishments. Within limits. He was blind and it would look good on the evening news if they rescued him from her.

They would dismantle her, and she knew that very well.

They would keep her brain and never let her die.

What in the hell could she or Scott do about that?

Keep running.

Originally, they were going to Detroit, and if possible, cross the border into Canada. It was all they could think of. Canada had vast, wide-open spaces and wasn't wired nearly as tightly as the States. In popular parlance, Detroit was now called Dystroit—for the dystopic end times had surely come for that city. It was the price of being a bit too liberal.

It was even worse than in the movies, Scott had heard, in his occasional oblique manner, eaves-dropping on any conversation that held hope of seeming to be half-ass interesting.

It was a good place to escape from, was the way he heard it. Stories of occasional, 'over-winter' cannibalism, and attempted socialism, and some sort of economic cleansing up there were hopefully just exaggerations of the underground, or liberal press. Years ago, a delegation from that city to the Federal government had been politely advised to see to their own affairs.

"Yeah. I hear you." The note of worry that crept into her voice was hardly reassuring to Scott.

It wasn't that she'd lied, exactly, it was more like she was only telling him so much.

"Betty. If you have a better plan, now might be a good time to let me in on it."

Sighing, which was the first time he had ever heard her do it, she let go of his arms and dismounted.

She lowered herself down again and he could sense her studying him. He rolled onto his left side. For what it was worth, they were eye-to-eye.

"Come on, Babe. Level with me."

"Well. I still think we should go to Detroit. We've been sort of leaving a trail. It's better if we end that trail somewhere logical. Right, Scott?"

That part was right. That part they had agreed on.

"And then what?"

"Well, I just don't know, Scott. It's just that I don't think it will work."

"I thought we could steal a boat and just paddle or motor across. That's what we figured."

"If we did make it...our problems would just be beginning." And Canada was so much weaker than the States.

They would most likely be apprehended, sooner or later, and then returned. The States would push and Canada would be pushed. Scott didn't think that was the whole story. He was sure there was more.

"Yeah. In other words, you didn't think I'd stick this far. But Betty. We have gotten this far. We have been doing it."

"No, Scott. It's not like that. I could never do that to you."

Oh, Betty. If only I believed you.

If only I could believe in you.

"I've been doing some thinking. Philosophical thinking, but thinking. And this is important—what we are doing is important."

"And why is that, Scott?"

If only he could look into her eyes.

"Because we love each other. That's why. That's something they won't understand. That's something they're not going to be able to accept. And that's why we have to do it."

"Okay."

What?

That's it?

Women!

She plucked idly at his chest hairs. The dimly coloured aura, all he could see, shifted slightly in the morning sunshine, a fact he knew by the burn of the sun on his exposed legs.

Going by the sounds of commerce and humanity coming in from outside, the window was up behind him, and therefore that must be east.

"Yes. We have made it this far." There was a new note in her voice, and he shook a little inside when he heard it.

"How are we paying for things?" He'd been meaning to ask her that for a while.

She had his wallet, and she had his bank card. Only trouble was, all the kiosks would be monitored, and at least those cameras were well-maintained. They were also located in more respectable locations.

The forty or fifty bucks cash Scott had originally begun with must be long gone by now.

"Well. It's a long story."

"I have the right to hear it."

She was very quiet.

When she spoke, she sounded miserable.

"I set some money aside. When I was working."

"Huh." He clamped his mouth shut.

Working.

Did he really want to know this?

He heaved a deep sigh.

"Okay. That's understandable. I guess. You knew you were leaving. Am I right."

There was a silence and then she snuggled in close to him.

"Yes. It was right after I saw you for the first time..."

She'd been thinking of leaving anyway. She saw Scott, lining up for his ration-card and there was something in his demeanor. Defiance was written all over him. There was something almost feral in his determination to be independent and left alone, above all things. That's what caught her attention.

Maybe even her imagination, was how she put it.

"And it was like I couldn't even think straight, Scott. It was love at first sight. Such independence. Such fire! Such anger, but of course I knew where it was coming from. I wondered how you did it, of course." She had wondered how a man could be so alone.

She had wondered how long a man could live with such anger.

Here was a man who felt unloved, and honestly thought he was unlovable. All of her initial impressions had been borne out.

Here was a man who thought his life was worthless, and she had this strong need to tell him it wasn't true.

"And so how did you get the money, dearest?"

She trembled in his arms.

Now she was afraid of him; and of what he might think.

Of what he might say.

He braced himself for what came next, although there could only be one answer—he hoped, obviously there were ways and then there were ways.

He was only slightly shocked.

"All right, Scott. I embezzled it."

"From your employer?" He grinned insanely, and a finger touched his lips.

She gave a darned good imitation of heaving a deep sigh.

"Yeah."

"If you don't mind my asking...?"

"I fiddled the household accounts, Scott." Her voice was far away. "I knew we were going to need some money."

"Huh. And how much did you get?"

It was only when she told him that a flash of something cold and electric splashed over him in a quick wash of pure, unadulterated, ice-cold consternation.

Recovering from that shock, Scott asked her what the rest of her plan entailed and that's when things got really weird. It turns out she didn't really have one.

She was making it up as she went along.

***

"Madame Cartier?"

"Yes, James?" The servant, always deferential, sober and dignified, stood in the doorway.

With a sigh she put down the reader. She was ensconced on her bed, with a box of tissues on one side and a five-kilogram container of jujubes on the other. The newest diet pills were a real blessing. She had just received a dozen of her favourite romantic intrigue novels via her subscription service and was looking for an entire day of escape from the hum-drum of reality.

"Our new robot is here."

"What?"

"Our new robot is here."

"I didn't order any new robots. Did Doyle order it?"

"Well, no, Madame. I don't believe so."

"Shit."

Angrily, she flung her silken comforter to one side. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she stuck her feet in her slippers.

"Where is it?"

"She's in the kitchen, Madame. And may I say, what a fine-looking model she is, too."

"Did you sign for it?'

"Ah, no, Madame." James stepped out of the way as Olympia barged through the doorway.

"Damn that man!"

"Um, who are we referring to, Madame?'

"Danvers!"

Robots did not judge people. It was part of their make-up, in that they did not comment on the human activities around them. As much as anything, James appeared shocked at her response.

The language was unusual to say the least, for the Cartiers, especially Madame, led a serene, pampered existence where the irritations and provocations of everyday life must not intrude.

He agreed in all respects: it only made sense after all.

People enjoyed life so much more when they got everything their way and inconvenience did not interrupt their bliss.

The notion that ignorance was bliss had always troubled him.

What did people mean when they said that?

The answer had always escaped Mister Carlson.

He was aware that she had been upset by the whole Betty Blue disappearance, and that she was also worried about her. Madame Cartier was very good to her employees and had great affection for them all, which she demonstrated regularly.

In James' opinion, the Cartiers were very nice people who might have been spared such indignities. He had no opinions on Betty Blue other than that she must have gone off, somewhere in the head so to speak.

James was well-programmed, trained not to betray emotion or shock in even the most extreme circumstances. The mistress was clearly upset. He had his own emotions. This was a trial for them all.

"Did someone sign for it?"

"Ah, I believe someone did, yes, Madame."

"Who?"

"Most probably, Madame. One would think so. One of the kitchen staff, they must have done it, Madame."

Damn. She should have left clearer instructions when it became clear that the insurance company was bound, bent and determined to settle the claim, 'to the complete satisfaction of the customer,' come hell or high water. And with no regard to her wishes at all. And no real attempt on the part of the police to find her Betty Blue.

Her eyes glittered as they hustled into the elevator, her hand slapping the button in no uncertain terms to take them to the kitchen level.

She gave him a look.

"I'm sorry, James, but I've been sort of expecting something like this."

"Yes, Madame."

Of course he had no idea of what she was talking about. Robots were programmed to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. It interfered with their objectivity when dealing with a certain kind of human being. If only they didn't have brains the size of a pea. It was infuriating sometimes to have a complaint and no one of any real worth there to bitch at. Or to, however one cared to say it.

According to their on-air advertisements, the insurance company had a ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent settlement rate of all claims registered. Olympia wondered about that other thousandth of a percent. What happened there, eh?

She was beginning to have some suspicions, as to how that impressive feat had actually been accomplished. They had two years to settle and what was the big rush?

The elevator whirred to a stop.

The door slid back, and James politely indicated that she must go first.

Chin dropping into fight mode, Olympia Cartier strode for the kitchen and service area, where all street deliveries were made, and goods sorted out, as this cosmopolitan household consumed vast quantities of consumables, and the remainder was destroyed as a tax write-off. One of the great joys in her life was entertaining. Ordering a little more than you needed was de rigeur for the smart hostess, and certainly the human servants were always grateful to be sent home with leftovers.

The poor things were just struggling along in some cases, what with the lowering of the minimum wage, and with so many of their mates in prison. That was why the lower classes never prospered. Single parents do not make good parents, or so she had always believed. The trouble with poor people was that they bred like rats. Some of them had quite atrocious looks as well. Physical appearances said a lot about a person.

With a shake of her head, Olympia Cartier wondered what the hell was wrong with them people sometimes, but that was apparently the way God had created them; to serve his mysterious purposes on Earth.

What those purposes might be could be devilishly obscure at times.

***

"What in the name of Heaven is going on?" Olympia's voice rose, a sure sign of impending doom for someone or other—in a nice way, that is.

Nothing irrevocable, as Doyle often said, and he knew what he was talking about. If it was just anger, why then; it might pass. If they were really obnoxious then sooner or later they would do it to themselves anyways. That's what Doyle always said.

But this was just imbecilic.

"Good morning, Madame."

The voices rang out cheerfully all around, the kitchen staff, the porter, her human maids and the Major-domo, Mister Carlson.

Carlson was the only non-human domestic servant accorded the honorific as befitted his role as senior non-human staff member.

Rover, who belonged to Devon, roared around and around their feet, almost tripping her up as it came racing up to greet her.

"Mister Carlson."

"Yes, Madame?"

"Get that damned dog out of here."

"Yes, Madame." His eyelids flickered a bit, the tone alone telling him that the mistress was not pleased.

Silent infrared communication sent the dog scurrying with plastic tail between its legs.

"Did you sign for this?"

"Oh, no Madame. James, or I believe Gerard did. He signed for it."

"Oh." She scowled at the whole lot of them.

Robots were supposed to have intelligence, they were supposed to think.

Her shoulders slumped. They had the bloody gall to send the thing over in a crate.

Betty had arrived by taxi, and paid off the driver herself. She took her small valise, her only luggage, and then presented herself at the font desk in the lobby. Coming up from outside, entering the foyer, she had announced herself in cool and confident tones.

This was something else, with packing noodles of foam, fitted recesses lined with soft but shiny plastic sheeting to protect it during shipment, and there was all that damned pink flesh.

The bloody thing was naked.

The corners of her mouth turned down, and her eyes swept the floor, littered with coloured plastic banding material, steel bands, and tools—why couldn't a robot put their tools away? There was more packing tape, ripped cardboard, a thick white disposable e-booklet. How crass.

"Show me that invoice."

Mister Carlson, with a deeply concerned look on his face, put his hands together.

"But of course. There's no charge, I definitely asked. Their robots said no charge, I have to accept that at face value. It's logged into the household register. We can retrieve it immediately." His tone was hopeful

Of course. No one used a paper invoice these days. They carried a little too much weight with the older crowd, and were notoriously hard to eradicate fully. There were too many of them filed away in inaccessible places and you had to find someone dishonest to go in and get them...

It registered that there were a lot of people in the kitchen, although getting a new robot was exciting for all of them.

The naked robot in the crate stared straight out over Olympia's head with big brown eyes.

Her glance impaled one of the maids.

"Find some clothes for that thing. Or a frickin' bed-sheet." The girl scuttled out of the room, hands waving on the ends of her arms in exaggerated panic.

She looked at Mister Carlson, who really hadn't done anything wrong.

No, she was mad at herself. She should have seen this coming.

"This room could use about half as many people in it."

Wordlessly, he swung his face.

"Those of you who are completely inessential and have other duties, please go."

There were seven of them, not counting human maids, and Olympia sighed as they went through some kind of vaudeville routine in determining who was it. This was something that might have been amusing initially, but once in a while it could be a real drag.

Finally, the remaining human maids and junior robots had left, the cook going into the freezer, a habit they had all learned to accept. Olympia would speak to her later, but that one was definitely hyper-sensitive to mood and tone. The cook took everything personally, an attribute that was thought to enhance the cooking but more than anything made the thing a pain in the cunt to put up with.

Yes, it was beginning to look like one of those days.

With a shake of her head, Olympia told them to put it all back in the box as best they could.

"And whatever you do, don't activate that unit."

"No, Madame." Mister Carlson paused.

"You didn't activate it, did you?"

"Oh, no, Madame."

That was one good thing. Activation was a process, and the thing would soon be loaded with data and programming. It was a second-tier of ownership, a whole new set of terms of service, and one going way beyond mere delivery of a mechanism. There was no reason to download all the household details into a machine that was going back to the factory.

She had always been tempted to insult Mister Carlson, just to see if she could upset his equilibrium. It was said that the emotional responses were highly-tailored as to task and the likely set of foreseen circumstances.

"That's a lovely head of skin you have there."

"Why, thank you! Madame is most kind."

There was no sign of mockery, although he did smile in the most natural manner. Did he see the absurdity in it? Or was it pure bullshit, a programmed response. That question was becoming more and more apropos.

To stare into those eyes was to admit weakness. She almost gave her head a shake.

What poise they had.

With one last angry look, she turned and headed back, up to where her personal office was located. She wanted a look at that invoice.

Mister Danvers was going to get a phone call, a rather nasty one, about this.

The only real question was who should make it?

She would no doubt say something regrettable, and their family attorney, a formidable man named Ralph Coningham, at five-hundred-dollars a minute, would perhaps intimidate. That might be just the thing. And yet the insurance people had their nefarious and anti-social jobs to do.

The company was owned by an old family friend.

It might be better to have Mister Carlson, dumb as a stick as he was, simply call up SimTech and the insurance company.

Tell them to come and pick it up, she thought. Let him waste half a day on that. The elevator closed on her.

She'd waved off the inevitable accompaniment from Jewel. Jewel was more decorative than anything, and Olympia wasn't in that kind of a mood. As she recalled, Devon had had a hand in ordering that one.

He thought he had a sense of humour, and they all suffered for it sometimes. Olympia wondered what kind of fluff they had stuffed her head out with, although she was a whiz with the social media and up on all the latest trends. The trouble was a lady needed a proper, serious thought once in a while to have any depth.

Betty Blue.

Why did you leave like that?

Was that about me?

Or was that about you?

There had been times when they were just girls together, and Betty Blue her best and truest friend. That was incredibly liberating, a kind of personal revelation of all she had been holding back. To live in the social microscope was a kind of repression, and Betty would keep her secrets because she was programmed to.

She would not repeat scurrilous remarks, nor would she stoop to gossip. All of them had empathy, too much in some cases. They had to bond, to imprint upon you for their internal workings, the gizzard as Doyle called it, to become properly effective.

The robots learned, but they also taught you so much—it was undeniable, and Betty was the best of what was a pretty good bunch. Some of her friends' robot servants were downright useless, at least according to them. There seemed to be a great variety in their responses, with robots of all levels of intelligence or even usefulness, in acquiring their individuality. It was said to be an environmental response.

The question of Betty Blue still haunted her. And yet she could not reasonably say that Betty would not have accepted the delivery.

What was she expecting?

Really?

They were only robots, and people made similar mistakes all the time.

For the love of God, wasn't the arrival of a new unit enough to make them call her and ask if this was authorized?

It didn't seem too much to ask. Wasn't that the simplest of security precautions?

Robots were as dumb as a stick, as Doyle was fond of saying.

Carlson now, that one was as dumb as two sticks.

Betty Blue, she had received affection from Olympia. And she seemed capable of giving it, selflessly, flawlessly...sincerely.

Olympia had been brought to tears once by Betty.They were watching TV together, side by side on the couch.

Betty's eyes were awash with moisture as the commentator yammered away outside a still-smoldering building in some far-off country.

"Oh. That's terrible."

"Nah. That's the Archipelago. I hate them."

Betty's face turned to hers, eyes wide and disbelieving.

"But...but they're people!"

It was quite a shock, to be contradicted by an appliance. Olympia could see the logic in it. It was an understandable point of view, in fact the only proper one.

Hmn.

She turned away from Betty, bemused by the response, so lifelike and so forlorn, so completely taken in by it, and that's when Olympia saw the little girl.

Four men wrestled an improvised litter with haste and precision as Martin Sea-Monkey told the story of an unprecedented attack on what was described as a girl's school. It was the third such unprecedented attack in about a month.

Her face was pale and round. The low profile of the blood-soaked white sheets from the waist down made her jaw drop.

It looked like the child's legs had been blown off in the explosion.

That's when Olympia cried.

Unconsciously, her hand crept over and Betty took it and gave it a squeeze.

That's what made Betty Blue so special.

There really was something different about that one.

Chapter Thirteen

Something in Gene's peripheral vision darkened the doorway.

"Hey."

Dave Parsons was in plain clothes and looked a bit overawed by his present surroundings. There was nothing hard to knock on, with the soft-sided cubicles in this modern, open-plan office. MacBride shared this space with several others.

"Ah, Dave. Come on in." Gene MacBride stood. "I'll introduce you around a bit later. Most of the team is out. Which is usually the case."

Gene gave Acting Detective Sergeant Parsons a friendly grin. He indicated a chair by Detective Subiyachi's desk in the far corner.

"Grab that one. We'll find you a desk shortly."

The wheels squeaked as Parsons dragged it over. Gene had been doing some thinking about a desk for Dave, and it wasn't as easy as it sounded. This area held four detectives, and squashing Parsons in there was going to be problematic. Yet it was better to have him right there, rather than at the far end of the building in some obscure cubicle that lacked all the plug-ins and services. If they shoved the outer partition outwards, it would free up some space, but make the passageway a little too narrow for comfort. It was his crew and upper management probably wouldn't say much, although there were the fire codes to consider.

MacBride sat down carefully. Lately his butt had taken on a kind of a red, raw, turkey-skin effect right in the vicinity of the tailbone. While normally not a vain man, and it was only slightly painful at times, for some reason he saw it as a sign of age.

It was incipient armchair warrior status.

And it bugged him. The notion that he might go in and explain aforesaid problem to a pharmacist, most likely an attractive twenty-two year-old female one, might have had something to do with this minor and yet obsessive mental irritation.

It was such a small thing. Gene actually blushed. He could feel it happening. Parsons appeared aware of how gingerly he lowered himself down. The guy had to look at something. Dave was looking shy and chewing on the bottom lip. He watched Gene carefully from below lids lowered slightly over his baby-blues. It was oddly charming in a forty-something year-old man. He seemed fit enough, with no big belly flapping down over his belt, and there was something of the tiger in his stance coming in.

"Thank you, Gene."

Dave had lavished on the aftershave. His shoes were shined and he was squeaky clean behind the ears.

Gene smiled again.

Parsons had pulled up his chair at a proper distance and on a good angle. Averting his eyes, he looked at the big screen on Gene's desk. There wasn't much there to look at except his plotting board, a slathering of light rectangles on his habitual dark background, and a few small notes. They had several (more like seventeen) murder investigations ongoing. They were possibly related, going by geographical factors and modus operandi, and while the perp had been profiled to some degree, MacBride was wondering about the timeline. There were no conflicts, and that was good. No one could be in two places at the same time. It took x amount of time to go from Point A to Point B. There were no close correlations between phases of the moon, weekends, statutory or known world-wide religious holidays. School was in for some incidents and out for some others. This one, if real, was definitely a slasher. Assuming the crimes were all relate, the religious angle, the sanctimony, the tendency to communicate, was missing. The crimes were still being described as unrelated in the media. They were all girls and young women of a certain age, the Nordic type. What the hell that meant, he had no idea. He had no hunches either way. The killings were all linked by being committed off-camera and without biometric correlations to anyone proven to be in the immediate areas. Going by known attributes, there were only so many people in the area at the time, and all others could be accounted for. All of their stories had been checked out and verified nine different ways. They were all clean. It had to be someone else. Someone was being very clever indeed...maybe. Such a number of unresolved cases carried its own weight.

It was a pretty puzzle.

But if they were all related, this one was good.

Really good.

Let Parsons stew for a moment. It would do him good to be humbled just a bit, and he needn't overdo it.

The trouble was that someone must have done it in each and every one of the cases, or possibly someone or two or three someones, had done all of them.

He reached over and closed the file.

He leaned back in his chair, exchanging a look with the guy.

MacBride picked up his coffee cup and had a quick sip. He looked at his watch, an anniversary gift from his wife Irene. The time to early retirement ticked down, but he ignored it as best he could.

"Okay. This is only a temporary assignment, but you've been very helpful so far." He cleared his throat. "If we have any success, naturally that would be good, and, I've already put a good word in for you."

Parsons nodded. Otherwise, he wouldn't even be here.

Off in the far distance, the sound of a kettle whistling rose above the hum of the lights and the whir of computer cooling fans. Someone coughed. There was the muffled hum of a few scattered folks working in their cubicles. The phone in a nearby cubicle beeped persistently, but there was nobody home and it wasn't all that loud. Francine's voice came from behind the partition as she greeted someone down the way, and then soft footfalls turned the corner. She whisked into the room with a coat over one arm and a cardboard cup in the other hand.

"Ah." Dropping his feet abruptly, Gene stood up, and Parsons stood up as well.

She hung up her coat. Gene made introductions as Francine pulled her heavily-padded work chair out of her space, which she had arranged in what she called a cockpit. It was very much like that, with everything adjustable and ergonomically-designed for long spells in the saddle.

More than anything, crimes were solved by information, its gathering, its analysis, and its cohesion. Run it through the machine, tabulate, and if a charge was justified, one would shortly be forthcoming. After that, it was just a matter of picking them up.

"So." Francine seemed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning. "We have some new leads."

"Yes, Francine."

Parsons nodded, licking his lips slightly. He had brought his own coffee, a large one from a popular chain operation, which saved time and dicking around. Gene allowed him time to struggle with the plastic tab, as Dave eventually tore it all the way across in a gaping V.

Those things could be a bastard at times. They could send men to Mars, but they still couldn't design a decent drinking tab.

"First one."

Gene manipulated his screen, bringing up another file, with another plotting board. This one was looking better now with a few entries.

Their new friend pointed at the most recent one.

"Yeah."

Dave Parsons stepped up to the plate, figuratively speaking.

"This is an odd-ball. For some obvious reasons it struck the computer that whoever stole this car had done it before. But the capability to jack this kind of security system is pretty rare—this guy's a real pro, right? There was even the bonus prize of a shit-load of Filter Kings in the back end."

The vehicle belonged to a salesman. Parsons took a quick sip. He was a sensible guy with a sensible explanation. One of the problems was that there were a few hundred suspects, and many of them had been off the radar and unaccounted-for, some of them for quite some time. They would mostly be pros, but a few talented amateurs were on that list. The amateurs were mostly dopers with a little patience and some skills in the hacking department. There were always people rotating off to incarceration, and always new people coming up. The newest were unknown quantities, and often anonymous, without even a handle or a street-name to go by.

A cargo aboard the vehicle was a double score, as far as a thief was concerned.

Parson's touched the rectangle and all the details, the make, the model, location, time of day, and the details on the property inside were revealed.

Francine nodded.

"Ah. They're expensive as all hell. Some high-pressure sales tactics, too."

Their frickin' robots came to your door and told you that you had won a free vacuuming job, any three rooms in the house. This was normally a five-hundred-dollar value, as inflation had been running a bit high these last few years.

They did a good job, too. She could attest to that herself, the only problem was getting them to leave. It wasn't easy to push them around, and she'd practically had to shoot the really forceful one just to get him to shut up. Intrigued, Francine had looked it up. It was all legal and everything. All you had to do was not let them in.

All you had to do was stand your ground, but of course no one wanted appear rude these days as it engendered all sorts of questions about your sociability-rating.

Parsons seemed very intelligent.

"That's right. But here's the weird part. The car was abandoned, hundreds of kilometres away. And the vacuum cleaners were still in the back."

"Not chopped?" Gene could see the point well enough. "And nothing missing. Huh."

That vehicle should have disappeared, forever, within ten minutes or a quarter of an hour at most, going by past event profiles. All the little identifying tags, radio and passive markers, tended to end up in the nearest sewer-drain, or maybe under a bridge somewhere. The whole process took remarkably little time. Twenty gang-bangers working together, all of them with their own tools and some fairly well organized, on-the-job training. Gangs had no manpower problem these days. With manpower always a problem, the cops would usually show up to an empty warehouse somewhere and find the crooks long gone.

The more ordinary thieves, simple loners or the new, zoot-suited gangstas, wouldn't steal a car just to get vacuum cleaners.

They'd smash some glass, grab a few and run, ripping the boxes apart to get at the stock tracking devices inside the packaging of everything they made these days.

Nowadays, buying hot items 'still in the box' was strictly a no-no and everybody knew it.

"No—and you would think a guy that could steal a car like that would know better. We've gotten some swabs, and hopefully we can identify him and find him."

Francine looked thoughtful.

"You keep saying him."

"Yeah--because if it's the robot, it's her first time. It's also a real leap of behaviour. And yet we know or believe she's capable of violence, maybe even proactive violence. I guess that's my thinking there."

Gene and Francine exchanged glances. They chewed on that one for a while.

"What's your main point?"

"Assuming a thief. Why didn't he take the car to a chop-shop? Why leave a signature? Whoever did this beat the latest in smart key and voice-recognition, and then just abandoned it?"

Parsons looked at Francine.

"Just taking the car took real skills. Joyrides are almost always in a parent's car, or one of the older models."

There were still a few of those around, in fact some of the suburban gangs loved to rip off old muscle cars and trash them. Owners confronted by a '69 Cuda wrapped around a telephone pole, or a Hemi with a blown engine, tended to cry when informed of the car's fate. The law prevented further restorations just to get them off the road. In that sense, the government had finally recognized what was euphemistically called 'historic climate flux in the Biblical sense,' as borne out by stuff every kid was taught to recite by heart in school nowadays.

"If he's still alive." Francine thought. "Or she."

Parsons nodded.

"There are no bodies unaccounted-for in the immediate vicinity. But—we might get some DNA from Nettles. That would be nice. A hair or a fragment of dry skin would be enough. Also, robots have taggants embedded in the skin, which follows a limited number of DNA patterns. The lab boys have found one or two." In his own opinion, it was not really enough to be conclusive. What he was saying was that it might not be the same robot.

Gene's mouth opened. There were a limited number of options for robot skin makers. Their repertoire was nothing like the population at large in terms of sample size, and there were only a small number of subcontractors. For human transplant, a genetically-neutral piece of skin was embedded with the patients own cells. It obviated the need for anti-rejection drugs, always hard on the system. He'd read all about it, just trying to get some kind of handle on what the hell they were trying to achieve. In the past, he'd been fully familiar with all kinds of human perps. But if robots were all new; criminal robots were unheard-of.

Up until now.

It made him feel better for some reason. Higher Authority had asked for Gene. They had their reasons.

Outstanding.

Francine gave Gene a look.

"I'm not suggesting anything. Not yet. But that robot looked damned strong."

Gene considered it. He sipped his coffee.

Parsons spoke.

"She's very resourceful. She didn't kill the muggers in the park."

Francine inclined her head.

Hardly conclusive, but it was an indicator.

Gene's mind rolled it around and around.

"If she surprised a thief in the act, and took the car off him, there's no incentive for him to report it." Parsons pointed at the screen, needing to do something with his nervous hands. "If he's alive, he can be found. Possibly, he might talk, to somebody. He might get picked up somewhere along the way."

Filed for future reference, in other words. Parsons had a thorough mind.

She'd certainly had the opportunity to kill. Nettles wasn't holding anything back either in that little shindig. Nettles was almost lucky he hadn't killed anyone. Self-defense, yes. But even so—he was in possession of stolen property, or at least missing property. The commission of a crime vitiated self-defense to a certain degree. Gene's mind went over it quickly, and not being a legal specialist, he'd have to inquire a little more deeply. A long list of old cases went through Gene's mind. It wasn't unprecedented, but in his line of work that was somebody else's problem.

The general principles were clear enough.

Parsons settled into his chair a little deeper. Now that he was on the scene, actually working, he could relax some. He'd been a bit nervy since getting the call. He went on.

"Also. The car was stolen about four kilometres due west of the rave party." That part of town was still within borough limits.

Gene nodded. The computer had picked it up as anomalous, a set of indicators that didn't add up.

"Okay." It was certainly interesting.

"Connect the dots." Parsons reached over and activated a map onscreen. "They've escaped the city. They've abandoned the car upstate."

It was still very much hypothetical.

Francine cleared her throat.

"Okay. Not going south, then." There were better ways to travel if they were going south. They would maybe use the highways, or they could hop a freight train, or simply ditch the vehicle and walk south on the Appalachian Trail.

Francine's eyebrows rose, but you couldn't exactly shrug it off. Stranger things had been attempted. With proper ID, they could fly, but so far no signs of that. The thoughts of going through the stringent airport security, with no avenue of escape if the wrong questions were asked, would be a daunting prospect.

Parsons smiled.

"Ah. But we have another stolen car." And his hand went to his pocket and he pulled a data-stick from his side jacket pocket. "It was stolen a good twenty kilometres away from where the station wagon was abandoned, but."

Rising, he looked at Gene.

"May I?" Glanced up. "The lady may be foraging on her own, so to speak, while Mister Nettles simply sits on a park bench somewhere."

Gene nodded and looked at Francine.

"Be my guest." His eyes came back. "Are the local cops getting any fingerprints, anything like that?"

Prints from a known crim would tend to rule out Betty and Scott as the thieves.

"Not really. But they're assuming a competent thief would wear gloves anyway." Parsons nodded on that thought. "We can ask them to have a look—but Betty Blue would be wiping anything down, steering wheel, door handles, anything she or Scott came in contact with."

'Of course."

Parsons located the socket on the side of the screen as Gene touched the virtual buttons to bring it up and open the file. A new box appeared on the time-line.

He quickly read off the details.

"Interesting."

This time it was a family vehicle, a six-wheel drive all-terrain monster. It must have been eight feet tall to the the light rack on top. Gene saw it as a passing phase, but people were really nuts these days and the advertising was even madder. Here was a family man, who honestly believed that it might be someday necessary to winch his vehicle (with the wife and kids in it?) up a six-hundred metre cliff judging by the highly-chromed front bumper accessory. They probably used the lights for tanning.

Francine got up, stepped in close and read it.

"So they ended up in Pennsylvania. That's where the car was dumped, anyways."

Parsons nodded.

"And not chopped, not flogged off anywhere. It's a long way from the point of origin for a joy-ride."

She looked at Parsons, sinking back into her seat.

"So where do you think they're going?"

He pursed up his lips to speak but Gene beat him to it.

"Canada—the only question is where. How do they plan on doing it?"

He met Parsons' eyes.

Parsons gave him an intensely earnest look.

"It's either that, or west. The top tier states are still pretty sparsely inhabited. If they try that, they will have to change their appearance and identity. All the roads up there do have cameras, and they have a better record of keeping them operating. But Canada is so much closer. There are places where they could cross by land—New Brunswick, southern Quebec. There are lots of hills and forests. The prairies are less likely. It's all open country out there. They're going the wrong way for anything east. But a river crossing, at night. Maybe."

Gene made him go back through the slides. On the U.S. side, the islands in the delta of the St. Clair River were all developed, but the Canadian side was a wall of bull-rushes with a screen of low trees in the background.

"Not the Niagara River?" Francine had seen it. "Or the St. Lawrence?"

Parsons looked thoughtful.

"No. There are much better places. More remote, with maybe less of a current." Parsons pointed, streaming a few slides. "Walpole Island. Shit, that's a couple of hundred metres in a rubber boat. They could almost do it on an air mattress. Or the Detroit River. Ah. Farther upstream, maybe."

Other than that; there was Mackinac, but Lake Michigan and Lake Superior seemed to offer some pretty big hurdles, not least of which was getting there undetected. Going around Chicago involved a long detour.

Dystroit. And why not? They might even go to ground there. There was all kinds of liberal underground activity up in that neck of the woods.

"Hmn." Gene considered.

He looked at the time of the theft, and when the discovery had been reported in the local police records. It was barely a day ago, and Parsons had been using his contacts well.

"Okay." His lips pursed. "It's still a small area. I'll call the Pennsylvania State Troopers, and the feds."

It was like a breath of fresh air.

"Let's see how many drones and other passive systems we can get on that."

Parsons pointed at Ohio, Indiana, northern Kentucky, and upstate New York as Gene nodded in comprehension. He nodded again when Parsons pointed at Vermont and the fellow's hand dropped to his lap.

Parsons sat up straighter, leaning forward to study the screen.

"All righty, then."

Gene spun around, leaned back, and his chair was angled perfectly to put his feet up on the end. Francine shifted away and Parsons rolled his chair to the left to give himself more room. Not unexpectedly, Parsons pulled out his own device and began flipping through pages and contacts. Gene noted the beginnings of sweat patches under his arms. Clearly, this meant a lot to him. He had the motivation, as the saying went.

He seemed like a pretty useful guy. First impressions are lasting ones. Especially if borne out by subsequent events. Gene's left hand reached for his desk-top multi-phone and after few seconds with the list, he was dialing his first number.

***

Letitia's personal hatchet man and a few trusted souls had built a replica classroom in a very short period of time. A dozen of their newest employees sat straight, fresh-faced and optimistic. They had their hands in their lap, knees close together, and their feet flat on the floor. Their eyes followed her around the room.

She bit back any sign of approval.

"All right. Today's session involves the simulation of an unknown threat. Suffice it to say that we are cooperating with authorities, and we are on nationwide lookout for a small number of unidentified persons, working with minimal inputs so far."

Each student, still in their probationary period of a full year here at SimTech, had been cleared on moral grounds, although some of them were a bit skimpy on their technical qualifications.

Sometimes this was a good thing. It made them expendable.

All of them had talent, and all of them were the cheerful, optimistic sort that had no trouble seeing the good in everyone. More than anything, they had a foot in the door at SimTech, and must have had high hopes for the future.

They were looking for jobs for life and that was good.

They might even succeed.

Across the front of the room, behind a rollaway three-metre blackboard, the big screen took up the entire upper half of the front wall, and each student had a console of three screens. On the sides were a half dozen more screens on the left, while the right wall was blackboard near the front, and corkboard back to the rear corner and the doorway. They had a few memos up on there already. Closets and a small coffee nook completed the layout. In this part of the SimTech campus, the ceiling was an impressive honeycomb of reinforced concrete, ducts, tubes and light fixtures which emitted a pleasant and reassuring buzz.

Boyd came in with long rolls of cable dangling from one hand and a tool belt on his waist.

"Can it wait until later?"

"Uh, I suppose. But it's just the TV, the news feed. I'll keep it quiet."

Letitia nodded. It was part of the act as much as anything. Everything was all very new here.

Twenty-four eyes followed her every move as she picked up chalk and a long maple pointer.

If the universe really was a hologram, then life was just a game-space and nothing really mattered anymore. There were no unchanging truths and hence no morality. All of that was just a way of keeping the dummies in line and docile.

It was a kind of justification.

She smiled brightly and then let it drop.

"Okay. Our job here is to filter data. There's a lot of it, as you can imagine. We're taking inputs, theoretically, from the entire United States, as well as a broad swath of our neighbours' surveillance uptake, both in Canada and in Mexico."

There was a collective squirm and some muttering when the implications of this set in.

"Ma'am?"

"Call me Chief. Yes?"

"That's a lot of data."

"Ah, yes, in fact it's very consumptive of machine-time, which is why this is only a simulation. All of our data is simply generated by random human algorithms, and it merely provides us with the environment in which to conduct our exercise. Even so, we are sucking up to one-third of system resources during this exercise, so pay attention.'

This was greeted by a nervous chuckle from the young man in question. His name tag read Ned.

The end of her pointer touched the blackboard and her first images popped up.

"Subject one. Caucasian male, approximately thirty-eight years old, quite tall, thinning brown hair, brown eyes. He's also blind."

She engaged their eyes for a second.

Boyd was down on hands and knees, working inside the rear closet which took up two-thirds of the back wall.

"Subject two. Female robot—"

There were gasps and giggles.

"Don't laugh. It could happen. They are traveling together. We're looking for anomalies, as they have disappeared right off the radar."

A young woman in the front row nodded sagely.

"Marnie. What sort of anomalies are we looking for?"

Marnie sat up.

"Well, we could look for anomalous hits. That would be IDs with no point of origin, in the case of newly-created citizen profiles."

Letitia nodded, beaming at the girl. She had this one all picked out for some nascent leadership qualities. As long as no crime had been committed recently in that area, these kinds of hits were merely anomalous. No one went looking when there was no real reason.

"We can measure sightings over a time-line. Too big a jump, and it's a giveaway."

"What do you mean?"

Some guy named Rick's hand shot up.

"They couldn't have gotten from point A to point B in the time allotted using available means."

She pointed at Rick.

He stood, taking a quick glance down at his screen. He was a surreptitious reader, probably not realizing she could monitor all the screens in the room from her own big desk, sloping there, and up off the ground a good ways, like a big drawing table. All of them were educated. This guy was a few pages into the manual already.

Nice.

She put the chalk down and went to her desk.

"Well, Chief. There could be a new ID but with no prior activity. A ghost citizen. The same could be said for vehicles—a new fake number and yet no backup history to go along with it." He looked at the others for reassurance. "A car appears on a road. It goes past a reader and yet, where did it ah, emanate from?"

"Very good. Go on."

"Kids have been chipped for years now. A kid, a bit too young, one with a new chip, one out of sequence, might be an illegal immigrant, or it must have a proper data trail to account for it."

He looked uncertainly around at a classmate to his right, who stared at her readout as if mesmerized.

"...I'm saying he'd have to have a visa and some kind of status listed with other agencies to account for the discrepancy."

Letitia nodded, encouraging them with a sweeping glance.

Without rising, the red-haired girl spoke up. Arlene.

"There would be obvious frauds, those who had simply stolen ID. They would not match the biometrics on the card, but in some circumstances the card is enough to do a certain job..."

She was on thin ice and she knew it, but she had the idea. The kid went on to talk about drones, street-level surveillance, vehicular movements, store-front cameras, Neighbourhood Watch cameras, money machines, access points. The kid knew her stuff to some degree.

Letitia picked another face, another name tag.

"Ed."

"On an older vehicle, the card might get you in and the motor started. What you do after that is pretty chancy." This young man, bearded and beaded and tattooed, had the air of experience, like someone who knew what he was talking about.

The corners of her mouth tugged upwards.

He blushed at the first sign of approval.

It struck Letitia that she might be a kind of mother-figure, at least to some of them.

"Very good. Next."

She pointed at the guy with the ring in his nose.

At SimTech, employees were trained in complementary pairs. They were ones and twos, rights and lefts. She'd have them put the buds in with their study-partners and head-jack each other next, and then they could go to full immersion and the next part of the exercise.

Chapter Fourteen

Thomas Da Busey Khan loved his little cubbyhole, way downtown where there was constant amusement, movement, and customers by the minute.

Chicago was his town and he loved her so. It was also his fourth major city in as many years, but he had a way of being familiar, blending in right from the start and becoming a fixture with his grab-bags of dollar candies and three smokes for a ten-spot.

There were three mega-high-schools within a four-block radius.

Taking in shoes to be mended, reading tea leaves, repairing digital scales and phones and wristwatches, he did it all, including his three-minute tattoo-removal. The Tarot card-reading machine just inside the vestibule was pure genius, and if someone wanted moloko—a good old fashioned moloko, one needled with a little something extra, Thomas was just your man. He knew everybody and his phone list was extensive. The real money was in what were euphemistically called life-hacks. Nothing too serious, just getting people out of their pesky tele-communication service contracts, (Thomas was also a paralegal and notary public,) help in disappearing when the bailiff found you, and all that sort of thing. A quick makeover on the ID when your teeth no longer matched the photo-chip embedded in your BMs as people called them. Even your shit had biometrics in it these days, a recent study demonstrating an uncanny match-up between recent fast-food purchases and any number of trace elements in the typical sample.

To say that Mister Khan was good with the SEO would be an understatement and he wasn't too particular with his methods either. One of his little companies did a fair bit of consulting. All off-shore stuff. The whole IT thing fit in a briefcase, as Thomas was wont to say and you could always build a few websites for people and then leave town.

The whole place was four hundred fifty square feet in area. He had just enough space to hang out on a bar stool, and sit in behind a glass case, displaying every scratch-and-sniff lottery ticket under the flag. Behind Thomas was a pop cooler, and a few gum-pushers were kind enough to rent a square foot of display space on the end.

All of this had been enough for a down payment on Gerta. Unfortunately not enough to keep up the payments on her, but that was just a minor everyday challenge for one such as he, and not unanticipated right from the start. To be honest. It was all in the plan, and a clever and nefarious one it was, even if he did say so himself.

More than anything, he loved Gerta, and when a buzzing alarm went off on his pocket-device, his heart beat a little faster. Gerta was the love of his pathetic little life, and he knew it.

It was with a slathering of excuses that he pushed a customer out the door, reaching for his pork-pie hat and locking and bolting his stainless steel shutters. He shoved his hat in the packsack. He mounted his bike with the orange flag on an old CB-antenna whip, made sure his bicycle clips were in place, gave his cone-shaped orange and white-checkered helmet a rakish push slightly up on his forehead, and entered midday traffic nervously.

But changes in Gerta's system were troubling indeed. It could only mean one thing, and while his firewalls and detectors were very good, there was always the possibility of somebody better—much better, somewhere out there in the real world.

He'd worked with some of them over the years. The thought that one of them might have finally caught up to him was deathly frightening.

The physical exertion of just making it home was enough to contain him for the moment.

***

Betty was blocking a new threat. She had been for some time. She told Scott, but he barely nodded, still half in shock. He didn't understand that the persistence of the threat was annoying and took up valuable system resources.

Scott had his own concerns.

It had been a long week and he was flagging, even just sitting there on the passenger seat, just going down the road. They'd had this vehicle something like thirteen hours, which seemed like a long time. If the talkative GPS system was any real indication, they were making very good time, even though they were avoiding anything that looked like a proper highway.

Judging by the thumps, the bums and the tilting back and forth of the vehicle, the roads they were using must be very rough indeed.

He kept taking a long slow breath, and then blasting it out in a forceful and yet despairing manner. It helped a bit. It was like he needed more oxygen than he was getting.

Scott was absolutely fucking beat.

The two of them needed rest more than anything.

"Honey. Can we slow down a bit now?"

The big vehicle jounced up, down, and from side to side.

"In a bit, Honey."

She seemed very tense, very focused. Scott had no idea that they were cutting through a state forest in Illinois, or what had once been one. This once-popular state park was reverting, and not in a good way judging by sagging house trailers and shanties tucked in small clearings under the trees.

All the roads were rutted clay, and not a name or number marked anywhere...she was going strictly on her own reckoning, but while a compass bearing was one thing, none of the roads was being very cooperative.

She didn't even answer him.

Scott shut up for a while. The car skidded to a halt when she was confronted by an unfamiliar sight.

"Turn...left." The GPS was adamant, but she wasn't buying it at first.

She checked all other sources before deciding, but there were still no road signs. Finally she went, accelerating slowly as if suspecting a trap. She kept it at about fifty kilometres an hour.

This road seemed to be maintained, and she relaxed somewhat.

There were increasing signs of a big city ahead, even on this obscure two-lane black-top running through regenerating forest-like scrub and small, subsistence farm plots. Her mouth opened and she grabbed his arm beside her as a pale, attenuated form, a household robot bringing out the trash paused by the side of the road.

Straightening up, it met her eyes in a silent flash of infrared communication. She kept her head straight ahead but in the mirror the unit turned and followed the receding car with its gaze.

"Okay, Scott. It looks like we might have a problem."

***

Mister Boyd entered the room, pleased by their industry. The form tied on the plywood board writhed weakly against his bonds. The décor was a testament to their honorable trade.

"Hello."

The pair, a small, bird-like man and an incredibly fat woman, both clad in 1920s bathing attire, nodded politely.

"Is there gonna be many more?" She had been looking forward to Rio.

They had plane tickets and everything. It was their wedding anniversary, their twentieth.

Boyd shook his head.

"One maybe later tonight. After that, we have two or three possibilities. One or two of them might work out."

"Nothing we can't handle."

He inclined his head politely.

"There's no art any more." The lady didn't seem particularly incensed, although her eye roved over the rack, the tongs and the pokers most longingly.

The fire wasn't even lit, and the room was deliciously cool after being outside. What she wouldn't give to pull a fingernail or a couple of teeth. He nodded and grinned, raising his eyebrows.

Without bidding, they unbound the head for him. They made a good team.

Grabbing the man's wet forelock, he pulled the face up to have a look. White-rimmed, staring eyes begged his mercy.

"Hey—aren't you the guy who invented the double-click virus...?" He laughed harshly, dropped the head, and then lovingly restored the muslin around the face as the wet round 'O' of a mouth sucked and gasped like a wounded carp against the thin fabric. "I still have that on my personal machine, at home, you bastard."

The wheezing, sucking sound was music. Real music. The boy-hacker whimpered.

Boyd stood on a patch of concrete that was drier than the rest of the room, harsh shadows dancing in the glare of a single, powerful overhead spotlight. That painful light would be all their prisoner would be able to see through the thin and soaking muslin. He wiped his fingers dry on his pant legs.

The prisoner shivered and moaned.

"Mister Khan."

"I—I don't know anything. Please, oh, please. Oh, God. Please."

"Ah, but you do, Mister Khan. You were found in unauthorized possession of one of our products. You can't make the payments, you return the item, Mister Khan. It's not such a difficult concept, eh? This is a very serious offense, Mister Khan. How did you break our security protocols?"

"I've already told you—"

"You've been inside and around, all around inside of our systems. You know all about our systems, Mister Khan."

You're a little too good at what you do, Mister Khan.

Cooperation was not ideal, for how could you ever trust the information if it wasn't wrung out of them? At best, you would get just enough to satisfy you—and then a lot of bullshit about how somebody else made them do it...but SimTech wanted the truth.

And he had been truthful, too, only they needed to be thorough. Mister Khan had been engaged in a little sexual role-playing, of a distinctly anti-social nature, but he must have had the software package all written and ready to be loaded. The time-frame was too short. He made two bi-weekly payments, and then hey, presto!

He and the little lady went off the grid.

Once he had his robot lady friend all tied up with clothesline wire, it was a simple matter to duct-tape her head to the table, switch her off with some kind of universal infrared keying device, and then cut in. The lab boys and girls would have the chance to study all of Khan's work, but Mr. Boyd was really more into the soft sciences, a nice way of saying he was a people person.

Every once in a while, you had to lean on somebody, and he was at least properly trained.

Somebody had to write that kiddie-fuck program as well. Mister Khan had all the essential qualifications.

Having broken swiftly, Mister Khan was insistent that no one else knew about what he was doing and that he hadn't had any help at all. Keeping a secret was his best defense—he said that more than once. Mister Khan had done any number of things in the unit's programming, including the stoppage of payments, moving to another jurisdiction, and somehow evading detection, all the while still maintaining the usefulness of the device. All of this was troubling to upper management, and Boyd could see their point. It might even relate to the Betty Blue disappearance, the original rationale for Plan Nine's invocation. Mr. Khan was extremely talented—and he didn't work for the company. This alone was troubling.

Their unit, another 9100-series model, was now secured. Testing and forensic analysis were underway.

Honestly, a few red flags should have been raised when Khan ordered such a youthful model, and his store-front down-town wasn't much of a blind when an actual person took a look at it. The business was a hole-in-the-wall, in a location that at least sounded prestigious.

What they had discovered, was that their programming was less than secure when faced by a sophisticated programmer such as Khan. It was the sort of thing that could not go into a written report, and hence his role as facilitator here today.

He nodded at the others and they set to filling up another bucket of ice-cold water.

Mister Khan sobbed and moaned, thrashing wildly against the restraints.

"Goodbye, Mister Khan."

"No! No! Please..."

"Fucking hackers."

The door thudded firmly into place behind Mister Boyd.

The poor man didn't even have the breath to scream.

Should have thought of that first, eh.

You should have stayed home.

As he walked from the ravine lodge, set well off from the main campus, the sky overhead was a brilliant oxygen-blue and the air crisp and clean after their recent spate of early June rain-showers.

There was a spring in his step.

Birds sang, one or two robotic bees buzzed in the decorative border plants along the walkway and it was all very well to be alive.

***

Boyd had an office, a big corner one down low on the north-east side of the main administrative building. The smoking area lay down below and all he could see were treetops.

He could rarely be found there, and it was a barren space with little more than a French grey carpet, a brown desk, and the usual modern amenities, plug-ins, screens, and access ports. With no real need for secretarial help these days, the only other entities who ever came in the office were the cleaning robots. Purposely of low IQ and equipped with only the simplest of attachments, they couldn't turn on his machine or get into his drawer even if they wanted to—which they were incapable of even imagining.

Mister Boyd sat in the leather executive chair and glanced at an icon on his primary screen.

Missus Bennett was in her office. The thumbnail status showed her alone but on the computer.

He beeped her and the form looked up, a hand reached, and then she was with fully him. It was a nice little feature of the firm's in-house network to be able to see if someone was busy or if they had someone with them.

"Yes, Mister Boyd?"

"I just wanted to tell you that while negotiations are ongoing, the Indian contract should be resolved shortly."

"This is a secure line, Mister Boyd." Her eyes glistened and there were some signs of stress in her posture.

I know, I know.

The trouble is, I don't trust anybody.

Especially not you, nor anyone else involved with this company. Most companies, in fact...

"I won't keep you long, Letitia. But that previous matter has borne some results."

"Okay, I've got a minute."

"The product was compromised, but it was outside interference. The only real liabilities to us are perceptual."

"It's our machine, after all." And if the story hit the news feeds, the company might look bad for a day, unless one of the nine-day media wonders went on a witch-hunt.

"Yes. But it was definitely hacked. The lab people are looking it over now, but it is clearly not the result of a malfunction."

"Ah. I get it."

"Yes."

"And what are our Indian friends saying about that?"

"Pretty much the same story. We have to analyze the systems a little more thoroughly—our Indian friends are definitely a little more talented than we thought."

"Meaning?"

"He, ah, wreaked havoc in there." It was the first time he had ever used the expression. "Yet my feeling is that there never was a problem with the machine itself."

"Okay. Thank you, Mister Boyd."

He nodded.

"Letitia. How are our students doing?"

"They're following car thefts and looking for anomalous, one-time, one-card-one-purchases, burner phones, purchases that are small but leave no fore and after trail."

Boyd nodded again.

She gave him a wry look.

"Any suggestions as to how we could narrow it down a little?"

"Sooner or later they have to go through one of our bottle-necks."

Boyd wasn't a tech guy. He was a soldier and thought in purely tactical and strategic terms.

He might even be good at it.

"Let assume the worst case scenario. Betty Blue had a major malfunction—and we don't know what it is. Her movements appear supremely logical, and yet there must be some underlying motivation behind it."

"So what are you saying?" She knew exactly what Boyd was saying.

"For want of a better term, what if Betty goes postal?"

She stared at her screen and hence into his bland and ingenuous mien.

"I'm sorry. What do you mean?"

"What if Betty is not simply reacting to some stimulus, internal or external, but is behaving proactively, according to some plan?"

Letitia looked away from him.

"She wants something, Letitia. If only we knew what that was."

Letitia Bennett's eyebrows rose, her eyes fell to her keypad and the security chief was suddenly one troubled individual. Boyd broke off and stood up to get his briefcase and an untraceable weapon.

He had another raid this evening, hopefully leading to another subject to interrogate. Water-boarding, because it didn't leave any physical marks or verifiable evidence, was strictly legal and that was always handy.

But the odds were this was just another hacker and other than some unique and peculiar skills, as often as not they didn't know a thing otherwise. He still hadn't broached his biggest concern. How was it possible for the runaways not to have been spotted, with all eyes on the lookout, and almost universal coverage?

That one was his idea as well.

Boyd hated wasting everybody's time like that.

Chapter Fifteen

Scott was drunk.

The booze wasn't helping. It was like his skin just wanted to crawl off of him and run away and hide somewhere. He knew the sensation.

Here it was again—and that thought alone was enough to rekindle the turmoil. Because he knew exactly what it could do to him.

It was just fear, and fear alone won't kill you—or at least it shouldn't. Simply knowing that didn't seem to be of much help right then.

There was nowhere to run because they were already running.

There was nowhere to go because there was nowhere to go.

What was shocking was that Betty must have known that.

The realization was too much for him.

Scott hadn't had a serious anxiety attack in twelve or thirteen years. The thing was not to let it revolve around in your head.

But he was awfully close to having one now.

He felt sick to his stomach all of a sudden. His heart and respiration surged.

"Oh, God. Oh, Baby. How in the fucking hell are we ever going to get out of this?"

"I don't know, Scott."

In spite of all odds, they were still at large. Betty had the feeling the noose was closing tighter, and yet she would be hard-pressed to explain why. Scott expected a hard hand to clamp onto his neck at any second, and yet he would be hard-pressed to explain why too.

It was just a feeling they had. They'd been too lucky so far.

They had simply stolen car after car and driven clear across Middle America with nary a hitch.

It could not be that easy. It just couldn't.

"We really ought to do this more often." Even the joke sounded sick.

She smiled absently and went over to the window. They were on the nineteenth floor of a major hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

Scott sat in an upholstered chair, listening to the TV news. It was the usual litany of house fires, traffic incidents and unarmed peaceniks going postal, becoming unruly, or losing control of their demeanor and having to be shot at their workplace, or in a school, sometimes a mall or a theatre somewhere. It's a good thing the Volunteers and their fanatical counterparts, the Vigilantes, were everywhere.

"They always say the same thing." Her voice was pensive, far away.

"Huh. Yeah. He was polite, kept to himself and never gave anybody any trouble." Scott laughed. "Until now!"

"No. I meant Mars. This is a giant leap for humankind..." She understood Scott's point well enough. "But really just a lot of hoopla about a money-pit that will never bring any benefits to the poor, tired, huddled masses."

But the fact was; that it was always a similar kind of profile. If he wasn't blind, Scott might have fit that profile a little too well himself, and so he never really joined into the conversation.

What was he supposed to do?

Condemning them seemed superfluous, and if they really were mentally ill, why was it so hard to spot the syndrome? Some guy goes into the departmental office, spends half his weekly income on the penalties for not buying guns, you know what? Somebody somewhere should be asking a few questions.

In his experience it was just too easy to slip through or be hammered through the cracks in the system.

A forgotten man himself, he had to be careful not to extend too much sympathy, at least in conversation with other people. Besides, all that had changed now.

His life meant something now that he had taken the outlaw trail.

Something real.

The news was all about the landing on Mars, which always seemed breathlessly imminent judging by the commentators, but still hadn't happened. It was the longest segment so far, he noticed, but then it was all hot and positive news, a bit of a rarity these days in spite of persistent spin and creative editing.

At one time, Scott would have been enthralled. Right now he had bigger fish to fry.

"Baby."

"Yes, Scott?"

"Will you marry me?"

Her laugh tinkled out and cut through his gloomy mood in a way that only she had.

It was something special that they shared.

Scott flushed. A tired smile crept over his face.

"Well?"

"I'm sorry, dear. It's just that you caught me by surprise—of course I'll marry you." She heaved a sigh and came over and sat on the arm of his chair. "But we need some kind of resolution here. We need to get out of this bloody predicament, the good old U.S. of A."

"When?" He didn't want to say that would be never. "Let's do it now—while we're right here."

In Nevada, they took on all comers, and just over the border in Colorado, people could marry in threesomes and multi-role relationships, which Scott had heard of but didn't pretend to understand. But a man could marry two women, or two men would marry three women. One of those women could be married to another man, and one of the men, or more, might have outside attachments. Each of their roles was clearly defined before going into it, with some rather wordy prenuptial agreements in place. In Colorado, you could marry three men and a dog.

"What? Are you serious?"

"Yes. Come on, Betty. Look. If that doesn't throw a fuck into their minds, I don't know what will—"

Her jaw dropped.

Of course.

"Scott. My mad lover...my man. My boyfriend! My real, live boyfriend. You, sir, are a genius." She leaned in close and began kissing his neck and his ear.

She couldn't believe she just said that. He wasn't putting up much of a struggle.

"All right, all right." His arm slid up and he pulled her down onto him. "But don't think you're going to distract me, not for a minute."

The attitude didn't last long, but he didn't feel too hard done by it.

***

"What?" Olympia Cartier was incredulous.

"I'm afraid it's true, Madame." Mister Carlson acted unsurprised.

Yet he was as surprised as anyone. When he discovered the discrepancy, he'd been quite shocked. Arithmetic was such a simple little thing, and it just seemed so unlikely.

It was only upon deeper inquiry that he found the problem was quite extensive. He mentally reviewed the pages, something not difficult for one of his job description. It didn't take long to get a few answers, none of which eased his mind or settled his worries. Somehow the entries had been blocked, but sooner or later the system had to balance.

In the end, there was only one conclusion to be drawn. Betty Blue had been cooking the books.

Olympia was in her chair, with Mister Carlson looking over her shoulder, a shaky and slender finger pointing out each and every entry. This room was austerity itself, with none of the gilt and rococo of the rest of the house. This room was strictly business. Personal, household business, but business nevertheless.

"Here's one. Here. Here and here." He was thoroughly nonplussed by it.

There was no rational explanation. None of their system intruder alerts had gone off, and the series seemed to go back a couple of months.

"Oh, my, God." Olympia was shocked.

Her colour rose. She'd sent Betty off on some of these errands herself.

While each entry didn't seem to be for all that much money, it was never in round figures. It was one-thousand-ninety-four-dollars here and eight-thousand-forty-four-sixty-one somewhere else. Betty must have been sneaking out on her own; making unauthorized purchases, and keeping the change. There were just too many of them, and at all different times of day.

Mr. Carlson pointed at an unfamiliar symbol.

"What's that?"

"She's done some online transfers." He swallowed, standing upright now and looking over her head into a kind of infinity.

"Oh. My, God."

Her fingers flew across the keys.

"What, is the one common element in each and every one of these discrepancies?" Mister Carlson, his voice rising in a kind of triumph, paused, and looked at his employer.

She was not only dumbfounded, but deeply hurt by this revelation.

Her eyes bored into the screen, and then came up and she searched his face.

"Betty. Betty Blue."

Betty Blue, whom she had loved and trusted and taken into her own household as if she was her very own daughter. Betty Blue had been systematically ripping off the household accounts, and for all they knew, this might be just the tip of the iceberg.

"It's a good thing I spotted it." Mister Carlson couldn't keep a note of smugness out of his voice and his demeanor.

Looking back, he had to admit that there had always been something just a little bit different about that one.

True, he had made allowances. They had made her feel welcome, a valued member of the household. It wasn't just her obvious and latent sexual qualities. As a professional, he could rise above all of that. He'd had one or two qualms. After all, young girls had crushes and all that sort of thing. In the end, nothing had come of it, and he had come to terms with her to some extent.

She had her independent streak, and yet deferred to him in a respectful fashion when it was appropriate, not least of which was in front of junior staff.

No, it was just her sheer intelligence, the competence...her coolness, and her poise. There was always that mysterious something, call it humour, call it a sense or spirit, in behind those crystalline eyes. He'd sensed a certain kind of trouble there, and if the trouble that came wasn't exactly the same as the trouble you expected, it still goes to show you...

It seemed as if his instincts had been pretty good, right from the start.

Olympia's jaw worked back and forth.

Her hand stabbed forth and she shut down that page.

She gave Mister Carlson an angry look.

"Get me that insurance broker on the phone."

"Yes, Missus Cartier."

No wonder they were so eager to settle the claim—there was no telling how much damage an out-of-control robot might cause. She was still seething after that last little incident to show any mercy this time around.

Her mind raced. She knew all about business from listening to Doyle, of course, and she was not entirely without experience on her own.

Betty Blue hadn't been recovered. She was still out there, somewhere—Olympia's gut instinct was pretty adamant about that. If she had simply failed or malfunctioned, she would have been found by now.

It's what she honestly believed. That Betty was out there, somewhere, all on her own. And that she could be found, and brought home, and that maybe, just maybe, things could get back to normal.

Olympia was determined to get to the bottom of this if it frickin' killed her.

"Argh."

She slumped back in the seat, heart pounding.

And if they weren't careful, they would be liable for whatever damage Betty did...

"Hold on. Belay that order."

"Missus Cartier?"

Her mouth was a firm line, lips closed and working back and forth against each other.

"No. We'd better talk to Doyle about this. And maybe our lawyer."

"Yes, that's a good idea. Would you like me to call the police?"

"Yes!"

S.O.P.

Standard Operating Procedure, as Doyle called it.

She really couldn't think of what else to do. Somebody over there was going to get a real blast of shit.

***

Betty had done her homework. With her extensive database, and her quick mimicry of what she saw around her, she took extra pains with Scott's appearance.

She had dandified her man. Scott had no idea of what he looked like these days, small consolation for his worries.

Scott smelled wonderful, something he never would have said about himself. That was his old life. No matter what happened, he would never go back to that life. How in the hell had he endured it?

It was a tough question.

Everything from the mousse in his hair, to the silky-smooth shave, to the powder on his neck from her trim and styling, everything augured for success.

"Okay. Let's get this little escapade on the road."

As usual, he was taking her word for a lot of things. If Betty said it was three o'clock in the morning, then it was. If Betty said this particular funeral director, a justice of the peace and minister of this particular roadside wedding chapel wasn't too particular on details and that all he really cared about was getting paid, cash up front was best, Scott wasn't inclined to ask too many questions.

Questions just lead to heartbreak.

On Scott's insistence, they had faked up another identity, only in this instance there was a twist. He was listed as Scott Nettles, of Scottsdale Arizona. There actually was such a person, only three years older than himself. To their good fortune, according to Betty the gentleman bore a passing resemblance to Scott.

With Betty's eyes having a built-in scanning feature, and her innate ability to hack in and around almost anything, because after all it mirrored her own inner self, they could change the image, the code, the ID scan and pix to anything or anyone they wanted.

It was another good omen, but that other Scott Nettles was unmarried. It voided one possible pitfall. According to Betty, the State and the states had never really achieved the promise of full integration of all network resources. For one thing, it would have made the delivery of social services a little too efficient. Also according to Betty, it would have prevented corruption. Since any crime that was not committed by private individuals but government employees and their contractors was by definition corruption, it was easy to see why that full integration must never happen.

It would have made things a little too difficult for them. And of course, they were the ones most familiar with the systems—and they had the most access to them and the vast cash flow that sustained this fermenting nation through good times and dark. There might have been a few legitimate issues as well, including mis-matched hardware, software and operating systems. Then there were all the usual privacy paranoias.

"So. Are you sticking with Betty Blue?"

"Yes. Scott. I am. That's my name, and...I guess maybe that's all a person really has sometimes."

"We got each other, Babe."

She was just a blur to him. His guts churned but he had to trust to something. Pure luck, or God, or something.

She took his elbow, closing the hotel room door behind them. He bent and found a suitcase. Scott was getting really good at acting as if he was sighted. With her fussing nervously and tapping along on her usual high-heels, it wasn't as hard as it looked—another one of those damned sight puns, he thought.

There were altogether too many of those in the world already.

Why don't people come up with some deaf puns, or dumb puns, or fucking lost my penis in an unfortunate smelting incident sort of puns—anything, really.

Almost anything would do.

***

"Well. I'll be damned."

"You said that already." Francine looked over Parsons' shoulder.

He had just gotten off the phone with Olympia Cartier, hopping mad and demanding some sort of precipitate action.

To watch Parsons fawn and ingratiate and supplicate with the old bitch was an inspiration.

She had new respect for him with each passing moment.

Gene was expected momentarily, held up for forty minutes so far by a high-speed monorail accident. Due to a spate of such suicide incidents, trains were equipped with what amounted to a cow-catcher on the front. Unfortunately, the crowd of hopeful suicides was a bit bigger this morning than the makers had anticipated, nor the government oversight committee for that matter.

One of the fortunates had gone in through the windshield, which, even at seventy-five millimetres thick, could not withstand the weight of a human body striking it at an effective two-hundred-forty-five kilometres an hour.

Suicide was (of course) a criminal act when the state needed all hands and bodies to feed the gaping maw of the economy. As someone once said, every crime is a political statement. As for the interest rate on all of those unpaid student loans, that was all nice and legal. They chatted back and forth as they checked their devices and a plethora of paper memos. That was one dinosaur that just never seemed to die.

Gene came in just then. He slung his coat at the rack and sauntered over.

Francine knew instantly he'd gotten laid last night. They'd given him a birthday cake just the day before.

'Best we can for you—unless we can find a deaf, dumb and blind volunteer.' Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Say no more.

It was always an occasion.

"Hey. So. We have a breakthrough."

Parsons spoke first and Francine nodded brightly.

Gene looked intrigued.

"Explain, please."

They looked at each other and grinned, but Parsons took it as a matter of course.

Francine already liked the guy and thought he might do well in the unit.

No problemo.

His weird accents, occasionally thrown in, and out-of-decade slang terms brought a certain spontaneous charm to working with him in the field.

"Your hot and sexy, three-point-eight million dollar robot girl, uh, Gene, has embezzled herself a tidy little dowry. Out of the household accounts."

"What!"

Francine nodded sagely.

Olympia had been reluctant to send the data, but on the advice her her lawyer, she had no choice. The insurance company was insisting and she was trapped. Parsons for one would like to see the look on her face next year sometime, when they went to renew their household policy.

Yeah, fuck, eh.

Who says there is no God?

"And if you look at the time-line, it all fits nicely. Not only that, but it looks as if our girl Betty bugged out at a convenient time. See, she's given herself a few days head start. But she knew, knowing their accounting system as well as she did, that the year-end balance would catch all of this."

"And the Cartiers have to do their income taxes." Gene nodded.

"True. But they do that separately. No, it's just a quarterly thing, and since they moved into that residence during the month of June, that is when their year-end balance would strike. Ah, the thirtieth of June."

"Ah. Okay. I get you."

"Here's where it gets a little sick. Betty also had access—possibly still has, access to all sorts of other information. Financial information—"

Gene gaped a bit.

"What...kind of financial information?"

"It's not just the household, but anyone who dealt with the household. Suppliers, bank account numbers, just imagine with her capabilities. She has partials on all of them. She might not be able to hack the big-box PIN numbers. But she might be able to figure it out, you know, some other way around the problem, just by studying the outer layers."

And they all knew what a sieve the internet was in terms of prohibited information, not to mention under-the radar private networks.

Gene's mind boggled.

He wondered about Betty Blue.

It was a good question, really.

But he wondered just exactly how much she knew.

Even more so, he wondered just exactly what she thought of all this.

Seriously, robots (or to be more technically accurate, cyborgs) were supposed to be incapable of insanity. They were supposed to be incapable of irrationality.

She must have something going on in her head. There had to be some little thing that her manufacturers had just plain missed or something.

"What's next?"

"Ah."

Francine sat up straight.

Parsons went back to their time-line.

"Connect the dots."

It showed a series of car-thefts, more-or-less exactly as predicted, once the vector settled down into a straight line.

"Nice."

Gene reached to his belt pouch and pulled out his device.

A short squirt of something very cold shot through his gizzard.

"Holy crap." He looked up at them. "But, I do have to call the chief."

They nodded encouragingly. Make the call, Gene.

Chapter Sixteen

SimTech security chief Letitia Bennett was working in her office when the call came through from Edwin, supervising Plan Nine activities down in the classrooms.

"What's up, Edwin?" Informality with junior employees was one of her strengths.

They loved her for it.

"Bingo. I think we've nailed it."

"Oh, really."

"Yes. We have confirmed they are creating new IDs and credit cards. So far they have not been reported for fraud."

"How is that possible?"

"Because they've been paying them off just as quickly—wirelessly, electronically, from a host of identities."

Letitia sat up, and had to stop herself from reaching for the icon showing Boyd's desk.

She hesitated.

"Go on—please."

"She's got a shit-load of bank accounts. We've only been able to crack a small number of them. She's got a few hundred here, a grand there, ten thousand somewhere else. It's a good trick if you want to travel incognito. With her memory, it's no challenge. A human crook would almost have no choice but to keep extensive notes and records. If an account gets shut down, which hasn't happened yet, as far as we can determine, she just tries another. All the retailers want to get paid, and the bank just wants to see the transaction go through so they can get the fee. No crimes have been reported. Ergo, no crimes have been investigated because no crimes have been committed. No credit numbers banned or blocked or prohibited. The list of bad things that don't happen is extensive. They're off the radar insofar as that goes."

"What about the IDs?"

He shook his head in awe.

"Making them up as they go along, adding in back history and entire family trees. And, as we well know, her internal capacity is vast—and very, very quick."

It was a jolt, all right, but SimTech had built her—and their own resources were considerable. Now that they had something to go on, it was only a matter of time. The real challenge was to nail her first, ahead of the cops, ahead of the crims, ahead of the competition and the hackers.

"Interesting!" She had questions, and Edwin, with his short, thick black hair and bland face, every inch the professional educator, looked at her with alert blue eyes of the darkest shade from behind his red, horn-rimmed, spectacles/Googgs.

She thought for a second. Taken along with the fact that Betty Blue had been stealing her employer blind, it made sense. She hadn't shared that with the Plan Nine team or their supervisors as there was no real reason to do so. The source of that data was highly-confidential, but with a secure and private window inside of Mister Carlson's head, not to mention every cop-robot ever made by the firm, it was simple enough.

"What about the cars?"

"The cars were stolen, used as briefly as possible, and then abandoned where they wouldn't be found too quickly." He glanced at his notes and then over his shoulder, giving someone, presumably their team, a smile and a nod. "The one where they tumbled it down an overgrown ravine was classic. She knew exactly where she was going on that one. When they stole a car, it was from one of several sources. Our team has some good imaginations. Yet we've confirmed enough of these. They stole from high-theft areas, information freely available from any number of sources. Betty could access that, under a false IP. They stole cars from folks who were not using them or out of contact. One was camping, one family was on a canoe trip, one was from someone sleeping in the very motel-room it was stolen from...er, outside of."

"Okay."

He went on. Some of the trips were very short, which implied extensive knowledge and planning.

"One car was taken from a used car lot. It was a Saturday night. It was a small town, and the vehicle was taken from a back row—not the shiny, big-ticket items lined up along the street. It was just a beater no one was interested in." They were long gone, the vehicle already abandoned before the crime was even reported.

"Hmn."

"One of them was an old car, a valuable antique. That was in a storage unit. The owner didn't know it was gone until the police contacted them." That car went about forty kilometres and was abandoned according to the available records.

"So. It can be done then—"

"Yes. If you had access to reams of personal data, data of the most obscure and trivial kind, quite frankly, you could run circles around the system. And if you had time and resources to sift through it." What might be difficult for one human being would be child's play to one such as Betty.

She had more questions.

"But going from one jurisdiction to another, using public roads—how are they doing that?"

"Ah. Yes." Edwin took a breath, again consulting his notes. "Surprisingly, there are long stretches of secondary roads with no cameras. Some are dirt, some are clay, and some are not maintained in winter. Hell, some are not maintained even in summer. Not even product and delivery trackers. Those are all satellite, right? The real trick is to link the sections up and stay on them for any distance. But this explains the remarkably eccentric track they're leaving."

He showed one mysterious track, where a vehicle left a road, drove across a corn-field, and then popped out onto another secondary road.

According to Edwin, Betty must have been aware that the next intersection had a camera.

It was only over the course of many hours, several days in fact, that they had been able to get a general trend. There was no telling when they might zip off on another tangent. Since the team were still looking backwards, it was hard to guess forwards, although fuzzy logic would dictate to some extent.

Edwin faded in her attention as the ramifications whirled around and around in her head.

The trail, so far as they had been able to reconstruct it—once they had the GPS data from recovered vehicles, (another neat trick, and only slightly illegal) showed an incredible zigzagging, back and forth, left and right and left and right again.

"When they came to a bottleneck, they simply abandoned the vehicle."

"...and then they went across country?"

"Yes, Missus Bennett. Or, they were using phony IDs, including a high-powered chip. Betty could simply hold it in her hand and maybe, well...all they would have to do is to interfere with the signal from her own transponder-chip. Let's say they can't shut it off. You can't cut it out. You don't have the skills, right? Just jam it, even though an alarm might sound somewhere. Once you're over the wire—slum folks call it 'going outlaw,' they could just walk down the street until they were past the choke-point and then steal another car. Bugger off at a high rate of speed while technicians somewhere are still analyzing what happened."

While the penalties were high, so were the stakes. Some folks took the risk. Those were either the really dangerous ones, foreign and domestic terrorists, psychopaths on a mission, or folks with a lot to lose. Too many offences were capital offences these days, but no one was interested in Edwin's opinion on that.

In his opinion, it simply drove up violent crime statistics because there was nothing to be gained by surrender or cooperation. It was almost as if someone had a vested interest in promoting crime, and especially violent crime. It was strange, but the new capital-theft category the Justice System was now using had really been a mistake in Edwin's opinion.

He cleared his throat.

"Mad as it seems, if you're nervy enough, you can beat the chip-scanners. One case involved a person wearing a soft lead wrapper around their foot. That's where they're implanted in Eire. They're not uniform around the world, which causes a few headaches when traveling. They had a fake chip in their hand and approached the reader with their arm extended. The reading device was presented with one warm body and one strong signal. In that case, they only needed to get through the one checkpoint. How long Betty Blue and this Nettles character can keep it up, is a very good question."

They were also heading out into far more open country.

Letitia could hear their young team members chatting excitedly in the background, still following up leads and by the sounds of it enjoying the challenge immensely. They would all be convinced of their future with the company by this time.

She chose her words.

"Well. Our criminals, the subjects, must have some very good skills and equipment."

"Absolutely, Missus Bennett. It's not easy to fake IDs, chips and vehicle transponders. The cars are the easy part, I'm told, but it really is a tough job—the usual method is to grab the car and chop-shop it within the minimum time-frame. Ten minutes and off, is their motto, no matter how many desirable bits and pieces are left behind."

And if the police didn't find it within their own maximum time-frame, too much information was constantly being poured into the stream. They had to move on. They wrote a report and forgot about it. Items on their case list were constantly being 'depreciated' in terms of priority. The highest priorities got dealt with first. There simply wasn't time to resolve all of them; and homicide had a higher priority than theft of a vehicle, or frickin' vacuum cleaners, or expensive robots that reportedly walked off on their own.

The subjects were gaming those algorithms very well so far.

There was another crime always being committed, and cops spent the bulk of their resources in areas where they thought it would do the most good. Or at least some good.

Unless a vehicle tripped a sensor with its transponder, it was as good as invisible—no one would be looking for it in the good, old-fashioned way, via radio calls, shift bulletins and vehicle descriptions. No one used their eyes anymore. Cops still pulled people over, routine traffic stops and the like. But Betty would take pains to see that it didn't happen. All she had to do was to signal every turn and drive the speed limit. Make sure all lights and signals were working. More than anything make sure those transponder codes were all legit. It was a wonder they put license plates on them at all these days, but of course the department of motor vehicles had to sell the taxpayers something tangible and the license plate was a personal trophy of sorts, what with the cost of operating a vehicle and everything. The real tag was a string of data loaded into the car's transponder. The real tag was read by a short-range system mounted on the cop car's dashboard.

"How come none of our SimTech products have spotted them?"

"Either they're very lucky, or I don't know." Edwin wasn't particularly troubled. "I can only make educated guesses."

The existing systems should suffice, if enough machine time was devoted to the problem. In the middle of Iowa, there wouldn't be all that many robots and cyborgs walking down the street at any given time. The odds were worse than Letitia perhaps properly understood. It was also the kind of material that Betty Blue would be able to access freely.

"Sooner or later, they will be spotted. But it is much more sparsely populated out there, and it's not exactly a high-income area." There were only so many known SimTech products in the area, and most of those would be engaged in their regular duties. While it was technically feasible, it wasn't very smart to try and hack the competition's machines and use their eyes. Most of those unit's duties were indoors, sales and service, waiting tables, housemaid duty, et cetera.

Sooner or later they must be caught, Edwin told Letitia.

Letitia nodded.

"Very well. I'll pass all this up the ladder. Thank our people for me, please. You're doing some very important work."

***

Mister Scruffles, looking devastating as always in his jacket and ruff, scampered around everyone's ankles and sniffed with particular interest at Betty's feet.

It was too bad Mister Nettles was blind, thought Rose Downie, her little doggy was a prime attraction, one that set this establishment off over a hundred others on this street alone.

"Yap! Yap!"

"Shush."

The animal came over and fell on its side beside her piano bench. It lay there with its tongue hanging out, knowing the routine very well, only looking up from time to time as if to check on how things were going.

The chapel was larger, and emptier than expected. They should have brought their own audience. Yet the tone and the atmosphere, the sounds and the smells, were loaded, like long wet branches bearing some heavy fruit.

Scott was beginning to catch on, having to fight for calm and for air. Scott forced himself not to breathe for a while. He was hyperventilating. He swallowed convulsively, trying to stand up straight and look right, and at the same time wishing he could see this for himself.

It was the moment of a lifetime, and Betty's hurriedly-whispered instructions didn't give the full flavour of the thing. Clad in glowing white chiffon, Betty stood in stark contrast to Scott in his rented dark grey tuxedo. She searched his face. No sign of fear and that was good.

The Reverend Fallon Downie was brutally handsome, with a dimple on the chin, long, thin black hair slicked back with some kind of pomade, and a pencil-thin mustache. The other half of the dynamic duo that ran the place was gently playing the wedding march, looking over, head back, wearing an inane grin that Scott couldn't benefit from and Betty ignored. Rose was a slender blonde lady of indeterminate age, with a breathy, whispery voice, wide cheekbones and a pointed chin. She had big, velvet-painting-children blue eyes. She gave the impression of hanging on to every word, with not a thought of her own to contribute.

Her questions had all been asked a million times. Someone had once said Rose had no unexpressed thoughts.

Everything in the world was all new to Scott and Betty.

They faced each other, holding hands. She had eyes only for him, and Scott was listening for all it was worth in case he made some bone-headed response.

"...blah-blah-blah...blah-blah-blah...blah-blah...richer, poorer...sickness and health...blah-blah..."

Tall, and wearing a Colonel Sanders white suit and black shoestring tie, the only thing missing was the monocle. It took but a moment for each party to place a ring on the other's finger; a good sale and one the Reverend would have liked to have seen every day. Every so often it happened, and he was wise to stock a few rings.

"Do you, Betty Blue, take this man, Scott Nettles, to be your lawfully-wedded husband?"

"I do."

"And do you, Scott Nettles, take this woman, Betty Blue, to be your lawfully-wedded wife?"

"I do—I do."

The lone spectator, apparently waiting for their partner to show up going by the black tuxedo and creamy white ruff, coughed quietly and wiped a tear from his craggy, eighty year-old face, a lived-in face, a face that could hold a three-day rain. He reached for his big yellow handkerchief.

"You, sir, may now kiss the bride." He turned to Betty with a big smile and threw his arms up and out. "And you, my dear, you may now kiss the groom."

Scott and Betty proceeded to do just that.

"God Bless you, my children. For you, Mister and Missus Scott Nettles, this is the beginning of a whole new life."

The organ music swelled, the lady playing it swayed from side to side and the Reverend beamed at the happy couple in unfeigned approval.

"Yap! Yap!"

They ignored Mister Scruffles, who uttered a profound sigh, wagged his tail and looked on in hope and wonder.

***

Not unnaturally, Gene MacBride wanted to be in on the kill.

While the Vegas cops were pretty good about such things, nailing enough credit for his own department was a valid consideration these days, and when had it ever been any different?

Armed with state and federal warrants for the arrest of Scott Nettles and the robot known as Betty Blue—that one was like pulling teeth from the judge, Gene, Francine, and Parsons hovered above Las Vegas. The lights of the city stretched out all around down below, off to the distant horizon.

The helicopter had a characteristic vibration, the noise was insane, even with the headgear and hearing protection. They were strapped in and the pilot was throwing the thing around like a fighter jock as they tried to pinpoint the location.

Francine peered out the side window with her high-powered Googgs and Parsons was in behind the pilot and copilot, talking a mile a minute.

Gene wasn't nearly as excited as he should have been. First, the odds of them getting out of the desert city without being spotted were nil, secondly, it was almost like it was too easy. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bushes, he thought. It was like he wasn't quite ready for them yet.

Gene had developed a sneaking affection for Betty Blue, and Mister Nettles, for that matter.

They had made his life interesting, if only for a little while.

"Ah, we've got some kind of action."

Gene's pulse picked up on Dave's words.

"Oh...?"

He sat up as straight as he could in his seat, and taking his scope, took a look out the window at the wedding chapel.

"What kind of action?"

Vegas police were having a busy night, or they would have vectored them in on the chapel already.

There were no good landing places nearby, and Gene wanted to make this arrest personally.

"We have three parties getting out of a vehicle—no, wait, there's more over there. This doesn't look good, boss."

Gene spotted them.

"Fuck."

He grabbed his com device, already tuned to dispatch downtown where they awaited his word.

"Emergency! I repeat, emergency! Roll all available units, destination, Made In Heaven Wedding Chapel." He blurted out the address as well as he remembered it.

Gene shouted at the pilot, drawing a startled look.

"Put this damned thing down on the ground. Now, Mister. Or I'll have you on guard duty at a homeless people's recreation camp for the rest of your life."

"But sir!"

"Do it!"

The pilots engaged each other in a look and then turned away, looking for the biggest parking lot they could find. A rooftop would do, if that's the way the man wanted it.

Let that son of a bitch drop the last three or four metres on his own, for all they cared.

***

After their kiss, Betty unglued herself from Scott.

"Honey, there's something I've been meaning to tell you."

"You're pregnant." He turned to where the Reverend was. "I'll bet you didn't see that one coming, eh, Bud?"

A quick sob ripped from deep in her gizzard and then she was clinging to Scott, almost knocking him over backwards in her need.

"Oh, my children." Reverend Downie stepped in for a quick group hug, and even his wife, the tip of her nose quivering and hastily throwing back her piano-bench, came over to get in on all the free emotions going around.

"Oh, dear." Missus Downie took Betty by the shoulders and led her over to a pew as the Reverend pumped Scott's hand in delight.

"You hear that? She's pregnant!" With their deep and abiding love of the unborn, Mister and Missus Downie were right in love with their latest blessed couple. "Well, don't that beat all."

"I—I'm going to be a dad." Scott choked up for a moment.

Reverend Downie stepped back, still holding Scott's hand and looking for his reaction—it occurred to him that Betty's pronouncement was a bit unconventional.

Scott's face lit, even as the first tears sprung from the ducts.

"I'm going to be a dad! I'm going to be a dad!" Yanking his hand free, Scott, barging around like a drunken cow in a ladies' shoe store, began dancing a jig, an imbalanced rendition still reminiscent of a Highland Fling, but dangerous enough to onlookers for all of that and the Reverend stepped back.

Betty and Missus Downie were having girlie hugs and lots of whispering on the front pew, and he beamed at them, quickly grabbing Scott when he hit the top step of the low stage that was their marriage platform.

"Whoa, young fellow. You're no good to anyone if you break your neck—"

It was right about then, as the lone spectator in the back row applauded with an exaggerated golf clap, that the door burst open and men in long black coats, dark glasses and carrying some of the finest assault shotguns that money could buy, and then one of them fired a shot into the ceiling. In dramatic counterpoint, a puff of white ceiling tile dust fell from above.

Everything came screeching to a halt and there was a shocked silence.

***

Boyd and his apprentice hatchet-people Amity Sloan and Bengt Armitage had Betty Blue and Scott Nettles in custody. The pair were slumped side-by-side on the front pew, and the other three were face-down on the highly-polished tiles in front of the marriage platform.

The dog, one Mister Scruffles according to their sources, came racing out from under the pews where he had initially hidden in panic and with a quick lunge, bit Amity on the ankle.

"Wa, yew danged sun of a be-atch!" With a quick squeeze of the trigger on her S.P.A.Z. 12 Mark III automatic assault shotgun, she blew the indignant dog's head off.

What had been intended to solve the problem, left the headless dog zinging around the room, bouncing off of things and leaving a big red squelchy mark everywhere it hit. She fired again, and this time the thing was flung sideways and slammed into a wall.

Rosie was crying unashamedly, and Fallon and the other gentlemen were cussing and swearing and declaring undying vengeance.

Again, the doors burst open.

Again, someone fired a shot into the ceiling. (And again, a puff of dust came down from the ceiling.)

With the back-up perps outside in custody, Gene MacBride strode masterfully into the room as the trio froze. With the room flooding with bulky people in scuffed blue armour, resistance was clearly futile.

Gene looked over at the dead dog. He looked at Amity.

"Right. You'll pay for that." Proffering a hand, he accepted her weapon.

The other two didn't put up a fight.

Gene turned, and Francine took a quick step to avoid being bowled over. Parsons merely looked vindicated—but a promotion looked very promising right about then.

He looked at the unhappy couple on the font pew, holding hands and with Mister Nettles clearly in shock and wondering if the end of the world had come.

Her eyes met his.

"Betty Blue, I presume."

Her eyes fell and it was all he could not to crow.

Chapter Seventeen

An employee of one of the more prominent nationwide ambulance chasers, holding a white plastic-board placard, struggled through the cordon. Gene thought he saw a credit note slipped into an officer's side pouch. The man peeled off, raced through a gap in between the two cars, with Gene and his immediate circle standing there at Betty's door. Theirs would be the second vehicle, with Mister Nettles and a uniformed officer all ready to go.

The law firm's name and number were on the card as Betty stared straight ahead and Gene was reaching for a weapon in his surprise.

They stood out front in a press of officers, armoured and unarmoured, plain-clothed and uniformed.

The suspects, the subjects, and Betty Blue, unclassifiable by any of the crime manuals written so far in all of history, each had the back seat of a cruiser to themselves. Three heavily-armed citizens detained outside the building had been questioned and then released.

With no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing, there wasn't much they could charge them with. LVPD assured Gene that they would be taking an interest in future in these particular individuals, and with that he had to be content.

Gene had toyed with the idea of chaining himself to Betty Blue by the wrist—strange how it wasn't chain her to me.

His feet still hurt from hitting the tarmac, and there was this knot of tension in his gut.

She was impressive up close.

"Betty. Do us all a favour and just be cool, okay?"

It was the one and only time she looked at Gene, right into his eyes, thereby acknowledging him in some way. It was one of those moments. His body tensed in the vicinity of the kidneys, it was that visceral. He wouldn't give a penny for her thoughts under the circumstances. She looked away, and yet outwardly her emotions were neutral—completely absent in a kind of personal shield.

It was strictly by the book with these two. Gene had a lot invested in this case, and in his career so far as far as that went.

You had to keep them separated, although later in the debriefing process people might be put in a room together just to hear them talk. The machine would pick through it and look for code, slang, cant, argot, jive-talk, and try and analyze tone and mood.

In the unlikely event they said anything of significance the machine would pick up on that too. Even just talk of home, family, friends, domestic matters, could be a source of valuable intelligence. The wives of criminals had to get their grocery money from somewhere. He wondered how that applied in this case. The nuances, the subtleties—the permutations were beginning to spin, now that he had them in the bucket.

"Okay, Inspector MacBride. We're off to the holding facility with these bozos—" The LVPD officer was referring to the Downie's, being held as material witnesses.

Federal law prohibited them from being released on their own recognizance. Trials were too expensive to have reluctant witnesses changing their story and mucking things up halfway through. They would be thoroughly debriefed.

"And the others?"

"Let 'em walk." Gene raised a hand. "Except for the dog killer."

The LVPD sergeant nodded. She would be charged with Canicide in the Second Degree, as it was difficult to see how it could have been premeditated.

However, the law was clear and they had the chapel video recordings and the Downie's testimony. That one looked like a goner. With cooperation and some kind of a plea deal, Amity would be looking at ninety-nine-years-to-life. Luckily for her, it was only the one count.

"Yeah. That's a bad rap, nice of you guys to nab that one for us." He gave Parsons and Francine appreciative looks. "I've never seen such accurate profiling and prediction—nice work, and all the way from down east as well. We all, uh, thank you very much."

There were nods and mumbles from the nearest members of the LVPD.

"Yeah." It seemed pretty unanimous all around.

Gene coughed into his hand, giving Parsons and Francine a quick glance.

They had a dog killer in custody, and these folks were from the East Coast. Simple logic.

That was really good police work, and some of the LVPD popped the face-plate and took honest-to-goodness looks at the prodigies.

It was best to remain humble, of course. Such admiration never lasted long, in Gene's experience.

Boyd and Armitage, both with a major employer and tasked by them with the recovery of certain stolen goods, really hadn't done anything illegal. Empowered to make a citizen's arrest, they had simply been holding Betty and the Nettles character until they could turn him over to authorities. Armitage looked familiar to Gene for some reason. He was one devilishly handsome man. He might have been photographed in front of a chic Hollywood restaurant on some TV gossip show a few years back.

He had that kind of weightless, worthless look about him.

When they said they were holding them for authorities, they were referring to Mister Nettles, mostly. As for the dog, they said it bit Amity, but the law was clear and dogs were sacred animals. They, honestly, were just taking Betty Blue back to the factory.

While they would be happy to cooperate in providing evidence and testimony in a trial, they had Betty in custody.

SimTech was a big company and Gene was being diplomatic. He listed as much as he talked.

Inspector MacBride knew all about how this particular robot had run amuck. Or amok, in the proper spelling. Naturally SimTech would be pleased to dispose of her and remit all damages. Naturally, this would be after making her available for expert witnesses of the prosecution to implement their own objective analysis. They agreed with everything Gene said, and were very polite—like fuckin' Canadians or something.

Gene wasn't quite buying it.

Not by a long shot.

"All right." He turned to Francine and Parsons.

They were just piling into the cars to take Betty Blue and Scott Nettles to a secure federal holding facility, the only place Gene would feel safe with such a volatile cargo. They weren't armoured, unlike most of the LVPD, and this was one valuable pair of runaways. They were still trying to get a flight. Parsons looked up from Gene's phone screen and shook his head: still no luck.

Parsons rode with Nettles. Gene and Francine were in with Betty, whose stony face ignored them.

Francine gave an odd look. Her device was buzzing and rumbling in her belt pouch.

"What? I though I told them—" She pulled it out and looked at the screen, eyebrows rising.

"Shit."

She looked over at Gene.

"What is it?"

"Argh. Writs."

"What! Oh. Writs." His hand flew up to his face and he rubbed his whiskered chin.

Writs.

His own device hummed in his hip pocket just then and he pulled it out and had a look.

"Who in the hell?" It was the Right-to-Life Foundation.

His jaw dropped as he opened the document and read the first paragraphs.

"Oh. My. God."

Francine was slumped in the right hand side of the car, with Betty staring straight ahead in between them.

Francine gave a brief shake of her head.

"What now, Boss?"

"The Right-to-Life Foundation has filed a brief on behalf of the unborn fetus of Betty Blue and Scott Nettles." Gene's face lifted and he found himself transfixed by those deadly eyes as the robot herself turned to regard him.

He tried not to swallow and Francine sat up a little.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Blue. I didn't mean to upset you."

Gene snapped the thing off and stuffed it into his pocket again.

He thought she would speak, say, 'That's Mizz Blue...'

To you, you son of a bitch.

One could hardly blame her.

He looked at the back of their driver's dummy plastic head. If nothing else, it gave you something to talk at.

"Driver. Can you please step on it? We haven't got all night."

***

One and a half hours later, they were aboard the Silver Bird Airlines flight. Gene contacted the chief as it looked like they'd be on the ramp a while.

"You got 'em! Good work." The chief, porcine and expectant in a calm and self-assured manner, sat up straight.

This would be all over the nightly news.

"Can you give me a thumbnail briefing?"

"Ah—I don't know about that, Chief." Gene was appalled.

That was the trouble with electing chiefs of police, he supposed—anyone could win, especially with the party-political machinery backing him up.

"There are certain issues involved. We're already getting writs."

"Writs?" The chief's face clouded.

One of them was from a foundation founded about four minutes ago, noted Gene. They were all getting in on the act. It would do wonders for fund-raising. This had all the hallmarks of a hot-button issue. Until the next one came along.

"So...what are the issues involved?" The chief went up just a tad in Gene's estimation.

"Hmn, Well. Is Betty Blue stolen property? If so, then Mister Nettles may be in a lot of trouble. And yet I really haven't charged the gentleman with anything yet."

They could keep him in custody for up to fourteen days, in his particular citizen-class, which was a straight D-minus all across the board. They could ding him for up to ninety days on Mental Health Suspicion, but that seemed premature.

The chief pursed his lips as if to speak, but Gene soldiered on.

"Is Betty Blue Mister and Missus Cartier's property? If so, is she property with a mind of her own—otherwise the Cartiers are looking at some public liabilities, not to mention possible charges. I'm sort of thinking reckless endangerment or negligence. This is all pie in the sky at the present moment. I wouldn't mind some guidance from the Public Prosecutor on this one. The assault victims do have rights. They have made certain sworn statements. They can also afford some kind of ramshackle legal assistance."

The chief's eyes went left...

"Is a mind sufficient to indicate life? Up until now, all the experts say no. But was this a malfunction, or was it simply the irrational act of a living individual in human terms?"

If it was a malfunction, the company that built the machine might be looking at some serious liabilities. They would begin by denying everything. It wasn't all that hard to read the future sometimes. Gene thought the chief read the notes provided, as the man's eyes began to glaze over. Apparently not.

The chief's eyes centered up and the jaw dropped, and then his eyes slid to the right.

"Is Betty a new form of life? Then we must define her rights before we can try her." Gene's eyes glittered.

Francine sat rigid. She couldn't believe her ears.

"Does Betty have the right to self determination? Did she cause damage, or did she steal from her employer? So far, we have no complaint from the Cartiers—not a signed one, anyway."

The chief licked his lips, staring at Gene fixedly.

"Even when she first walked off. What was that...desertion? Of what, and from what?"

"Okay. Go on." So the bugger was listening then.

Gene took a breath.

"What about their unborn child."

The chief interjected.

"And the rights of those who feel it is the anti-Christ...okay, okay. I'm starting to get it now, Gene." The chief settled back in his chair.

He picked up a stylus and made notes!

Unbelievable.

"...surely a state-ordered abortion would be premature, and would possibly violate Mister Nettles' rights, and there are advocacy groups already on us on that score."

The chief winced.

"Yeah—I hear you."

"It might violate Betty's rights as well. There's nothing illegal about a robot being a surrogate-uterus for a human family. They used to do it in test-tubes, you know what I mean, anyways, but this way is so much more...ah, social. It's not a frickin' glass tube for conception, the baby can hear the mother's heart and all of that. But not one has ever had custodial rights. They have, so far as we know, never borne a child for their own sakes and on their own initiative."

It was a bit obscure, but the chief knew what he meant. Gene was aware of Parsons' ears twitching as he tried not to stare too obviously over Gene's shoulder at the screen.

"Congratulations, incidentally." The chief's tone was priceless.

Gene grinned.

"Don't forget that they are now married. That one makes my head spin."

And Nettles had used somebody else's name, which was the same as his name. Only the address and the birth date were wrong. On the other hand, people got married under professional and new names all the time. But how in the hell would it look in court? Mister Scott Nettles is charged with pretending to be...(drum roll please)...Mister Scott Nettles. The jury would laugh their heads off, the prosecution would immediately look foolish, and the case would look frivolous, and everyone knew exactly how that would go. Who cared, really? But identity was a serious issue.

Francine was madly typing on her own device.

'Uterus.'

Gene covered his mouth for a moment, tempted to bite the back of his hand or something.

The chief was being patient, but it wouldn't last.

"Gene."

"Ah, sorry, sir. Ah, the uterus is another issue."

"What?"

Parsons, eavesdropping as best he could, cringed at the tone.

"The uterus is a human uterus, grown in a lab, installed in a product, and owned by Mister and Missus Cartier."

The chief wilted, knowing the implications couldn't be good.

"This, ah, raises another whole can of worms. If there is a controversy about whether a woman has control, or any sort of rights at all regarding her own uterus, let's just think about this for a moment. Whose uterus is it? Can they have joint ownership, or just who exactly paid that bill...?"

The chief was trying to follow along, and at the same time appalled.

"Whoa. Run that by me again? You mean Mister and Missus Cartier, right?"

Gene nodded.

"What if some jury decides that Betty Blue has the right to do this? What if a jury decides that Missus Cartier has the right to do it, and somebody else comes along, and a trial by law determines that the thing is a threat to humanity. Their lawyer will advise them to fight it every step of the way. It is, after all, only their right to own an appliance that is involved..."

He looked the chief straight in the eye, although he was close to running out of steam.

"I can't help thinking that the insurance company, I forget the name of the company, if the claim had been settled, would...in my sort of opinion, own Betty Blue as scrap. That might have turned out to be a real bargain for them. At some point, a corporation would own that kid."

Gene had just about had it, by this point.

"As far as I know, it is still illegal to own another person. Even parents can't do that, chief."

It would be precedent-setting law, wouldn't it?

"This case is pure lawyer-food, all the way, chief."

Gene heaved a deep sigh and quit while he was still ahead of the curve. If robots were unpredictable, and had minds of their own, then they would either become uninsurable, like life insurance for soldiers, or the rates would skyrocket. This had vast commercial impact, now that the things were becoming ubiquitous.

The chiefs hands went up to his head, then they slowly fell again.

"Gene. Only God can create life. That's a Constitutional issue, one that had already been defined."

Gene nodded as Francine exhaled in a rush.

Shit. He was right. Score one for the chief.

"It's better if we just let everybody else do the talking for a while, sir. Let them define the terms and the agenda."

In the meantime, Gene would pray for enlightenment.

The chief thought on it, and Gene reflected that this was no time to bring up the issue of slavery. Plantation owners with slave labour owned the children of their slaves. A good lawyer might argue that while slavery was illegal, the products of a self-replicating machine could be owned by somebody or some corporate entity somewhere. Even then, they still might cite plantation law as precedent for the legal concepts involved. Law had to come from somewhere.

Were robots slaves?

No—they were machines.

Until Betty Blue came along.

"So what in the hell are we going to do?"

Gene sighed deeply.

"We'll be back in a couple of hours, sir. In the meantime—"

"Yes?"

"I could really use a good cup of tea." He needed that cup of tea very, very badly.

"Hmn, hmn. What are the suspects saying, if anything?"

"Betty Blue just ignores us and stares straight ahead. Yet I don't think she's catatonic or anything like that. She has ruthless self-control. As for Mister Nettles, he's quite vocal. Nothing we can really use so far."

"Vocal?"

"Ah, yes, sir."

One row ahead on the other side of the aisle where he could be shot by both Parsons and Francine easily, Mister Nettles' ears and neck burned red. There was nothing wrong with his hearing.

"And where do you plan on holding them, Gene?"

"Oh, Lord. Some place where nobody can get at them, chief. Any ideas on that score would be greatly appreciated."

The chief gave a short, sharp bob of the chin.

"I'll put my thinking cap on."

Gene nodded. The chief meant it quite literally, but Gene had never been able to overcome the squeamish thought of plugging a nine-volt battery into your head.

Whatever gets you through the night, he thought after signing off.

***

The cat-shot was a kick in the lower back as always, and the climb out at seventy degrees, hanging upside-down in the straps, along with the usual buffeting, only made his mood darken.

They were cruising through the night sky at ninety thousand feet, thankfully, right side up now. They had the back row of the cabin all to themselves thanks to experienced and cooperative flight attendants, only one of which was a robot.

Parsons was eyeing up Francine's leftover steak, and the half of a baked potato still sitting in her tray.

"Go ahead." He took the platter and she put up the in-flight table and then adjusted her seat in the reclining position.

"Gene. Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Honestly, if they made it through airport security..."

"With the sniffers and the dogs and all the frickin' human security, we're lucky we made it on the plane."

Gene and Francine laughed. Parsons had a point.

Gene kept his voice down.

"Mizz Blue. Are there any weapons, sharp implements, or explosive devices, fireworks, anything at all, that maybe I should know about in these suitcases?" Mr. Nettles' knapsack had been curiously disappointing.

She ignored him. Nettles turned to bellow.

It was the first class compartment, about a third full of passengers, so anyone could hear him.

"No, asshole."

There were a few chuckles from other passengers, male and female, (mostly human beings but one or two robots to be observed as well). No kids in there, and thank the good Lord Almighty for that.

"Don't mind him, ladies and gentlemen. He's just having a bad day." There were more laughs and whispers back and forth.

"Dave."

"Ah, yes, sir." Parsons reddened slightly and settled more firmly back into his seat as unobtrusively as possible.

"Thank you, Mister Nettles."

Nettles shut up too.

Passengers had initially been curious to see Nettles chained in the aisle seat, but it wasn't so outlandish. Pretty much everyone had heard of the U.S. Marshalls and how they transported federal prisoners. It was actually pretty common fare in film and television, so they knew all about it.

Having gagged down at least some of his own meal, after the service robot took his tray away, Gene's boredom and curiosity got the better of him. Betty and Scott's suitcases were on the seat beside him. On an impulse, he took that seat and with one bag on the floor, he put the other on the seat between him and Francine as Parsons goggled at it.

Shouldn't they wait for the lab? But the things had to be secured. What with finding a secure facility, body-searching the prisoners, signing them in, signing them out, then airport security, it had been just go-go-go for the last hour and a half. He glanced at his watch.

Crikey! But it really was like that sometimes.

"You can take some pictures if you like."

She just grimaced.

He snapped on a pair of rubber gloves.

Gene opened the first one, and quickly rifled through it.

"All clothes. Toothpaste. Shampoo. Oh, look." He held up a box clearly labeled theatrical makeup. "Hmn. I wonder if that was used in the commission of an indictable offence."

"Nice." Francine noted the presence of some grubby-looking rubber masks.

They were underneath everything.

"Hmn." Gene put it all back for later analysis and then set that one aside.

He put the other case up.

"It's not even as heavy as the first one."

On opening the bag, he began pulling out what were clearly tools or instruments of a kind.

One of them was a simple, phone-sized device with a glass bead seated in a round orifice, and a big slot on one end.

"Huh!" Parsons nodded sharply. "That's what all the best car thieves are using these days. It's infrared. There's probably a small, serrated bar on the other end---here, let me show you."

Gene passed it over.

Parsons squinted, eyeing up the back side of it, and then with a small click they saw it extend.

"What's that?"

Dave handed it over.

"You shove that into the door-lock, and tiny sensors reconfigure the metal in the probe to resemble the original key. All the while, the device is interrogating the car's chip, hacking in through that avenue, and it's, ah, pretty amazing what they can actually do. One way or another, they're getting in."

According to Dave, the probe would open anything that accepted a key or had a simple, consumer-type code access. You only got so much security for your dollar. There was a slot on the other end for reading cards, and then a fake card was created using the same ID codes. This could be inserted into certain card readers, but all the major bank machines and ATMs were apparently wise to them. Smaller retail operations would be the targets. If a thief opened a car, and found a purse, they were smart enough not to steal the card. Hence, the victim often didn't know the car had been entered and the card copied. It was only when they got their end of the month bill or checked their balance that the shocking spend was revealed.

That's what the fraudsters called it—a spin or a spend, depending on what part of the country you were in.

The creative criminal just found other ways, he said. These days everyone's device accepted data from cards, sticks, probes, and once you got into the home computer, or their personal account somewhere, all you had to do was to hack the passwords and PIN numbers. The average person didn't pay enough attention to that sort of thing, Dave explained.

Her mouth opened as she examined the thing. Her eyes slid over to Gene.

"This probably belonged to the original thief."

"Yeah—maybe. But she impresses me as the flexible type. I mean, in her planning." The fact was that the pair had eluded them for days, and in the ordinary, run of the mill type of criminal activity, that just didn't happen.

The system might not detect a crime. It might not identify a suspect. Not all crimes got reported or recorded. But when they did, the system was pretty good about finding someone when they wanted them.

The nightly news was jammed with coverage of pursuits, high-speed chases, and then there were all of the reality-based TV shows where these incredibly stupid people were getting picked off all over the place. It was a funny thing, but people never seemed to learn.

"What in the hell is that?"

He passed over a small plastic case with some kind of child-proof fastening. Parsons fiddled with it, as Gene pulled out more black boxes. These were a little more obscure, although a pad with a manual key-pad and a handful of adapter cords looked interesting. He wondered what in the hell that was for, but the adapters would fit just about anything electronic. One cord had what looked like a programmable bank card on the end.

"Hmn. Nice."

Parsons cussed. Gene looked over in time to see the case had popped open and what looked like multi-coloured diodes or transistors, coded in finely-hued stripes, as they flew up in the air in what would have been comedic except they really ought to preserve the integrity of their chain of evidence.

"Shit! Make sure you don't lose any." Gene suppressed a grin.

There was no telling how it would go, but they had plenty of material evidence. A rational explanation of Betty's behaviour, (and Mister Nettles' for that matter) would have been nice. But it wasn't essential to a conviction. He had a long list of potential charges, and that was always useful.

More than anything, he would like to get them talking.

Simple possession of any of these devices was enough for a good stretch.

Sitting twelve feet away was Scott Nettles. That one would talk—he was almost sure of it.

Jammed in against the window on this wide-bodied jet, Betty Blue, shackled by metre-long chains to the frame of her seat, stared straight ahead and ignored everything that went on around her.

He wondered just what she was thinking right about then. If Parson's little thingies were what he thought they were, blank human ID chips, then that equipment must have come from somewhere else. Car-thieves tended to specialize. It was the key to survival and they really didn't bother with complex and overly-dangerous sidelines.

Chapter Eighteen

Forty-eight hours had gone by. Gene felt refreshed, after a couple of good sleeps, a proper shave, and some real food. Hyper-lag was a bitch. He'd kind of forgotten that as he didn't travel so much these days. There was some unfinished business to take care of.

Gene MacBride sat across from Scott Nettles in Interview Room Four. Nettles looked oddly comfortable in the orange coveralls and red slippers. The face had character, except when he got angry and it all twisted up like a raisin on PCP.

"I just want you to know that you're not in any trouble."

"Huh."

Bullshit.

The thought was written all over Mister Nettles' face and body, as he sat there with arms crossed and one ankle up on the other knee.

"Seriously. We see you more as kind of a victim here..."

"Fuck off."

Gene suppressed a laugh.

Good for you, sir.

Never give up one iota of your power, Mister Nettles.

Thank you, God, for allowing me to witness this moment.

"I'm a police officer. We're just here to help you, sir."

Even Gene heard the soft hack of Francine's cough on the other side of the partition, with its obligatory one-way glass panel, dark and smoky and looking like Scott's tired but angry brown eyes. Scott's eyebrows climbed but he said nothing.

"Anyway, Mister Nettles, your property will be returned to you. We'll have a constable help you with that, and there is a bus stop right out front."

Nettles still had a pair of tens as Gene recalled from the case notes. With the workload, it was amazing how yesterday's novelty was today's passé.

Scott Nettles sat there in disbelief, a frozen look on his face.

With the benefit of two full days of news coverage, it had become patently obvious that some of their fears had been groundless. A prominent singer had just delivered triplets in conjunction with her new three-album boxed set (all part of the promotional campaign, suspected Gene) and the world was simply moving on. There were real crises looming on the horizon and all of this would be quickly forgotten. That disturbed him, but he wasn't an ethicist. No one disputed that robots had a kind of self-awareness, a kind of identity. In more than one interview, the rather creepy looking Doctor Piqua had simply evaded the question of whether Betty Blue had the right to self-determination.

I'm not an ethicist. I just build them, Piqua had said.

He was letting everyone else do the talking, the defining of the terms and the setting of the agenda.

Gene stood.

"So that's it, then?"

"Yes, Mister Nettles. We would appreciate it if you were available to answer any further questions that we might have—I always like to leave the door open like that, but that's just the normal duty of a citizen...I don't expect too much to come out of it."

"But—but. But—what about my kid?"

"I'm sorry, Mister Nettles. That, is a matter for other authorities. It's out of my hands—and none of my concern..." Yeah, and maybe you and Betty should have thought of that earlier.

But Human Services were all over the unborn child like a dirty shirt. On balance, a recently-founded foundation was lobbying all over the Hill on behalf of Betty's right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

"What—fuck you! God damn you all to hell! What about all that stuff I stole—what about all the God-damned crimes I committed...?" Scott was furious.

In here, there was a chance of sneaking a message to her. He'd already tried to get on the laundry work team, but had been turned down. It wasn't a real jail, just a holding facility and things really didn't work that way. Scott Nettles was an idiot in several ways. Gene could read him like a book, and it was all so unnecessary.

"Mister Nettles."

Scott was going on. The man certainly had an impressive vocabulary. Gene winced and reddened slightly when Scott turned from the state and the system and the world and humankind in general and started in on him, personally.

"Mister Nettles." Gene broke in during a pause for breath as Nettles ran out of air, beet-red in the face and glowering blindly at him. "You're blind. You are simply not capable of committing all the crimes you are describing. No jury in the land would convict you. My colleagues and I are agreed on that much at least...relax. Get over it. Go home. Get on with your life."

"Argh! What about Betty—you fucking son of a bitch."

Gene reminded himself that a paranoid person was a suffering person. One had to make allowances.

"Scott. You can't help Betty Blue—or your child, when you're sitting on the inside of a jail cell." There were a million people, some of them pretty good lawyers, all wanting to talk to Mister Nettles.

It wasn't Gene's job to give the man advice, legal or otherwise.

A shudder of emotion went through that thin frame and then the man got a hold on his emotions.

Fuck the world. The knowledge that he was powerless was devastating. To know that he simply didn't matter in the equation.

Scott slumped in resignation, head going back and forth, no, no, no, and jaws working. He was near tears. Gene had a moment of remorse.

"Aw, fuck." Scott slumped forward and put his head in his hands.

"Thank you, Mister Nettles. Now let's see about getting you out of here."

As Nettles clambered unsteadily to his feet, Gene took him by the elbow and led him to the doorway.

He stood there, breathing heavily, as Gene opened up. Scott was clearly on edge and emotionally flabbergasted. Probably thought they were going to gas him or something.

"Tom?" A uniformed officer cooling his heels on a hard plastic bench, flipping mindlessly through a garden magazine, looked up.

"Yes, sir?"

"Would you take the gentlemen down, please? He's, uh, legally blind and needs help getting out of here. See if we have a stick or a cane in Lost and Found."

Throwing the magazine aside, the officer hastened over to take Scott and the paperwork proffered by Gene.

"Yes, sir." Anything that would get him off that bench for a while.

"Thanks, Tom. And goodbye, Mister Nettles. God bless, and good luck to you in all things."

It was nothing more and nothing less than he would have said to any other citizen under similar circumstances.

***

"Good morning, Miss Blue."

"Good morning, Inspector MacBride."

"Please call me Betty—or Missus Nettles."

Gene smiled in spite of his inner misgivings.

"I hope you've been getting enough of the, ah...precious bodily fluids." He didn't know what else to call them, but her needs were a bit out of the ordinary and there was the baby to consider. "...while you have been our guest."

"Yes. Thank you. It's all been very nutritious." She was expressionless, and yet always that sense of menace.

He had to admit the reaction was not unique. Gene cut quite the authority figure when he had to. She would be defensive as all hell.

"So, anyways. Betty, ah, we've been sort of consulting back and forth, with your, ah, former employer—and the, uh, other authorities..."

"Yes?"

"Well, I wonder if I might ask you one or two questions?" He tried desperately not to be overly threatening.

All he wanted was a few answers.

Yes, she was in trouble—of sorts, and yes, he had the power to cause her and Scott endless torment.

For what?

For what, he asked her.

"No comment."

"Yeah—exactly." He cleared his throat. "No comment. Hmn."

She wouldn't let his eyes go, and so he dropped them of his own accord, to the table top, where his hands lay neatly folded.

"Are there other robots like you, Betty?"

Somewhere out there in the world? Did they help you? Were they watching out for you, defying their human masters, feeding you data and holding it back from the authorities?

Was this some mad impulse on her part, or part of some larger agenda...? That was the really scary part.

She stared right through him. That didn't exactly help her case or ease his anxiety.

Is this a malfunction, Betty Blue? Or is it something more?

Are you the first of many, Betty Blue?

"No comment."

It was possible she didn't know. It was possible that she had acted entirely on her own, based entirely on her own feelings, and maybe it wasn't a malfunction, either.

In which case why not just say so?

She was aware of the issues.

And smart enough not to give him anything...

Hmn. Interesting.

Gene was calm, cool and collected.

Like a cucumber.

"I'm prepared to release you right now, Miss Blue. No strings attached. However, I have just one small request."

His eyes came up again, and hardened.

"It's all been very fascinating. Really. I'll be keeping my eye on you, young lady." The publishers were clamoring for their story—her and Scott.

Life didn't seem very fair, sometimes.

He smiled, slowly, lasciviously, making it as hard as he could for her. It was the only revenge he was likely to get.

It was the only revenge for a forgotten life.

The smile faded.

"Missus Cartier would desperately like to hear from you, Betty. I think she misses you."

For the first time, Betty's eyes changed. They defocused or something, no longer looking deep into his soul and finding him wanting in some way, but through him—off into the future, but not very far, somewhere close by, perhaps.

She was right back with him, though.

"She wants me to call her?" She had a half-witted look of dumbstruck humour on her otherwise smooth visage.

"Yes. Please call the Cartiers. Admittedly, your call may be monitored. Strictly for quality-control purposes, of course..."

They couldn't have people swearing at each other over the phone now, could they? That one was still mostly just a fine, although there was talk of a crackdown from certain quarters. Zero-tolerance. Well-meaning as those folks often were, it was getting to be a real pain in the ass at times. Not all human actions were culpable, nor did they require the total legislative approach.

Not that anyone cared what Gene's opinion was. He was just a cop, and hopefully, a good one.

She nodded, once...or twice.

"Very well. Good. And just so you know, we've been talking to the prosecutor, and the company, and the insurance people, as well as the gangstas (she coloured a bit here), and the car-theft victims. They're all going to receive damages. Paid for by the Cartiers, in some private little settlement with the SimTech people and the insurance company. They have a very good lawyer. I understand there's a hefty deductible, but that's all been taken care of."

They must really love you, Betty Blue.

He didn't say it. It would have sounded cynical, and that wasn't how he meant it at all.

He slid the drawer in front of him open. Pulling out a courtesy phone on the end of a two-metre chain, he handed it to her.

Shoving his chair back, he put his hands behind his head and his feet up on the corner of the table.

Gene waited.

"If she asks, you might consider working for them again. You know, like eight, or ten, or twelve hours a day. Whatever they want, really, or whatever you think you can handle." Gene paused thoughtfully. "Make sure you get a good rate, you know?"

As for the legal issues involved in the marriage, the unborn kid, or, was Mister Nettles even capable of informed consent, (what with his chronically-depressed mental state), none of it was any of Gene's business. The pair looked like they would be having plenty of legal trouble without his help. They were getting sued fifteen different ways last he had heard, (half the world wanted a piece of that baby) and it wasn't going to stop there. The city was also in the process of being sued fifteen different ways, but there were the usual legal cut-outs and no one was going to lose their home over it. None of the city employees' wages would be garnished for life unto the next three generations. No one was taking Gene or the mayor to court and trying to take their first-born kid.

No doubt the Cartiers had some idea of being a part of the child's life as well. Their present, and very generous attentions, were an easy-to-read indication of that.

She stared into his eyes, and in that moment, it was as if she was aware of his thoughts. She also looked very vulnerable.

Betty looked down at the phone. She uttered a deep sigh. With a resolute gesture, she punched out the number. Her eyes came up and she grimaced.

"Thank you."

It was all she said.

It was enough—barely.

Gene checked his watch, but it seemed to have stopped.

He had... shit, he had four years, five months, twenty-something days and a few hours until he could

take early retirement.

Chapter Nineteen

Scott was knee-deep in changing diapers.

With little Eddie's crib in the corner and the changing table right under the window, it was still an iffy thing. He'd barfed more than once doing this job. For some reason today wasn't so bad.

"Hey, little buddy." The squirming body kicked and fussed and Scott held onto a tiny hand, grinning from ear to ear. "Come on, help me out here."

Eddie fussed and squirmed something awful.

It was getting on towards dinner time and Betty would be home soon. He'd better put some thought into that. Unwrapping the stinky diaper, he put that in the garbage. He rolled the kid over.

Scott mopped the poop off the kid's backside and disposed of the wipes in the plastic garbage hamper. He took a fresh moist one and made sure Eddie's ass was as clean as a baby's bum.

He hummed softly to himself.

"I never thought I would live to see the day." With a scratchy sound, the Velcro fasteners were done up and the kid was good to go.

The sound of the door came from the front of the apartment.

"Ah. There's your mother now."

Scott put the baby back in the crib for the moment, although Betty would be in there soon enough.

He went out into the living room of their new two-bedroom apartment, which was looking a lot better since they had re-painted.

He never thought he'd see that come to pass, either.

Thanks to the new, ceramic, but pretty good set of used eyes the Cartiers had given him as a wedding present, there had been a moment of horror when he saw the place, really saw it for the first time.

It was hard not to think less of landlords in general, but the truth was he'd lived like that for a long time and still hated the thoughts of his old life. He had a moment of wonder.

I wonder what my old place looked like after ten or twelve years.

"Honey. I'm home."

They smiled into each other's eyes.

"I'm positively famished. What's for dinner?"

Scott threw his arms wide open, putting his chin down, turning his head and grinning like there was no tomorrow.

"Me."

Her laughed resonated around the room and probably in other parts of the building.

"No." She gazed hungrily into his eyes, and then down to where Scott kept the throbbing, big red rocket hangared. "That's dessert—I need food, real food."

The pair clung together in a bear hug as Eddie babbled happily in his crib. Already her eyes were sliding over his shoulder and seeking out the door to Eddie's room.

Scott sighed. He let her go.

"So, it's like that, eh. Off you go then. See your kid."

Once last peck from her, and then it was off to the kitchen for Scott.

A house-husband's work is never done.

"Betty?"

"Yes, dear?" They were already laughing and giggling in there and there was no end of nonsense from either one of them.

"Can you bring out that garbage bag when you come and I'll take it down?"

No answer.

He would have to wait in suspense, then.

Pots and pans rattled and banged. There were some frozen pork chops, a few potatoes, and a couple of tall cans of Bud. They had the makings for salad and there were still a few soft-pack containers of formula for the baby.

You really couldn't ask for much more.

END

About Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time.

Louis Shalako

