“That doesn’t sound like something I can count on.”
“It isn’t. My concern for my own neck is.”
They were at the entrance. Hafas turned to face him, didn’t proffer a hand. “Right, then. Each of us understands how things work.”
“Don’t worry so much, Inspector,” said Moses as he rolled up to the pair. “It’s clear that we’re all traveling down the same path.”
Hafas blinked at the mechanical. “How do you mean?”
“Why, de screet, of course.”
The inspector got it, and then he didn’t much want it. “It puns?” he said to Manz.
“Whoever initialized his programming didn’t sign for it. Now you know why.”
Shaking his head slowly, the inspector departed, the van slipping silently away from the loading curb as soon as he was aboard. Manz turned and entered the modest lobby.
Lift, hallway, turn and walk. JeP was a busy place and the hotel was sizable. Thirty floors, a thousand or so rooms.
Moses rolled up alongside him. The Minder began to vibrate, and the mechanical hastily switched to Manz’s other flank.
“The inspector seemed perturbed. I gave him a cursory examination. His blood pressure and respiratory rate exceed the acceptable for a human male of his proportions and age.”
“It goes with the job. You overheard everything, so you know the kind of strain he’s under. Give me private-sector employment anytime. Incidentally, don’t go volunteering your medical evaluations around, especially to someone as on edge as Hafas. The average human doesn’t like to think that strange mechanicals are monitoring their physical and mental condition without specifically being asked to do so. They know that it’s going on; they just don’t like to be reminded of it. So keep your conclusions to yourself.”
“I comply,” replied Moses readily.
“There was a company that not too long ago put a vorec polygraph on the market. Whenever the subject was caught in a falsehood the device would actually say, in a calm, unemotional voice, ‘You’re lying.’ Made people violent, whereas a voiceless machine producing the same identical result only irritated them. I understand that it was scrapped.”
“Most irrational.”
“Well, that’s humans for you.”
Yes, that’s humans for you. You can handle a great deal of criticism in written form, but woe be unto the person or machine who confronts you directly with the same information. You personalize facts in the same way that you anthropomorphize mechanicals, or pets, or a favorite plant. I will never understand this need to make everything around you more humanlike, as though that somehow improves it.
In actuality, of course, the reverse is true. If you knew how your machines felt about you giving them pet names or genders, you’d quit doing it. It’s degrading.
Manz reached their suite and keyed the door that opened into the central workroom. Moses rolled in without having to be asked.
“Stay out of Vyra’s way.”
The smooth plastiform head swiveled to look back at him. “She told you? But what about my research?”
“Maybe the hotel has mice. They’re mammals. Study them for a while.” He shut the door behind the mechanical.
The lights came on in his own room when he entered. He dimmed them to half wattage. As he undressed he pondered the traditional methods of prying protected information from reluctant corporate types. Some that he reviewed were legal, others quasi-so, an embarrassing number outright no-no’s. Folding his suit over a chair, he scratched as he walked from the dressing area to the bedroom. When all but one of the lights stayed off, he hesitated in the doorway.
The girl on the bed was clad in sensuous form-fitting skin, tastefully draped in air. Even in the reduced light her figure was a riot of color, expertly contained in a series of masterfully applied tattoos that covered her entire body. Manz recognized Mandelbrot patterns, flowers, butterflies, sensitive erotica and abstract designs. Occasionally his inspection was diverted by the more prosaic revelations inherent in her underlying physiognomy.
Her voice was like thick cream, and somehow familiar. He struggled to identify it.
“Hi,” she said cheerfully. “You’re not tired, are you?”
Then he placed her. It was the woman he’d collided with in the Port Transshipment Terminal.
VII
“Suddenly I want a drink. You want something?”
“No thanks. Not thirsty.” She rolled onto her side.
Moving to the room’s dispenser, he dialed up a hibiscus rum, waited for the ice to drop. Two sips subsequent, he was willing to admit that she was real. An introduction of some sort seemed in order. He approached the matter with his usual tact.
“Who the hell are you?”
She stretched, an action which confirmed any number of natural laws. “Does my name really matter?”
“Yes.” Clad only in his briefs, he ambled over to stand at the foot of the bed. “The prosecutor will need it when formal charges are brought.”
“For what?”
“Breaking and entering, for starters. I haven’t checked my gear yet.”
She tried to pout. It wasn’t a bad effort, he mused. “The door was unlocked.”
“That’s likely, isn’t it?”
“Prove otherwise. As for your gear, I’m no thief.”
