Douglas Child - Fever Dream

Once again, D'Agosta felt a huge deflation. "Then what the hell are we going to do? We can't just get a bulldozer, raze the store, and dig a new basement."

"No. But we just might be able to make our way into the tunnel space from one of the adjacent basements, which I confirmed still exist. The question is: which one to try first?" Once again, that gleam that had been so often absent in recent days returned to Pendergast's eyes: the gleam of the hunt. "I'm in the mood for doughnuts," he said. "How about you?"

34

St. Francisville, Louisiana

PAINSTAKINGLY, MORRIS BLACKLETTER, PHD, FITTED the servo mechanism to the rear wheel assembly. He checked it, checked it again, then plugged the USB cable from the guidance control unit into his laptop and ran a diagnostic. It checked out. He wrote a simple four-line program, downloaded it into the control unit, and gave the execute command. The little robot--a rather ugly confabulation of processors, motors, and sensory inputs, set atop fat rubber wheels--engaged its forward motor, rolled across the floor for exactly five seconds, then stopped abruptly.

Blackletter felt a flush of triumph all out of proportion with the achievement. Throughout his vacation--staring at English cathedrals, sitting in dimly lit pubs--he'd been anticipating this moment.

Years ago, Blackletter had read a study explaining how retired people frequently acquired interests diametrically different from the work that had occupied their professional lives. That, he thought ruefully, was certainly the case with him. All those years in the health profession--first at Doctors With Wings, later at a succession of pharmaceutical and medical research labs--he had been obsessed with the human body: how it worked, what made it fail, how to keep it healthy or cure its ills. And now here he was, toying with robots--the antithesis of flesh and blood. When they burned out, you just threw them away and ordered another. No grief, no death.

How different it was from those years he'd spent in Third World countries, parched and mosquito-bitten, threatened by guerrilla fighters and harassed by corruption, sometimes sick himself--working to contain epidemics. He had saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives, but so many, many others had died. It hadn't been his fault, of course. But then there was the other thing, the thing he tried never to think about. That, more than anything, was what caused him to flee flesh and blood for the contentment of plastic and silicon...

Here he was, thinking about it again. He shook his head as if to rid himself of the terrible guilt of it and glanced back at the robot. Slowly, the guilt drained away--what was done was done, and his motives had always been pure. A smile settled over his features. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

The robot's audio sensor took note, and it swiveled toward the sound. "Robo want a cracker," it croaked in a metallic disembodied voice.

Feeling absurdly pleased, Blackletter rose to his feet and walked from his den to the kitchen for one last cup of tea before calling it a night. He suddenly paused, hand on the teapot, listening.

There it came again: the creak of a board.

Slowly, Blackletter set the pot back on the counter. Was it the wind? But no: it was a quiet, windless night.

Somebody in the street, perhaps? The sound was too close, too clear for that.

Perhaps it was all in his mind. Minds had a tendency to do that, he knew: the absence of real auditory stimuli frequently encouraged the brain to supply its own. He'd been puttering about in his den for hours, and...

Another creak. This time Blackletter knew for certain: the sound had come from inside the house.

"Who's that?" he called out. The creaking stopped.

Was it a burglar? Unlikely. There were far larger, grander houses on the street than his.

Who, then?

The creaking resumed, regular, deliberate. And now he could tell where it was coming from: the living room at the front of the house.

He glanced toward the phone, saw the empty cradle. Damn these cordless phones . Where had he left the handset? Of course--it was in the den, on the table by the laptop.

He walked quickly back into the room, plucked the telephone from the wooden surface. Then he froze. Somebody was in the hall just beyond. A tall man in a long trench coat stepped forward from the darkness.

"What are you doing in my house?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

The intruder did not speak. Instead, he pulled back his coat, revealing the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. The butt-stock was of a heavy black wood, carved in paisley rosettes, and the bluing of the barrels gleamed faintly in the light of the den.

Blackletter found that he was unable to take his eyes from the weapon. He took a step back. "Wait," he began. "Don't. You're making a mistake... we can talk..."

The weapon swiveled upward. There was a tremendous boom- boom as both barrels fired almost simultaneously. Blackletter was flung backward, impacting the far wall with a shattering crash, then slumping to the ground. Framed pictures and knickknacks rained down around him from little wooden shelves.

The front door was already closing.

The robot, its audio sensors alerted, swiveled toward the motionless form of its builder. "Robo want a cracker," it said, the tinny voice muffled by the blood now coating its miniature speaker. "Robo want a cracker."

35

Port Allen, Louisiana

THE FOLLOWING DAY WAS AS DARK AND RAINY as the previous day had been pleasant. That was just fine with D'Agosta--there would be fewer customers to deal with at the doughnut shop. He had deep misgivings about this whole scheme of Pendergast's.

Pendergast, behind the wheel of the Rolls, took the Port Allen exit from I-10, the wheels hissing on the wet asphalt. D'Agosta sat beside him, turning the pages of the New Orleans Star-Picayune . "I don't see why we couldn't do this at night," he said.

"The establishment has a burglar alarm. And the noise would be more apparent."

"You better do the talking. I have a feeling my Queens accent wouldn't go down well in these parts."

"An excellent point, Vincent."

D'Agosta noticed Pendergast glancing once again in the rearview mirror. "We got company?" he asked.

Pendergast merely smiled in return. Rather than his habitual black suit, he was wearing a plaid work shirt and denims. Instead of resembling an undertaker, he now looked like a gravedigger.

D'Agosta turned another page, paused at an article headlined Retired Scientist Murdered in Home . "Hey, Pendergast," he said after scanning the opening paragraphs. "Look at this: that guy you wanted to talk to, Morris Blackletter, Helen's old boss, was just found murdered in his house."

"Murdered? How?"

"Shotgunned."

"Do the police suspect a robbery gone wrong?"

"The article doesn't say."

"He must have just returned from his vacation. A great pity we didn't get to him earlier--he could have been rather useful."

"Somebody else got to him first. And I can guess who that somebody was." D'Agosta shook his head. "Maybe we should go back to Florida and sweat Blast."

Pendergast turned onto Court Street, heading for downtown and the river. "Perhaps. But I find Blast's motive to be obscure."

"Not at all. Helen might have told Blackletter about Blast threatening her." D'Agosta folded the paper, shoved it between the seat and the center pedestal. "We talk to Blast, and the following night Blackletter is killed. You're the one who doesn't buy coincidences."