Robert Sawyer: Red Planet Blues

“You seem to be the senior employee here,” said Mac. “Am I right?”

The man had a Hispanic accent. “Horatio Fernandez. Joshua was the boss, but I’m senior technician.” Or maybe he said, “I’m Señor Technician.”

“Good,” said Mac. “You’re probably better equipped than we are to figure out the exact cause of death.”

Fernandez gestured theatrically at the synthetic corpse, as if it were—well, not bleedingly obvious but certainly apparent.

Mac shook his head. “It’s just a bit too pat,” he said, his voice lowered conspiratorially. “Implement at hand, suicide note.” He lifted his shaggy orange eyebrows. “I just want to be sure.”

Cassandra had drifted over without Mac noticing, although of course I had. She was listening in.

“Yeah,” said Fernandez. “Sure. We can disassemble him, check for anything else that might be amiss.”

“No,” said Cassandra. “You can’t.”

“I’m afraid it’s necessary,” said Mac, looking at her. His Scottish brogue always put an edge on his words, but I knew he was trying to sound gentle.

“No,” said Cassandra, her voice quavering. “I forbid it.”

Mac’s tone got a little firmer. “You can’t. I’m required to order an autopsy in every suspicious case.”

Cassandra opened her mouth to say something more, then apparently thought better of it. Horatio moved closer to her and put a hulking arm around her small shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be gentle.” And then his face brightened a bit. “In fact, we’ll see what parts we can salvage—give them to somebody else; somebody who couldn’t afford such good stuff if it were new.” He smiled beatifically. “It’s what Joshua would have wanted.”

The next day, I was sitting in my office, looking out the small window with its cracked pane. The dust storm had ended. Out on the surface, rocks were strewn everywhere, like toys on a kid’s bedroom floor. My phone played “Luck Be a Lady,” and I looked at it in anticipation, hoping for a new case; I could use the solars. But the ID said NKPD. I told the device to accept the call, and a little picture of Mac’s face appeared on my wrist. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “Come by the station, would you?”

“What’s up?”

The micro-Mac frowned. “Nothing I want to say over open airwaves.”

I nodded. Now that the Wilkins case was over, I didn’t have anything better to do anyway. I’d only managed about seven billable hours, damn it all, and even that had taken some padding.

I walked into the center along Ninth Avenue, passing filthy prospectors, the aftermath of a fight in which some schmuck in a pool of blood was being tended to by your proverbial hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold, and a broken-down robot trying to make its way along with only three of its four legs working properly.

I entered the lobby of the police station, traded quips with the ineluctable Huxley, and was admitted to the back.

“Hey, Mac,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Morning, Alex,” Mac said, rolling the R in “Morning.” “Come in; sit down.” He spoke to his desk terminal and turned its monitor around so I could see it. “Have a look at this.”

I glanced at the screen. “The report on Joshua Wilkins?”

Mac nodded. “Look at the section on the artificial brain.”

I skimmed the text until I found that part. “Yeah?” I said, still not getting it.

“Do you know what ‘baseline synaptic web’ means?”

“No, I don’t. And you didn’t either, smart-ass, until someone told you.”

Mac smiled a little, conceding that. “Well, there were lots of bits of the artificial brain left behind. And that big guy at NewYou—Fernandez, remember?—he really got into this forensic stuff and decided to run it through some kind of instrument they’ve got there. And you know what he found?”

“What?”

“The brain stuff—the raw material inside the artificial skull—was pristine. It had never been imprinted.”

“You mean no scanned mind had ever been transferred into that brain?”

Mac folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Bingo.”

I frowned. “But that’s not possible. I mean, if there was no mind in that head, who wrote the suicide note?”

Mac lifted those shaggy eyebrows of his. “Who indeed?” he said. “And what happened to Joshua Wilkins’s scanned consciousness?”

“Does anyone at NewYou but Fernandez know about this?”

Mac shook his head. “No, and he’s agreed to keep his mouth shut while we continue to investigate. But I thought I’d clue you in, since apparently the case you were on isn’t really closed—and, after all, if you don’t make money now and again, you can’t afford to bribe me for favors.”

I nodded. “That’s what I like about you, Mac. Always looking out for my best interests.”

Perhaps I should have gone straight to see Cassandra Wilkins and made sure we both agreed that I was back on the clock, but I had some questions I wanted answered first. And I knew just who to turn to. Juan Santos was the city’s top computer expert. I’d met him during a previous case, and we’d recently struck up a small-f friendship—we both shared the same taste in Earth booze, and he wasn’t above joining me at some of New Klondike’s sleazier saloons to get it. I called him and we arranged to meet at The Bent Chisel, a wretched little bar off Fourth Avenue, in the sixth concentric ring of buildings. The bartender was a surly man named Buttrick, a biological who had more than his fair share of flesh, and blood as cold as ice. He wore a sleeveless gray shirt and had a three-day growth of salt-and-pepper beard. “Lomax,” he said, acknowledging my entrance. “No broken furniture this time, right?”

I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Buttrick held up one finger.

“Hey,” I said. “Is that any way to treat one of your best customers?”

“My best customers,” said Buttrick, polishing a glass with a ratty towel, “pay their tabs.”

“Yeah,” I said, stealing a page from Sergeant Huxley’s Guide to Witty Repartee. “Well.” I made my way to a booth at the back. Both waitresses here were topless. My favorite, a cute brunette named Diana, soon came over. “Hey, babe,” I said.

She leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Hi, honey.”

The low gravity on Mars was kind to figures and faces, but Diana was still starting to show her forty years. She had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, and was quite pleasantly stacked, although like most long-term Mars residents, she’d lost a lot of the muscle mass she’d come here with. We slept together pretty often but were hardly exclusive.

Juan Santos came in, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. He was almost as tall as me, but nowhere near as broad-shouldered; in fact, he was pretty much your typical pencil-necked geek. And like many a pencil-necked geek, he kept setting his sights higher than he should. “Hi, Diana!” he said. “I, um, I brought you something.”

Juan was carrying a package wrapped in loose plastic sheeting, which he handed to her.

“Thank you!” she said with enthusiasm before she’d even opened it; I didn’t know a lot about Diana’s past, but somewhere along the line, someone had taught her good manners. She removed the plastic sheeting, revealing a single, long-stemmed white rose.

Diana actually squealed. Flowers are rare on Mars; those few fields we had were mostly given over to growing either edible plants or genetically modified things that helped scrub the atmosphere. She rewarded Juan with a kiss right on the lips, and that seemed to please him greatly.