Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

Vivian examined the scene for several seconds, pursing her lips and nodding. “Homicide, two counts, officers on the scene. Murder weapon is possibly a robot. Lieutenant, do we have a reconstruction yet?”

Bruno was surprised to see a heaviness around the edges of her eyes, as if she were suddenly holding back tears. Her lip quivered a little, although her voice had been firm and clear. Perhaps dealing with this sort of carnage wasn’t as easy for her as Tamra might like to believe.

“Yes’m,” Cheng Shiao said at once. He held up a wellstone slate. Vivian clicked her own, smaller one against it, and the two units chimed. An image appeared of the murder scene, exactly as it lay before them all but without the crowd, without the police and technicians and royal entourage complete with silver bodyguards. There was only Marlon, and Deliah, and the enigmatic little robot.

“The time is twenty-eight minutes ago,” Shiao said. “Both victims are clinically dead, in the presence of an inactivated autronic device of roughly anthropoid design, as seen here.” On the displays, in three-dimensional miniature, the faces and bodies of the two prone figures began to twitch. The movements were slight, but the time scale was clearly compressed, so that the corpses seemed to take on a kind of manic quiver reminiscent of an AC electrical shock.

“Death throes, approximately four minutes for the woman and three for the man, may be considered mercifully brief. Neural and circulatory connections between brain and body have been completely severed, and both brains have suffered additional, acceleration-related traumas, owing to the great violence of the event. Organized memories not related to smell or emotion should be considered irretrievable in both cases. Whether this damage was deliberate or incidental is a matter for speculation.

“Continuing backward in time, we find the autronic device, colloquially a ‘robot,’ showing its final signs of activity. Central processing shuts down last, following the termination of emergency and backup power. Here the memory is wiped and erased, and shortly before that, primary power shuts off, most likely under CPU command.”

On screen, the robot twitched, then rose to its feet like a marionette. It stood still for a moment, then turned around suddenly and brought its hands out parallel in front of it, raised slightly above the level of its head. The body of Marlon Sykes, twitching more violently now, rose from the floor and placed its head between the robot’s hands. Its neck was still twisted, though there was now no sign of the burnlike discoloration. If it could be said that there was any facial expression at all, it was one of simple discomfort, of skin and muscle hanging crooked and rudely pressed, like the face of a sleeper propped awkwardly in a chair not meant for sleeping.

That was only for a moment, though. In the next instant, the body’s head was rotated sharply, with such speed that Bruno didn’t see it happen, and afterward Marlon stood there, looking over his shoulder with what was now very clearly an expression of fear and startlement.

Then, in quick succession, the body of Deliah van Skeltering first hurled itself upward into the robot’s waiting hands, then twisted its head around similarly, then turned, intact, to face the information-rich wall of the instrument room. Bruno noted that the walls were not randomizing, as they had been when he himself had last seen them.

“The second and first murders occur, to all appearances, a premeditated and in fact calculated attack. Here the robot enters and approaches.”

The black machine leaped backward out of the room, landing lightly on its feet, and then commenced a stately—if accelerated—backward stroll along the grapple station’s main avenue. The viewpoint followed it all the way back to the fax gate, where it vanished.

“Curiously,” Shiao said, “the fax has no record of this transaction. We deduce it purely from the age and placement of molecular traces left by the robot’s feet. From this point, the scene remains largely unchanged for sixteen minutes, forty seconds, at which point there is a record of passage for two persons—Her Majesty Queen Tamra Lutui and Declarant-Philander Bruno de Towaji—and their accompanying guards.”

On the two slates, a little Bruno and Tamra walked backward out of the fax, led by one stocky little silver robot and followed by another. They continued backward at a brisk walk until arriving at the instrument room, at which point a conversation ensued between them and the figures of Marlon and Deliah, both alive. And this time, the walls were randomizing as Bruno had remembered.

How did the police know to include that in their simulation? What storage devices or subtle electrical traces told them that? These reconstructions, corroborated now by his own observations, seemed all but perfect. He resolved to learn more about police procedures, and particularly the physics underlying them.

The conversation was brief, and finally Marlon’s hand sucked a grease stain off Bruno’s jacket, and Marlon himself settled down onto his back on the floor and scooted headfirst into the recess where Bruno had first found him. Then Bruno and Tamra and the guards walked backward to the fax gate again, this time with Deliah van Skeltering trailing behind. When they had gone, Deliah backed alone to the instrument room again.

“A brief visit,” Shiao said, “preceded by another period of relative inactivity. We jump behind. Two hours, five minutes and thirty-six seconds earlier, the van Skeltering woman arrives, and eleven minutes before that , Sykes does. Again, for some reason the fax does not maintain any record or receipl of this singular transaction, but shed skin cells and residual ghosting tell us almost precisely when it must have occurred. Prior to this arrival, the station appears to have sat unattended for a period of twenty-nine days, and shows no prior visits by either Sykes or van Skettering at any time. This completes the first draft of our reconstruction. A final, admissible draft will be completed within twenty-four hours.”

Shiao clicked his heels together and waited.

“Excellent work,” Vivian said, nodding. “I’ll note this in my report. Regarding a motive, we—

Along the avenue, another Shiao came sprinting toward them, shouting, “Commandant-Inspector! Commandant-Inspector! I’m reporting trouble at six other grapple stations!” He pulled up and stopped, puffing. “Murders, Commandant-Inspector, all almost exactly like this one. Two bodies, one robot, some of them fresher than those found here. And Commandant? One of me has failed to report back. It isn’t like me, if I may say so. If I may say so, I fear the worst.”

Frowning, Vivian nodded. “Rightly so. Send a full armed detail and report back immediately. Try to capture the robot alive, if at all possible.”

“Yes’m!” The new Shiao turned and sprinted back toward the fax again. He was passed on the way by still another Shiao, who, while less agitated, was if anything in an even grimmer mood.

“Commandant-Inspector!”

“Yes, Shiao?”

“Commandant-Inspector, there’s been an accident of some sort. Cislunar traffic control just came through with a debris anomaly; the home of Declarant-Philander Marlon Sykes has apparently been damaged. My attempts to raise him there have been unsuccessful. House software does not appear to be responding. I fear the worst.”

“Darn it!” Vivian squawked, suddenly eleven years old again. “That’s no accident. Darn, darn, darnit! This just isn’t how we do things in the Queendom. Somebody’s being systematically mean , and that just isn’t how we do things .”

“No’m.”

She relaxed a little, perhaps by force, then nodded to Her Majesty. “This situation is obviously volatile, Tarn. With your permission, I’d like to remove you all to a safer location.”