“YOUR BROTHER, HUH?” JAKE took a few more steps across the laboratory floor. “I thought he was dead.”
“Do I look dead, asshole?” asked Richard Lofton.
“Richard, please,” said Marj in a gentle voice. “You go sit in your favorite chair while Jake and I talk.”
“Sis, I’m not a goddamn kid. You don’t have to treat me like—”
“Darling, please.”
“Okay, but there’s no need to nag my butt off.” Shoulders hunched, he shuffled to a high-back wicker chair and dropped into it.
Jake said to the young woman, “So you didn’t give up robotics?”
“I started working on him nearly two years ago,” she said, one leg swinging back and forth as she sat on the edge of the lab table. “In my spare time, originally just to take my mind off all the dreadful stuff I was running into working for the Welfare Squad.”
“How close a sim is he?”
“Oh, he’s Richard,” she answered. “Richard, that is, as he was just before he died. Well, no. Actually, he’s spruced up a bit, since he was in pretty bad shape by then.”
“Hey, I’m sitting right here in the same goddamn room,” reminded the android. “I’m hearing all this, you know.”
“Yes, but you needn’t be upset,” she told the replica of her dead brother. “Richard was in his early twenties when he was killed. He’ll always be in his early twenties.”
Jake leaned against the lab table that faced hers. “Killed in a Brazil War?”
“Richard fought in the last one, but he survived.”
“Survived? Survived, my ass,” said her brother. “I was screwed up beyond recognition by that damn war. Shit, I turned into a Tekhead. It wasn’t my fault, lots of guys tried Tek down there. You could just hook up to your Brainbox and pretend the fucking war had never happened.”
“No one is criticizing you, dear,” she assured him. “After a while, needing money badly and not wanting to borrow from me, he—”
“I did try to borrow from you, sis, and you cut me off. You told me, ‘No more dough for Tek dreams.’ ”
“I think you misunderstood what I was trying to—”
“Sure, I misunderstood. That’s why I took a job with Bennett and worked at one of his rural Tek factories in Brasilia.”
Marj said, “Bennett Sands ... She paused, shaking her head. “He somehow got the idea that my brother intended to double-cross him by selling information to a rival cartel.”
“That guy’s a real bastard,” added Richard. “He didn’t even, you know, give me a chance to explain. Had five of his thugs—and it took five to handle me—had them drag my poor ass out into the jungle and kill me. You know how they did it?”
“Dear, you needn’t upset yourself by discussing—”
“It doesn’t bother me now. Those greaseballs cut me into pieces with lazguns,” explained her brother. “Sliced me into quarters. My guts spilled out all over the ground and you should’ve seen the fucking insects and animals that came out to feed on me.”
“That’s enough, Richard.”
He folded his arms, shut his eyes, and leaned back in the creaking chair.
Marj said, “I got the notion—oh, several months ago, this was—that it would be fun to use this replica of Richard to kill Bennett Sands.”
“Sounds like fun, yeah.”
“But, Jake,” she said, smiling at him, “mostly because of you, Sands was arrested and stuck away in a maximum security prison in NorCal. I couldn’t think of any way to get at him.”
“Is that when you decided to kill the others?”
“Actually, Jake, I’d made up a tentative list even before I started working on Richard,” she told him. “Sands’ name obviously led all the rest. When I realized, however, that he might well be permanently unavailable, we decided to go after the rest of them.”
“How,” inquired Jake, “did they earn a position on your list?”
“Richard and I decided to kill everyone responsible for his death.”
“That was just Bennett Sands,” said Jake, “and his hired hands, wasn’t it?”
“If I hadn’t been talked into joining the damn army,” explained Richard, “if those political bastards hadn’t lied about what was really going on down there—”
“Don’t make yourself uneasy, Richard. I can tell him.”
“And the fucking Teklords. Got me hooked, then some of them set me up and made it look as though I’d screwed Bennett.”
Jake asked her, “How many names are on your list?”
“We have a few more to cross off yet.” She smiled faintly.
“But Bouchon wasn’t one of your targets?”
“Those assholes, whoever they are,” complained Richard, “are trying to set me up again.”
“Three of the killings, including the murder of your client’s husband, were poor imitations of the Unknown Soldier’s methods and style,” Marj said. “I’m really surprised that the international police authorities have been taken in.”
Jake boosted himself up, sitting on the edge of his lab table. “You got to know me because I might lead you to Sands.”
“Ever since I heard he’d been transferred to England, I’d been keeping close track of him,” she replied. “Then, when Beth phoned and suggested that I help you out—well, that seemed an enormous piece of luck for us. I realized you’d probably be crossing paths with him, since you were tracking down his missing daughter. Yes, I’m afraid that’s why I volunteered to be your guide.”
“And why we slept together.”
“That’s a bit more complicated,” she said. “But basically I wanted to decoy you here.”
“That whole business was stupid,” put in her brother. “You didn’t need him to find Bennett for us. Christ, we always find them, just the two of us. We never needed help from outside the family or—”
“We don’t agree on this, Richard, but there’s no reason to argue. Especially in front of company.”
Jake said, “Marj, I’m going to make a pretty obvious comment now. Something, I’m certain, you must’ve thought about while—”
“I’m not insane,” she assured him. “And, yes, I have considered the possibility. Very thoroughly.”
“Building a machine to kill people, sending it out to check victims off a list,” he said, “isn’t exactly something a—”
“Jake, it’s done all the time,” she pointed out. “Your Teklord friends, for instance, use kamikaze androids. Many governments, including our own here in England, have several projects in the works that—”
“Be that as it may, you have to stop.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Not until Richard and I have finished what we agreed to do.”
“Richard didn’t agree to anything,” Jake said evenly. “He’s been dead for years.”
“I told you, sis, this guy isn’t worth talking to.”
“Suppose you phone Beth,” suggested Jake. “Talk to her about this. She’s a friend of yours and—”
“Jake, I don’t need any advice, nor even a shoulder to cry on.” Marj slipped her right hand into a pocket of her smock. “We intend to take care of Bennett Sands.”
Jake said, “I’ll take care of him.”
“You’ll just turn him over to the law,” said Richard, leaving his chair. “They’ll put him back into another fancy lockup.”
“It’s very important that Sands, as did the others, die in a certain way,” she told Jake. “He has to see Richard before he’s killed and realize who he is. That’s the whole point.”
“Marj, this whole—”
“I borrowed your stungun, Jake.” She produced it from her pocket.
“Before you—”
She shot him.