Hafas’s office was situated on the eleventh floor of the recently renovated municipal administrative complex. It was an astonishingly busy place, full of people and mechanicals embarked in frantic haste for destinations of no especial note.
Having been briefly subjected to the early morning heat and humidity (Weather Control had forecast a high of thirty-seven), exposure to so much relentlessly purposeful activity soon had Manz perspiring psychosomatically, despite the steady thrum of the building’s energetic air conditioning.
He felt gingerly of the burn on the right side of his face. He’d treated it with a topical, and Moses had assured him it was barely visible. He hoped so. It would be awkward to have to explain.
The responses to his inquiries directed him to a blue color-coded cubicle located at the end of a long row of narrow alcoves. Spacious it wasn’t, but it was, as Hafas explained, all his. There was enough room for the inspector, his workstay and equipment, and a couple of chairs. Moses managed to squeeze into an unoccupied corner. Composite baffling muted the exterior sound.
If Hafas was surprised to see them so early in the morning, he concealed it behind his familiar veil of paternal affability.
“Morning, gentleman and humaniform. Have a seat.”
“Not permanently.” An exhausted Manz flopped into one of the chairs. “But I’ll borrow this one for a bit.”
The inspector glanced briefly at the entrance. “Not that I’m not pleased to see you too, but you’ll understand if I inquire as to the whereabouts of Ms. Kullervo.”
“Be unnatural if you didn’t.” Manz arranged himself more comfortably. “She’s sleeping off a potent intoxicant. Had an extended encounter with a Qaraca in the hotel restaurant last night.”
“You don’t say. She didn’t strike me as the type. More self-possessed, you know.” He frowned uncertainly. “I don’t know that I’ve ever tried that particular drink. Is it made with rum?”
“Not to my knowledge. I don’t think you would’ve cared for it. Too much of a kick for me.”
“Oh. One of those exotic offworld concoctions, hmm?”
“Exactly.” The Minder hovered silently above his shoulder.
Hafas’s expression turned serious. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy a casual chat, but I have this feeling you’re not here this early for the pleasure of my company. I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you, Manz. Nothing new on the jackings, but we think we’re making some progress on the murders of those two officers at the Port. Oh, and there was something interesting on the general Call Sheet this morning.”
“We’re all ears,” said Moses.
Manz smiled apologetically. “I had nothing to do with his interactive humor programming, I swear.”
“I believe you.” The inspector fumbled in a drawer and came up with a hardprint. “It seems that the inner office of one Cardinal Monticelli, of Borgia I&E, was forcibly entered late last night. It is assumed that the intent was industrial espionage, as files were scanned. Burglary may have been a secondary motive.”
“That’s interesting.” Manz’s expression was absolutely blank.
“There was some property damage. Also, in the course of attempting to apprehend the intruder, members of the building’s security staff suffered injuries of varying degree.” He looked up from the hardprint. “Any comment?”
“Must’ve been one hard-ice jacker to involve a whole security team.”
“That was my thought when I saw the report. It goes on to say that the intruder was assisted by a large humaniform mechanical which actually participated in the fighting.”
Manz smiled. “Now, Inspector, we both know such a thing’s impossible. Mechanicals are cortex-charged against using physical force on human beings.”
“That was my reaction, too.” Hafas cast ever so brief a glance in Moses’ direction. The mechanical did not stir or otherwise react. Nor did the Minder floating silently above Manz’s shoulder.
“How’s the Department handling it?” Manz inquired casually.
“Filed the item for follow-up, as befits its status. I don’t imagine they’ll devote any exceptional attention to it. No one was critically injured, and nothing besides information was actually taken. Since Borgia declines to disclose the nature of the material scanned, it greatly complicates any follow-up police work.”
“Yeah, it would,” Manz agreed.
Hafas was silent for a moment. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this?” he said finally.
“Inspector!” Manz put a palm to his chest. “I’m astonished you’d even consider such a notion! I’m a tenured adjuster for Braun-Ives. I know my limits and restrictions. I must say that I’m deeply offended by your veiled accusation, deeply.”
Hafas poured himself a glass of fruit juice from the self-chilling beaker on his workstay. He didn’t offer any to his guest. “You’ll get over it,” he said flatly.
Manz waited while his host finished his drink. Hafas licked his lips and looked thoughtful.
“Frankly, we’ve begun to suspect Borgia above the rest, but we haven’t got a shred of hard evidence to charge them with. I wonder if this industrial jacker found anything that could implicate them?”
“I doubt it,” Manz murmured noncommittally.
The inspector grunted. “There are a few minor transgressions we could stick them with. Small stuff. If they are responsible for the jackings or any part thereof, it might frighten them off. Provided a certain noisy intrusion last night already hasn’t. I know you’ve been running your own checks on Borgia and the others. You’re sure you haven’t come up with anything?”
Manz shook his head regretfully. “Nothing more antisocial than the commercial equivalent of an overdue library fine. Business at all three seems to be good as well as clean. If illegal profits are being funneled into any of your favored trio, they’ve been efficiently dispersed.” He jerked a thumb toward Moses. “I’ve had Dumbo here running his own analysis concurrent with mine. He hasn’t sniffed out any worthwhile trails either.”
The humaniform was indignant. “One cannot generate leads from insufficient data. Furthermore, as my aural apparatus is entirely internal, the mildly degrading appellation ‘Dumbo’ is particularly inaccurate, inappropriate, and frivolous.”
“Frivolous is my middle name.” Manz smiled at the mechanical, then turned back to the inspector. “Borgia does deal in the kinds of pharmaceuticals being jacked, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely. They’ve made no attempt to conceal the fact. Unfortunately, as I mentioned to you on your arrival, so do Troy and Fond du Lac as well as several suspected concerns further down our list of suspects. No help there.” He leaned forward, voice and expression full of anxiety.
“Manz, the Urban Commission is riding the Department pretty hard. I know I told you that when you first got here, but this last jacking’s made it a lot worse. So that means I have to ride you. You’ve got to come up with something, or I’ll have to deny you access to Department assistance. The Commission calls that an efficacious allocation of resources. I call it getting screwed for something that’s not your fault.”
“Easy.” Manz didn’t appear upset by the threat to withhold cooperation. “You’ve been great so far. Just give me a chance.”
“That’s about all you’ve got.” Hafas leaned back in his chair, unhappy with the situation and willing to show it.
“What else does Borgia make money on besides drugs?” Manz inquired curiously.
The inspector straightened and accessed another drawer. He handed his visitor a card-sized screen with the controls embedded in the back.
“This is as complete a list as we’ve been able to put together. Most of it is public-knowledge data, available to any other registered business. At the moment it’s considered comprehensive and up-to-date, but there’s always the possibility that some new information will come in and that will change.”
Manz beckoned to the Minder. “Copy.” He slipped the card-screen into a slot that appeared in the sphere’s side. The device vanished, to be regurgitated less than a minute later.
“Copy complete,” the Minder announced.
“That’s quite a gadget,” Hafas said enviously. “What else does it do?”
“Mostly data storage and retrieval. It’s not as intuitive as Moses and it’s not designed for mechanical-human interaction on a social basis, but it’s more analytical. Very sophisticated AI cortex. I find it indispensable but kind of dry. It does have the virtue of keeping track of you so you don’t have to worry about it, and it doesn’t take up much space.”
Everything I do for you; rapidly, efficiently, and without complaint, and you want personality too? Humans are never satisfied. No wonder you have so much trouble sustaining a mating.
Having recovered the card, Manz embarked on a leisurely scroll of the information it contained, passing over the cold statistics in favor of more descriptive passages. “Luxury goods, offworld art and jewelry, gourmet foodstuffs, underwriting of independent deep-space exploration … I didn’t think they were big enough to support that.”
“Takes up most of their corporate R&D budget,” Hafas informed him. “According to our information, Monticelli’s always been in the forefront of the exploration push. Apparently he believes the potential returns are worth the expenditure.”
“I would never have guessed it of him. He didn’t strike me as the gambling type.” The adjuster kept his attention fixed on the tiny screen. “I’m not always right about people.”
He continued to peruse the available information until it began to bore him, then handed the card-screen back to Hafas, who replaced it in his workstay file.
“Anything else?”
The inspector spread his hands. “Until the word comes down that I’m not supposed to waste any more time on you, I stand ready to help. What else would you like to see?”
Manz considered. “How about a list of all personnel, long-term and temp, who’ve been discharged by Borgia within the past year? With the names of those who’ve worked anywhere proximate to Monticelli highlighted.”
Hafas nodded. “I think we can manage that, though several of my people have already pursued that angle.” He swiveled in his chair and nudged a control. The workstay came to life.
“Yeah, but they don’t have my infectious personality.” The adjuster looked on as the inspector coaxed his instrumentation. Four minutes later the workstay disgorged a hardprint containing the information desired. Hafas withdrew it, examined it for superficial errors, and passed it over to his guest.
“Here. Good luck with it. We didn’t have any. If you’re looking for individuals with prior convictions of any kind, much less confessed addicts or anyone with personality problems, you won’t find ’em on there.”
Manz examined the list briefly before shoving it into a pocket. “I don’t expect to.”
“Then what are you looking for?” Hafas was eyeing him intently.
His visitor uncrossed his legs preparatory to leaving. “Whatever your people missed.” He smiled agreeably as he rose.
Hafas took no offense. Leastwise he didn’t show any. Instead he rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “Manz?”
The adjuster paused at the door, his two mechanicals in close attendance. “Tewfik?”
“Do me a favor. Find something we can use. Anything. But do it quietly, okay? I have enough to do trying to explain my section’s failures without having to explain yours as well.”
Manz wagged a finger at him. “We haven’t failed yet, Inspector. Haven’t been here long enough to fail. Give me a little time.”
Hafas wasn’t exactly praying as his visitors departed, but he was working hard at wishing them more than mere good fortune. Personally and professionally, he was badly in need of a break.
Once out in the corridor beyond the inner offices, Moses essayed an observation. “Upon first encounter I believed Inspector Hafas to be an unusually stable individual for one long engaged in police work. I now see that I must revise that evaluation. He struck me just now as fatigued and nervous, a bad combination for one in his profession.” They turned a corner.
“Repeated unsolvable thefts brazenly conducted within one’s jurisdiction can put abnormal pressure on any officer of the law. He’s under a lot of strain, Moses.”
“You know, sir, there are times when you sound uncannily like me.”
“Bullshit. That’s just your overactive imagination working.”
“I have no imagination, sir, overactive or otherwise. It is impossible to program imagination into a mechanical. It remains a wholly human attribute the cyberneers have as yet been unable to synthesize.”
“Well, then, your intuition unit is overheating. I don’t sound anything like you.” He glanced up at the Minder. “Do I ever sound like him?”
The Minder replied emotionlessly, as always. “Are you referring, sir, to actual auditory qualities or to selective phraseology?”
“Skip it.” They were leaving the building, and his mind was beginning to skip-trace other matters.
The room was full of elaborate instrumentation that hummed softly as telltales flashed in cryptic sequence. Manz’s queries led him to the back of the chamber, where a young man in a cleansuit was kneeling to examine the interior of a table-sized, deactivated component. Fiberops and clusters of bundled chips and spheres were visible beneath his sensitive fingers, which poked and pried methodically at the electronic viscera.
Moses regarded them with particular interest as Manz halted behind the technician.
A fringe of brown hair framed a ruddy, freckled face. Despite the proximity of his visitors, the youngster ignored them utterly, wholly engrossed in his work.
“Excuse me,” Manz finally had to say.
“What, hello.” Rising, the tech stared at Manz out of implant-distorted eyes. They might help in his work, the adjuster thought, but they gave him a distinctly bug-eyed appearance. Freckled hands moved ceaselessly, like nervous mice. “Can I help you?”
Courteous enough, Manz decided. Of course, he hadn’t asked him any questions yet. “You used to work for Borgia I&E?”
“As of seven months ago, yes.” Bug-eyes blinked, a disconcerting sight. “Are you with the authorities? They already questioned me once. I don’t know anything about anything.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. We’re not with the police. We’re carrying out a government survey of relocated personnel. Checking on fair employment practices, that sort of thing. We do random follow-ups on involuntary career changes in selected professions. Your name came out of the hat.”
The tech turned back to the unit he’d been working on. “I’m pretty busy here, and I don’t like leaving this exposed to the air. Can’t you give me a form to fill out later, or something?”
“This survey’s not that formal. I’ll just be a minute. Would you mind telling us why they let you go?” He indicated the Minder. “This device will record your responses.”
The tech stared with interest at the Minder. “That’s a new model, isn’t it?”
“Sure, but you don’t have time for small talk, remember? Naturally your responses will be kept strictly confidential. Did the police already ask you this?”
“Yes.” The tech sighed. “I was fired, that’s all.”
“Without any explanation?”
“Oh, there was an explanation, sure, but I didn’t buy it.”
“Did the police ask you about that?”
“Sure. I told them it involved a personality conflict.”
“Did it? Remember, this is being recorded.” Manz indicated the Minder again.
The tech stared at the hovering sphere. “Well, there was a personality conflict, all right, but there was a lot more to it than that. I didn’t believe Arsolt’s explanation for a minute.”
“Arsolt?”
“Mike Arsolt.” The tech adjusted a tuning slide on the tool he was holding. “The guy who gave me the bad news.”
“I see. If you believe your situation involved more than just personality conflict, why do you think you were fired? Again, this is strictly for government records. Any information you can supply might save someone else a job sometime,” he added encouragingly.
“Well … part of my work involved composing and submitting the budget for the crew I supervised. I kept getting it back with cuts I considered unreasonable. I mean, you can’t do your work properly without decent equipment.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.”
Sensing a kindred spirit, the tech became a little more voluble. “So just to satisfy myself, I ran a scan on overall company expenditures. Because of what I do, I could access all corporate records. It seemed to me that an awful lot of money was going into pure R&D. There were huge allotments for extraordinary, unspecified expenditures … that sort of thing. So I figured maybe some executive was skimming funds. You read about that sort of thing happening all the time in big, closely held companies.”
“You certainly do. You think someone at Borgia was diverting company funds for private use?”
“I don’t know. I was just trying to justify my own section budget, you know? It just struck me that a lot of money was being applied to some really nebulous debits without generating any visible return, and if the company could waste money on mysterious schemes of an unspecified nature, then they could damn well afford to fund their support groups.”
Manz made himself sound casual. “I don’t suppose you were ever able to learn the nature of any of those projects?”
“Are you kidding? If a company can’t cosset its own R&D, it can’t have any secrets. Specifics weren’t kept in general corporate files.
“Anyway, when I tried to use the information I’d gathered about what seemed to me to be excessive spending on nonproductive activities, to get my crew properly funded, that’s when I was terminated. Without any other explanation than that I was a ‘disruptive influence’ due to ‘personality conflicts.’ Personally, I think I was fired for being a conscientious employee. Lot of good it did me.
“When I pressed Arsolt on it, he said the necessary paperwork had been signed off by Monticelli himself. Not that that means anything. The Cardinal probably initials a hundred forms a day without reading more than the titles of a few of them. I don’t hold it against him. It was Arsolt’s call. He was my supervisor.” The tech smiled diffidently. “Is that any help? I really have to get back to work. I don’t want to lose this job, too. I like it here.”
“That should do it,” Manz told him. “Thanks for your cooperation.”
The youngster didn’t reply. He was already back on his knees, peering with surgically enhanced eyes into the glassine and plasticized bowels of his inert patient.
The number-cruncher was transcribing tax records with the grim dedication of a veteran interior lineman waiting for the play to be called his way. He was short and squat, with a heavy spade beard and eyebrows like mossy ledges in a miniature rain forest. His demeanor matched his appearance. Moses and Manz stood on the other side of the security barrier that separated them from this sophisticated Cro-Magnon statistician.
“I’d rather not discuss the matter, gentlemen,” he said without looking in their direction. The security membrane distorted each word slightly, as if the tail end of each consonant had been slightly filed.
Manz persisted. “All we want to know is why Borgia let you go.”
“I already told the police.”
The adjuster fingered the security membrane, heard it complain. “As I’ve already explained, we’re not with the authorities. We represent a public polling company.”
“As someone who works constantly with numbers, I certainly sympathize with your situation,” Moses murmured.
The statistician coded three lines of keys and abruptly whirled to face them. “All right.” He grinned nastily. “I won’t talk to any more people, but I’ll talk to you.” He pointed sharply at Moses.
As an attempt to belittle Manz, it failed utterly. He didn’t care if the man dictated to a toilet, so long as he answered their questions. The adjuster could see him being less than cooperative with the police, which raised hopes of obtaining some potentially useful crumb of information he’d deliberately or angrily chosen not to mention to Hafas’s troops.
“I thank you for confiding in me,” Moses replied, playing his role superbly. “Why did Borgia terminate your employment with them?”
“I’m a statistician, right? It’s my job to add and subtract and make sure everything balances properly. To make sure the right numbers are in the right places at all times.”
“And this was in some doubt at Borgia?” Moses asked him.
“Of course not! Not with me on the lines. My accounts always balance!”
“I’m sure,” Moses said soothingly. “In that event, why were you terminated?”
The statman sniffed disdainfully. “I came across an item that didn’t belong. Checked it three times, like I always do. It was a big item, and it just seemed to have fallen through the cracks, so I brought it to the attention of my superior.”
“Do you recall the precise nature of the error?”
“Didn’t say it was an error. Said it didn’t belong. Was in the wrong place. Had to do with corporate income derived from ‘Incidental Franchises.’ There was nothing wrong with the accounting. I just thought it excessive for the locale. So I wanted to check it out, just to make sure it was correct.”
Manz made a face. “Seems a funny reason for firing somebody. Lots of companies list large amounts under proprietary headings. For tax purposes, to keep stockholders baffled; all sorts of reasons.”
The statman affected a look of contempt. “Twenty-eight percent of all net profit for the preceding fiscal period?” He turned back to his instrumentation, and his fingers resumed flying over the lines.
“That does seem a bit excessive,” Moses finally commented. “Thank you for your time.” The statistician neither replied nor looked up from his work. “One more thing. While working at Borgia did you ever happen to run into another employee; young, good-looking temptech name of Suhkhet li Trong?”
The statman surprised Manz by emitting a vulgar snigger. “Sooky? Sure, I knew her. She spent a lot of time with old man Monticelli, and I don’t think it had anything to do with stats. Leastwise, not the company’s.” He made the unpleasant noise again before returning with dismissive finality to his work.