Chimera (17 page)

I said, "I'll see she makes it."

"Your company isn't exactly an asset," Nate said. "You could get yourself killed, and her, too. This is not a good night for skins in Crittertown."

Zoe jerked open the top desk drawer. Nate said, "What're you looking for?"

She pulled out a black marker and grinned at him. "No skins around here."

He frowned, then shook his head. "Cats. You're all nuts." With a pitying look at me, he returned to the bar.

Zoe pushed a desk chair toward me and aimed the desk lamp at it. "Sit down and tilt your head back."

"Wait a minute—"

"You only have to pass at a distance in the dark."

Which was true. I could leave her here with no shame—hell, for reasons I didn't want to think about, I was effectively paying her now to work for her. But I wanted to see her off. I do too many jobs that have no sense of closure, when I fail to find what I'm looking for or the client skips out on me. Waving goodbye to Zoe at the station—whatever her ride might use for a station—looked like the best I could hope for, given the way things had gone so far. I sat in the chair and squinted in the light. "Nate's right. You're crazy."

She grinned, took my chin in her hand, and began drawing on my forehead. As the tip of the marker dragged over my skin, her expression became more and more intent. Her concentration on her work made her look more catlike than ever. Very conscious that her face was mere inches from mine, I closed my eyes and swallowed.

"Hold still." She drew three dots to connect my eyebrows, then thick lines swirling over my cheekbones. The marker smelled antiseptic. One small, strong hand held the back of my head to keep it steady. As she brought the design down to my chin, she said, "Take off your shirt."

I squinted up at her.

She said, "The wild ones do full-body tattoos."

I wasn't planning to let anyone close enough to examine my collar, but if someone did, it'd be embarrassing to be caught simply because I didn't want Zoe to see I was carrying a few more pounds than I had as one of UNSEC's fair-haired boys. That she had seen me naked the night before didn't change the feeling. She had surprised me then. This was a choice. I stripped off my shirt.

Zoe moved behind me. I could feel her gaze on my bent neck like the sun on a bright afternoon. One of her hands gripped my shoulder, then the cool tip of the marker began making dots and sweeping lines that grew up from my shoulders onto the back of my neck.

A minute or two later, she stepped in front of me. Her knees brushed mine as she drew patterns on my upper chest and worked them up my throat. She said, "You work out?"

I shook my head.

"Hey!" she said. "Respect the work."

I did my best impersonation of a ventriloquist. "I used to swim a lot."

She cupped my chin to tilt my head back. Our eyes met. Our faces were inches from each other. Her lips parted slightly, then she said, "Swimming. Maybe I should've made you a tiger." She drew several quick slashes on the underside of my chin and stepped back, breathless. "Okay. Put on your shirt. No, wait."

She pulled several large T-shirts with beer logos from the shelf by the Lost and Found box and tossed me a green one. "Put it on backwards unless you want to be a walking ad." She turned around a black one for herself. I wondered if I was about to get a free show, but she pulled it over her red dress, then did the magician escaping a straight-jacket trick that so many women use at the beach to dress before the curious.

I put on the green T and my jacket while Zoe rummaged through the Lost and Found box. Grinning, she came out with a pair of sunglasses and a black knit cap. "Much better than tying a towel around your head and having to squint."

I put on the glasses. The world went three degrees darker. I could live with that. I decided not to smell the cap as I pulled it on. When I glanced at Zoe, she grinned and said, "Oooh, tres urban, darling!"

She twisted the multicolored strands of her hair into a tail, which drew her hair tight to her skull. That made her tufted ears stand out like banners, and her golden eyes seem to fill her face. Over the large black T-shirt, she slipped on a red-and-black baseball jacket from the Lost and Found, then held her arms fashion-model wide. "Ta-dah!"

I whistled. "It's the Queen of the Cats."

She tossed me a long, dark duster. "Then you better look like her date."

Zoe left the office first. Nate saw her and nodded approvingly at her new look. Zoe said, "We swapped some clothes. Hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. Ruby's expecting you. Say Nate sent you."

Zoe stepped aside and turned her hand toward me. "How about my pal?"

I sauntered up to the bar and checked out Zoe's artwork in the mirror. I didn't look like anyone I would want to meet on a quiet street at night. I felt a little silly, like a kid in a Dracula costume, and a little vain, like a kid who knew that Dracula was way cool, and a lot worried, like a kid who was about to walk among real vampires who wouldn't be amused if they saw through the deception. I leaned closer to the mirror. Zoe had sketched a fierce dog's head on my brow.

Nate laughed. "Sure there wasn't a wolf in the family woodpile?"

"Could be, Cuz," I said with a growl.

He laughed again, then told Zoe, "Better tell people he's mute."

The HV caught my eye. Adam Tromploy sat in front of a still image of Amos Tauber. Nate saw my glance and bumped up the volume. Tromploy said, "—no leads in the murder of nonhuman-rights activist, Amos Tauber. Oberon Chain, C.E.O. of Chain Logic Robotics, offered a hundred million dollar reward for information leading to the capture of his killers."

The image cut to Oberon Chain in a sleek office building lobby, telling a gaggle of reporters, "I'm devoted to Amos Tauber's dream: equal rights for human and machine intelligences. I can't imagine how a chimera could take the life of a person to whom its kind owes so much."

The sight of Oberon Chain fired sluggish neurons in my brain. I gave Zoe a look that betrayed some of my alarm. She frowned, but when I sniffed loudly, then glanced back at Chain on the monitor, she nodded.

Nate killed the sound as the bulletin ended, and turned to us. "Better fly."

"What's fastest?"

"Take Lankershim north. They'll have a doc come to get their pay."

"Thanks." As I held the front door for Zoe, I glanced back and saw Nate watching us.

He called solemnly, "Good luck." Then he grinned. "Cousin."

Zoe and I stepped into the cool night. Down the block, Arthur's car burned as two ratkids ran from the blaze.

The Mercedes was reciting, in the calm, cultured voice they give Mercedes security systems, "I am on fire. Please call the police. I am on fire. Please call the police."

Zoe said, "Arthur'll scream when he sees his ride."

"I'd like to think so."

"Now what? Catch a pert?"

"There are security cams at every station. We walk." As we headed north, I said, "When you said Chain smelled funny—"

She met my eye. "Like Blake."

"Any other humans smell funny?"

"Not like those two."

"What gives them away?"

She shrugged. "If you met one and didn't know what it was, nothing much. It's like sugar and No-Cal. Both taste sweet, but No-Cal tastes wrong." She whirled toward me. "Hey! Is Chain a lead?"

"More likely a dead end. If I was the head of Chain Logic, I'd sure use bot doubles to skip boring parties."

"What if someone kidnapped Chain and substituted an AI?"

"Someone who could do that could do anything at all with a chimera and a cheap detective. Let it go."

"But—"

"Suppose you claim Chain's an AI. Who'll believe you? If we could put enough pressure on him to make him respond, he'd just buy a doctor to testify anything he wanted. If you got some other chimeras to sniff him, they could only say he smelled odd, 'cause they wouldn't have Blake or Doyle as reference points. If you shot him full of holes in front of a primetime audience, people'd just be more convinced he was human when they saw him bleed. Have I left anything out?"

"Yeah. The possibility that the real Oberon Chain is a prisoner somewhere."

"If so, he's probably safe as long as the bad guys think their secret's secure. If we talk, we just give them an extra reason to kill him. And us." I had another thought then: "If Chain had synthetic legs or something, wouldn't he smell like Blake?"

Zoe nodded reluctantly. "Maybe."

We walked on. I thought about Chain and AIs, and Tauber and Gold and chimeras, and Zoe Domingo and me. None of those thoughts went anyplace I liked. We passed a burning newstand, then, a few blocks further, more angry chimeras ran by, smashing store windows and grabbing what they could. I considered cutting through residential streets, but I didn't think safety lay anywhere in Crittertown that night. Better to take the fastest route, I thought. That way, we could spot trouble in time to avoid it.

My theory failed quickly. By the time we reached Lankershim and Oxnard, trouble was all around us. The air was full of smoke and sirens and car alarms. The clusters of chimeras had become a mob. Most ran past without a second glance at Zoe or me, but a few gave us quick grins and the critter wave of solidarity that looks like clawing the air. I suddenly realized that on this night, anyone who could pass as a chimera was as safe as could be in Crittertown.

Someone threw a trash can through the front window of a narcotics store. I expected looters to empty it, but instead, a tigerman in a tattered suit and a minister's collar smashed bottles of vodka and set the whole place on fire. As I wondered how many dollars in alcohol, hemp, heroin, and opium were in each whiff of pungent smoke, Zoe said, "They're trashing their own neighborhood!"

I glanced at her. "You want to bus them to Beverly Hills?"

A young apeboy kicked in the door of a furniture rental store and grabbed a flat-screen HV. As other chimeras climbed into the place with all the joy of children after eggs on Easter, the apeboy passed the HV to me with an oddly formal bow and said, "Happy holidays, Cousins."

I returned the bow and gave the HV to a goatman brushing by me. "Enjoy, Cuz."

The goatman already looked Satanic with his stubby horns and goatee, but he looked more so when he grimaced and grabbed my sleeve. "You smell funny."

Zoe said, "That human thing?"

"Yeah."

Zoe laughed. "Figures. Stinky works around them all day."

The goatman sniffed, then glared at me. "You're a skin."

Tensing for the SIG, I realized I would miss it when it was gone. Then I realized that producing a pistol in the midst of a crowd that wasn't feeling good about humans might not be the best way to improve interspecial relationships. I let my arm relax.

Zoe told the goatman, "He's okay."

I said, "We're just passing through."

The goatman asked Zoe, "Had to bring your furry down to sightsee?"

Before she could answer, the apeboy pointed away and shouted, "Copbots!"

A phalanx of police bots marched onto Lankershim from Oxnard. They announced in unison, "Clear the streets! Those who do not return to their homes immediately will be arrested!"

A rock flew from the mob and bounced off a copbot skull. A doggirl shouted, "They're our streets! You clear out!" It became hard to track the action after that. Around us, chimeras threw anything that came to hand, including bottles, broken furniture, and a headless doll.

Zoe told the goatman, "The cops want me. This skin's helping me. If they catch either of us, we're dead on the spot."

The goatman glanced at me.

I said, "Why waste a trial on a critter and a critter-lover?"

He scowled and released my sleeve. "Get!"

I nodded, lest the sound of a human voice make him change his mind. Zoe and I ran back down Lankershim, only to see another mobile barricade of copbots filling the next intersection, boxing in the worst of the riot—and us.

Zoe said, "Hell."

A dogboy and a monkeygirl on a scooter tossed a Molotov cocktail at the bots. The bottle hit one's steel shoulder and exploded, hiding it and its sexless siblings in a burst of black smoke and hot flames. The crowd cheered.

Then the bots, blackened but undamaged, marched out of the inferno with shocksticks extending from their forearms.

"C'mon!" I yanked Zoe toward a nearby building where a brass plaque read, "Toad Hall Apartments." I tried the door. Locked. "Kick on two. One. Two."

Her sidekick was as good as mine. The door crashed in on its hinges, but before we could enter, cool steel fingers closed on our shoulders. A copbot said, "Chase Maxwell. Zoe Domingo. You are wanted for questioning in the death—"

A new sledgehammer, price tag still on it, met the copbot's head from behind, cracking its skull like a piñata. The goatman let the hammer drop. "Thought I told you to get."

Two more copbots ran toward us. I said, "We're gone." The goatman ran down the street. The bots chose to follow Zoe and me into the hallway, which didn't surprise me a bit.

Zoe said, "There's a back door, right?"

"Trust me."

"That's not an answer."

An apartment door opened a crack as we passed. An ancient foxwoman in a housecoat peered out and saw me, Zoe, and the bots. She said, "Dios mio!" and slammed the door as shocksticks retracted and dart guns extended from the copbots' forearms.

A sleep dart thumped into the woodwork next to Zoe's head. Something snagged my coat. I whirled, opened the Pocket, and shot as the SIG hit my palm. The bots fell back. If anyone ever comes up with disposable copbots, fugitives won't have a chance.

There was a back door, which I had expected, given that the building looked old enough to have been built during the Regulation Age. Miracle of miracles, the fire release bar hadn't been removed by a landlord who favored security over safety. I hit the bar, and we burst into an alley.

The nearest vehicle was a battered green Ford pickup parked by a dumpster. We tried the doors. Zoe said, "Locked!" and looked for the next place to run.

I smashed the driver's window with the butt of the SIG, reached in, and yanked the handle. Zoe took out her window with an elbow strike. As I opened the driver's door, a sleep dart pinged off its side. I spun and shot at a copbot coming from Toad Hall. It ducked, and Zoe and I scrambled into the truck.