Criminal Minds (Fox Meridian Book 4) (26 page)

‘More dangerous than unconstrained humans? I’m sure that you’ve encountered many more human killers than electronic ones.’

Fox nodded, conceding the point. ‘You’re right. Humans can be just as deadly. But we try to catch people with tendencies like that early.
You
took something you designed to be lethal and then you facilitated its release. You had to know what Ripper would do when he got free. You might as well have killed his victims yourself, Mortenson.’

He was not looking at her again. ‘Doctor Mortenson,’ he mumbled.

‘You don’t deserve that title. To most people, a doctor is someone who heals. You are a sociopath and a weakling, and you don’t deserve that title.’ Fox got to her feet. ‘Thank you for your time. I’d imagine that the lead on your case will be talking to you once your lawyer gets here. I hope they get you life.’

~~~

‘Thank you, Fox,’ Kit said once they were in an autocab heading for the MarTech tower and their transport back to New York.

‘What for?’

‘Believing in me, I suppose. You told Mister Mortenson that you thought I had developed well.’

‘You have. You’ve faced things some humans would be fazed by and I’ve not noticed any strange tendencies. You even have a social life outside of your relationship with me.’

‘I suppose I do. I should thank you for allowing that too. Not every owner would allow it.’

‘Huh. Point is, without you as an example, and Terri’s explanation of how the process
should
work, I guess, I’d be pretty heavily AI-phobic at this point. Terri’s right about getting you on talk shows. You’d be a good ambassador for class fours.’

‘That scares me more than infomorph serial killers!’

Fox grinned. ‘You will be great at it. It’s not like you’d be alone. Terri’s bound to be up there with you.’

‘And you. She’s certain to want you there as my owner and an advocate of my class.’

‘You’re right, it’s a
terrible
idea.’

Niflhel, 3
^rd
November.

‘It seems ages since you’ve been here. It’s nice to see you again.’ Cleopatra, the regal, if mostly naked, ruler of Alexandria, was busy doing what she did best: lounging.

‘Been too busy,’ Fox replied, taking one of the other loungers. ‘Up to my ears in contract documents, and… You’re aware of the recent Ripper murders?’

‘Of course.’

‘I was contracted by the Sisters of Corruption to look into those and it’s turned out to be… complicated.’

‘Is anything you do simple?’

Fox grinned. ‘A couple of things. This. It’s Kit’s birthday, so I brought her in here for some rest and relaxation. We have relaxed. Energetically.’

Cleopatra laughed. ‘I see. Is she still here?’

‘She’s visiting Vali. I think she has plans.’

‘Oh really? Well, I suppose she is a whole twelve months old today.’

~~~

Kit skipped up the path to Vali’s homestead trying very hard to look carefree. She thought she might be pulling it off, but she was nervous as Hell. Fox had successfully fought off the nervousness for her in Alexandria, but it had mounted a sneaky flanking manoeuvre as soon as Kit had walked out of Fox’s little apartment.

‘Happy birthday,’ Vali said as Kit walked in through the kitchen door.

‘Thank you,’ Kit replied, smiling.

Vali’s brow creased. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, absolutely nothing. I have had a very pleasant hour or so in Alexandria, and now I am here. What could be wrong?’ Vali gave a shrug and turned, moving to the table where he kept the mead. ‘Well, Miss Martins wants me to do chat shows to promote AIs as wonderful people.’ His back was turned: now was the time!

‘And you’re nervous about that? I think you’ll do wonderfully well. You have a good command of the language, a certain charisma, and you are, obviously, very pretty.’ He turned, holding two cups of mead… and almost dropped both of them. ‘Oh!’

Kit stood beside the table. Her tunic was on the back of the nearest chair. Her tail was flicking rapidly back and forth behind her back and her arms were held straight down at her sides. She was almost vibrating with tension. ‘Surprise!’ she said, giving him a terribly nervous smile.

‘I… am… genuinely speechless.’

‘I was hoping more for actions…’

‘I am genuinely actionless.’

Kit’s lips pressed together and her hands started to creep up to cover herself. ‘You don’t want to–’

‘No! I mean, yes! I mean… I just wasn’t expecting… I thought you were still a little angry with me.’

‘What? Oh, I forgave you weeks ago. I thought you might have noticed.’ She watched an eyebrow rise. ‘Zorra said you wouldn’t.’ She stepped closer and took one of the cups from his nerveless fingers. Then she gulped down some of the contents and almost immediately felt her skin begin to tingle as the code introduced slight interference in her inputs.

Apparently reminded of the synthetic alcohol, Vali took a gulp from his own cup, shuddered, and then reached out a hand to rest on Kit’s shoulder. She let out a little gasp. ‘Is my hand cold?’ he asked.

‘No. I… I would very much like you to do more than touch my shoulder, nice as it feels.’ His hand drifted down, trailing his fingers over her breast. ‘Y-yes… Like that.’

‘You know, the beds in this place are authentic. And a little on the rough side.’

Kit giggled. ‘I don’t care if we do it on the floor, or the grass outside, so long as we do it.’ His thumb was stroking back and forth over her left nipple, which was stiffening rapidly, and driving her mildly insane, or as insane as her base code would allow.

‘Come on, then. We’ll try the bed.’ He turned from her and led the way through a door at the back of the room and then up some rough stairs to what would have been the attic in a normal house. Here there was a small space containing a low bed, more or less a frame containing a straw-stuffed cloth mattress. ‘Um,’ Vali said, frowning, ‘I know I’m really messing with the romance here, but… what about your tail.’

‘Oh, well… My research into human sexual behaviour indicated several solutions. The one I’d like to try requires a little more limberness than some, but it is supposed to be quite satisfying.’ She emptied her mead cup, set it on the floor at the foot of the bed, and then crawled onto the mattress. Pausing on hands and knees, she looked over her shoulder. ‘Of course, this is one option, but I feel it lacks the intimacy of some positions.’

‘Uh, yes.’ Vali gulped down the rest of his mead and blinked at her.

‘Whatever we do, it would be easier if you undressed.’

‘Ha! Yes, I suppose it… Are you making fun of me?’

Kit giggled. ‘Only a little. Zorra says that if you are not having fun during sex, you should probably not be doing it.’ Settling onto her right side, Kit propped herself up on an elbow and watched as Vali struggled out of his clothes. He was, she noted with some relief, definitely interested in the proceedings.

‘Okay,’ Vali said, ‘now what did you have in mind?’

Kit stretched her right leg straight down, and then calmly and elegantly raised the left one straight upward. ‘You come here and kneel across my leg. My other leg goes on your shoulder. Then you just need to, um, get yourself in position…’

Showing more eagerness now, Vali straddled Kit’s thigh, looping one hand around her raised leg and edging forward. ‘That’s it,’ Kit said. ‘Now just… Mmm… Yes, that’s it. And now you should just be able toooooo!’

‘Is it all right?! I’m not hurting–’

Kit’s sensory input feeds settled and her eyes uncrossed. ‘It’s okay. I mean, it’s better than okay, it’s… It’s not like when Zorra uses her fingers, it’s more… more. I am going to be
hours
analysing my reactions to this.’

‘Me too.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean that… You know I run this place and a lot of this kind of thing happens here… Not
here
, but in Niflhel as a whole, but I’ve never actually… indulged.’

‘I’m your first?’

‘Yes. No one else has ever… intrigued me as much as you do.’

‘Well, you’re my first. Man. I’ve been with Zorra. Though, I think you should try some moving. This is very nice, but I think there should be some– Oh! Oooo! Ooohhhooooo… Yes. Keep doing… mmm… that.’

New York Metro.

Fox opened her eyes, sighed, and set down the induction loop cable she had used to connect into Niflhel. Kit was standing beside the sofa looking interested. ‘I’m going to say that your copy is still in there with Vali, right?’ Fox said.

‘Yes,’ Kit replied. ‘I must admit to being quite curious regarding the data we will synchronise on her return.’

‘I’m also right in thinking that she’s in there doing bedroom gymnastics with Vali, yes?’

Kit’s cheeks coloured. ‘That was the intention.’

‘She left to go see him about fifty minutes ago, so she’s either got him out of his britches or they’re having a really long discussion about your relationship.’

‘Oh, I really hope it’s the first option. I’ve never… you know?’

‘Been banged silly?’

‘I think you’ve managed that. I mean, with a male. I’ve never been with a man and it’s… It arouses my curiosity.’

‘Well, let’s hope that’s not all that’s aroused. I’m going to go back to contract documents. If your copy’s not back in an hour, I’ll go in with an assault team.’

‘I hope that isn’t necessary.’

Fox gave Kit a smirk. ‘I kind of hope it is. For your sake.’

4
^th
November.

‘I am going to be
hours
analysing my reactions to this.’

‘Me too.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean that…’

Kit paused the replay of her memory once again and looked at the face of the man, or avatar anyway, who had been on the brink of giving her a couple of hours of quite exquisite sensation. As she had predicted, upon returning from Niflhel and synchronising with her other copies, she had been tasked with a thorough analysis of what had happened. So she was running on one of her server’s quantum processors and doing just that. She imagined it would seem a little clinical to a human, but Kit was learning: she was taking experience and turning it into knowledge which could only result in a more exciting experience in the future.

And she thought her analysis was highly likely to bear fruit in that regard, but she found herself coming back to that same, short exchange over and over again. Indeed, the others, now aware of her memories of a pleasurable afternoon in Vali’s homestead, had both requested that she run a deeper analysis of that moment.

It was not simply that moment. Kit knew that some element of suspicion had been forming for months, though it had been brought into sharp relief by that one remark, made in a moment of excitement. He had said, ‘Me too.’

Humans
did
go over their actions and analyse them, Kit assumed. Fox did. She would replay her memory of events in an effort to detect things she could have done better, or to spot remarks made during an interrogation which might give more insight, or just to relive the experience. Kit had indulged herself with a few minutes of full-sensory replay when she began her analysis: not all of it, but enough to remind her of the
feel
of the thing before she took it apart.

But Kit was fairly sure that humans did not
think
of what they were doing as an analysis process. Learning from their mistakes, reliving the moment, reviewing, re-watching… But analysing? She had provided the phrase and he had responded, so it was not clear-cut, but taken with the other evidence…

Kit decided on her course of action and compiled her final analysis report. The conclusion of the sub-analysis concerning Vali’s comment was a simple one, if rather inexact: ‘I believe that there is a significant probability that Vali is an infomorph.’

5
^th
November.

Fox was lying in her lover’s arms, warm, comfortable, and satisfied, but her attention was not wholly in the room with him. Sam and Marie had gone out to Sheela Na Gig, but Fox had persuaded Jason, with little effort, to stay in for the evening. Yet another day of contract reading had brought on a headache which was not severe, but it was persistent. Jason had been gentle with her, but also persistent, and the headache was a memory, and she was taking the weekend off no matter how much it meant she needed to play catch-up on Monday…

But NAPA were running another sting op and, now that the lovemaking was over for the immediate future, Fox was monitoring what Palladium’s operations room was managing to pick up. She was not expecting a repeat of the previous week. She was not expecting anyone to even catch sight of anyone who might be the killer. She checked in anyway and watched the ops room’s assessment of NAPA surveillance frames as they ran their patrols until she thought the time was right.

‘How about we go grab a drink?’ Fox said, her voice low to match the lowered lighting. ‘I think we should take a break prior to round two, which I expect to be crazed and kinky.’

Jason chuckled. Fox felt his breath against her neck and almost reconsidered the break. ‘I take it from that that your headache has gone?’

‘You’re a miracle cure.’ Fox slipped out of his arms and off the bed, and padded out to the lounge without bothering to dress. She figured the kinky could start on the sofa.

When Jason followed her, he had put on a pair of briefs. This was not just an aesthetic choice, he had told her, because a naked woman was a thing of beauty, and a naked man was an accident waiting to happen: something was bound to get twisted, crushed, mangled, or attacked by a cat.

‘Wine?’ Fox asked. There was a bottle open and waiting on the table, the grapes grown and the drink bottled in the West Canadian Union.

‘That would be nice. A Canadian vineyard. Most people do not believe me when I say wine was produced in the country before the climate shifts.’

Fox grinned at him. ‘Thirty-first wine-producing nation in the world as of the second decade. I looked it up. I’d serve French, but I can’t afford it. Had it once. Jackson broke out a bottle when I moved to New York. Don’t
want
to think what it cost and I couldn’t tell the difference anyway.’