appropriate that it was into the Jewish section.
When he reached the right monument, 'Eliza Wil-kins, 1966-2042, beloved wife of Harold,' it was FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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thirty-two after. He was in time for the show. A funeral was progressing below him.
He was out of sight of most of them, and it was probably a good thing. They were planting someone of consequence, and from his vantage, it was pinks only. He thought he saw a morey in the crowd, but— damn his bad day-vision—it turned out to be a black pink with a heavy beard.
Not a morey in the lot, and the whitest bunch of pinks he had ever seen. Especially under the canopy. There, he figured on fifty people who got to use the folding chairs, at least another fifty standing back under cover, and a hundred or so milling about beyond some sort of private security line in back of the paying customers. Even with his poor eyesight he could make the types. The pinks who knew the corpse were obvious, they wore their money—he could see the glints of their shoes and jewelry whenever they moved—and they were, with few exceptions, white. The pinks who wanted to know the corpse were just as easily made, and they were closer to the normal mix of human coloring, a few blacks, orientals, hispanics. The black cops were totally out of it, with their cheap suits and their attention on everything but the service. The private security goons—they were white—were better dressed than the cops and were intent on keeping the flow of riffraff behind the tent. Then, in the back with the crowd, were the vids. Cameras and mikes at the ready . . .
Some of the riffraff—mostly blacks and orientals-were carrying signs. Looked like a full-fledged protest was going on. The vids were paying as much, if not more, attention to the riffraff than to the service. Nohar wished he could make out more of the signs, but the best he could do was read the occasional word. Lots of isms, 'Racism,' 'Sexism,' 'Speciesism.' The signs that weren't isms seemed to mention capital-R Rights.
The Right to what, Nohar couldn't read.
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Nohar wondered who had died—irritating, because he thought he had heard something about this, and the job his anonymous client had in mind probably involved the stiff. Perhaps the guy left all his money to some morey squeeze and they needed to track her down.
Nohar heard a truck, and hoped it wasn't security. The pinks might take offense at a morey walking around the human part of the cemetery. But instead of security, Nohar saw an unmarked cargo van. A Dodge Electroline painted institution-green. It was window-less, boxy, cheap, and either remote-driven or programmed. It wasn't the kind of vehicle Nohar expected to see in a cemetery. It pulled on to the shoulder and backed toward him. When it stopped, the rear doors opened with a pneumatic hiss.
The smell was overpowering. His sensitive nose was suddenly exposed to an open sewer. Nohar was enveloped by the odor of sweat, and bile, and ammonia. Even a pink would've been able to sense it.
He had no idea what this guy was supposed to look like, or who he was—but Nohar did not expect another frank. They were supposed to be rare. Despite that, what the opening door revealed couldn 't be anything but a frank. And a failure at that.
Once Nohar's eyes had adjusted to the nearly black interior of the cargo van, he could see it. The frank was vaguely humanoid and had a pasty white color to its rubbery skin. Its limbs seemed tubular and boneless, and its fingers were fused into a mittenlike hand. It wore a pink's clothes, but its pale bulk was fighting them. Rolls of white flesh cascaded over its belt, its collar, even its shoes. Glassy eyes, a lump of a nose, and a lipless mouth were collected together on a pear-shaped head. Its face seemed incapable of showing any expression. It seemed that, if the clothes were removed, the frank would just slide down and form a puddle on the ground.
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The frank also massed more than Nohar did though it was a meter shorter. Whatever gene-tech had designed this monstrosity had sere wed-up bigtime.
Until now, Nohar could never quite fathom the reason for the pinks' horror at the franks. It seemed bizarre to him that humans, who took all the genetic tinkering with other species in stride, were so aghast when someone tinkered with their own. If this was a sample of what happened, Nohar could begin to understand. Maybe, thought Nohar, pink genes didn 't take kindly to fiddling. The voice was the same as the one over the comm— deep, bubbly, and, somehow, slimy. 'Are you the detective, Nohar Raj asthan?'
Briefly, Nohar wondered if he needed the money this badly-he did. 'Yes.'
Nohar began to feel warmth coming from the back of the van. Nohar realized that the frank had the heat on in the van, all the way. Back where the frank was sitting it could be fifty degrees. An unpleasant sound emerged from the frank's mass. It could have been a belch. 'We have fifteen minutes before van goes to next stop, forgive. I need to smuggle myself out. Have to keep meeting secret.'
Nohar shrugged. 'Then you better get on with it.'
At least the frank took Nohar's appearance in stride. In most of the directories it didn't mention that Nohar was the only moreau in the city with a private investigator's license. For some people, his address wasn't a big enough clue. Of course a pink detective would have a problem with this guy, even more so than with Nugoya. At least with Nugoya, a pink could pretend the guy had been human.
'What kind of job? Surveillance or missing persons?'
Nohar heard flesh shifting as the frank moved. * 'Do you know who is being buried down the hill?'
Chalk one up for obvious conclusions. The stiff was involved. 'Rich, human, lots of friends.'
Another ugly sound emerged from the mass of white
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flesh. It might have been a laugh. 'The dead man is a politician. His name is Daryl Johnson. He is the campaign manager for twelfth district congressman, Joseph Binder.'
Nohar was wondering about the frank's weird accent when he realized that the frank had ducked his first question. 'What's the job?' 'I must know who killed Daryl Johnson.' Nohar almost laughed, but he knew the frank was serious. 'Outside my specialty.' So much for the money he needed. 'I don't mess with police investigations —'
'There is no police investigation.' Nohar was getting irritated with the frank's bubbling monotone. 'I work with moreys. I don't work with human problems. You got the wrong P.I.'
'Binder pressures the police, they close the case. I need to know if someone in my company is responsible for Johnson's death ... '
Nohar looked straight into the frank's eyes. That usually unnerved people, but the frank was as expressionless as ever. ' * Did you hear what I said?'' It took Nohar a while to realize that the reason he didn't like the frank's eyes was because they didn't blink.
'Let me finish, Mr. Rajasthan. You are the only person I can contact for this job. For obvious reasons, I am unable to hire a human investigator—' 'No solidarity shit.'
'Practical matter. No qualified human is willing to talk to me. My company is Midwest Lapidary Imports. We're privately owned. We import gemstones from South Africa. The board is formed of South African refugees—' 'All like you?' The frank showed no ofFense at the question. 'Yes, like me. We retain contacts in the mining industry—' Nohar got a picture of the South African gene-techs trying to create a modified human miner. Hell, maybe the frank's appearance wasn't a mistake. For all Nohar FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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knew, this guy was perfectly adapted for work in a five-mile-deep hole. Nohar stopped musing and waited for the frank to get to the point. 'To succeed, the owners of Midwest Lapidary Imports, MLI, need to remain hidden, unnoticed, private. The company will not survive if our existence is widely known.
'With Johnson's death there is the possibility that one of our number is behind the murder ... '
Nohar sighed. Learn something new every day. A bunch of franks were importing diamonds from South Africa, probably illegally. The pinks would just love that idea. The Supreme Court was still debating if the 29th amendment even covered the franks. No one knew yet if the franks were covered by the Bill of Rights, the limited tnorey amendment, or nothing at all. Before the pinks hi this country had even locked down the legal status of engineered humans, here were a few, acting just like eager little capitalists. 'You said Binder's blocking the investigation. What
