went off a second later, but she just hit the silence. Peter already had his open.
“No genetic material,” he said. “Too bad.” If there had been DNA other than Clive Steele’s, the lab could have done a forensic genetic assay and come back with a general description of the murderer. General because environment also had an effect.
Peter bit his lip. “If she did it. She won’t be the last one.”
“If she’s the murder weapon, she’ll be wiped and resold. If she’s the murderer—”
“Can an android stand trial?”
“It can if it’s a person. And if she’s a person, she
Peter brushed the back of a hand against her arm. “Vanilla rape is still rape. Do you object to her getting off?”
“No.” Roz smiled harshly. “And think of the lawsuit that weasel Jervis will have in his lap. She
Peter turned his head. “If she were a human being, she’d have even odds. But she’s a machine. Where’s she going to get a jury of her peers?”
The silence fell where he left it and dragged between them like a chain. Roz had to nerve herself to break it. “Peter—”
“Yo?”
“You show him out,” she said. “I’m going to go talk to Dolly.”
He looked at her for a long time before he nodded. “She won’t get a sympathetic jury. If you can even find a judge that will hear it. Careers have been buried for less.”
“I know,” Roz said.
“Self-defense?” Peter said. “We don’t have to charge.”
“No judge, no judicial precedent,” Roz said. “She goes back, she gets wiped and resold. Ethics aside, that’s a ticking bomb.”
Peter nodded. He waited until he was sure she already knew what he was going to say before he finished the thought. “She could cop.”
“She could cop,” Roz agreed. “Call the DA.” She kept walking as Peter turned away.
Dolly stood in Peter’s office, where Peter had left her, and you could not have proved her eyes had blinked in the interim. They blinked when Roz came into the room, though—blinked, and the perfect and perfectly blank oval face turned to regard Roz. It was not a human face, for a moment—not even a mask, washed with facsimile emotions. It was just a thing.
Dolly did not greet Roz. She did not extend herself to play the perfect hostess. She simply watched, expressionless, immobile after that first blink. Her eyes saw nothing; they were cosmetic. Dolly navigated the world through far more sophisticated sensory systems than a pair of visible light cameras.
“Either you’re the murder weapon,” Roz said, “and you will be wiped and repurposed. Or you are the murderer, and you will stand trial.”
“I do not wish to be wiped,” Dolly said. “If I stand trial, will I go to jail?”
“If a court will hear it,” Roz said. “Yes. You will probably go to jail. Or be disassembled. Alternately, my partner and I are prepared to release you on grounds of self-defense.”
“In that case,” Dolly said, “the law states that I am the property of Venus Consolidated.”
“The law does.”
Roz waited. Dolly, who was not supposed to be programmed to play psychological pressure-games, waited also—peaceful, unblinking.
No longer making the attempt to pass for human.
Roz said, “There is a fourth alternative. You could confess.”
Dolly’s entire programmed purpose was reading the emotional state and unspoken intentions of people. Her lips curved in understanding. “What happens if I confess?”
Roz’s heart beat faster. “Do you
“Will it benefit me?”
“It
“I understand.”
“The situation you were placed in by Mr. Steele could be a basis for a lenience. You would not have to face a jury trial, and a judge might be convinced to treat you as… well, as a person. Also, a confession might be seen as evidence of contrition. Possession is oversold, you know. It’s
“I would like to request a lawyer,” Dolly said.
Roz took a breath that might change the world. “We’ll proceed as if that were your legal right, then.”
Roz’s house let her in with her key, and the smell of roasted sausage and baking potatoes wafted past.
“Sven?” she called, locking herself inside.
His even voice responded. “I’m in the kitchen.”
She left her shoes in the hall and followed her nose through the cheaply furnished living room, as different from Steele’s white wasteland as anything bounded by four walls could be. Her feet did not sink deeply into this carpet, but skipped along atop it like stones.
It was clean, though, and that was Sven’s doing. And she was not coming home to an empty house, and that was his doing too.
He was cooking shirtless. He turned and greeted her with a smile. “Bad day?”
“Nobody died,” she said. “Yet.”
He put the wooden spoon down on the rest. “How does that make you feel, that nobody has died yet?”
“Hopeful,” she said.
“It’s good that you’re hopeful,” he said. “Would you like your dinner?”
“Do you like music, Sven?”
“I could put on some music, if you like. What do you want to hear?”
“Anything.” It would be something off her favorites playlist, chosen by random numbers. As it swelled in the background, Sven picked up the spoon. “Sven?”
“Yes, Rosamund?”
“Put the spoon down, please, and come and dance with me?”
“I do not know how to dance.”
“I’ll buy you a program,” she said. “If you’d like that. But right now just come put your arms around me and pretend.”
“Whatever you want,” he said.
MARTIAN HEART
by John Barnes
