performed the hack also edited the external webcam feeds that mirror to the companion’s memories.”
“How hard is that?”
“Not any harder than cloning over her files, but you have to know to look for them. So it’s confirmation that our perp knows his or her way around a line of code. What have you got?”
Roz shrugged. “Steele had a lot of money, which means a lot of enemies. And he did not have a lot of human contact. Not for years now. I’ve started calling in known associates for interviews, but unless they surprise me, I think we’re looking at crime of profit, not crime of passion.”
Having finished with the nail file, Dolly wiped it on her prison smock and laid it down on Peter’s blotter, beside the cup of ink—and light-pens.
Peter swept it into a drawer. “So we’re probably
Dolly blinked, lips parting, but seemed to decide that Peter’s comment had not been directed at her. Still, she drew in air—could you call it a breath?—and said, “It is my duty to help find my contract-holder’s killer.”
Roz lowered her voice. “You’d think they’d pull ’em off the market.”
“Like they pull all cars whenever one crashes? The world ain’t perfect.”
“Or do that robot laws thing everybody used to twitter on about.”
“Whatever a positronic brain is, we don’t have it. Asimov’s fictional robots were self-aware. Dolly’s neurons are binary, as we used to think human neurons were. She doesn’t have the nuanced neurochemistry of even, say, a cat.” Peter popped his collar smooth with his thumbs. “A doll can’t
Peter nodded.
Roz rubbed a scuffmark on the tile with her shoe. “So given he didn’t like anything … challenging, why would he have a Dolly when he could have had any woman he wanted?”
“There’s never any drama, no pain, no disappointment. Just comfort, the perfect helpmeet. With infinite variety.”
“And you never have to worry about what she wants. Or likes in bed.”
Peter smiled. “The perfect woman for a narcissist.”
The interviews proved unproductive, but Roz didn’t leave the station house until after ten. Spring mornings might be warm, but once the sun went down, a cool breeze sprang up, ruffling the hair she’d finally remembered to pull from its ponytail as she walked out the door.
Roz’s green plug-in was still parked beside Peter’s. It booted as she walked toward it, headlights flickering on, power probe retracting. The driver-side door swung open as her RFID chip came within range. She slipped inside and let it buckle her in.
“Home,” she said, “and dinner.”
The car messaged ahead as it pulled smoothly from the parking spot. Roz let the autopilot handle the driving. It was less snappy than human control, but as tired as she was, eyelids burning and heavy, it was safer.
Whatever Peter had said about cars crashing, Roz’s delivered her safe to her driveway. Her house let her in with a key—she had decent security, but it was the old-fashioned kind—and the smell of boiling pasta and toasting garlic bread wafted past as she opened it.
“Sven?” she called, locking herself inside.
His even voice responded. “I’m in the kitchen.”
She left her shoes by the door and followed her nose through the cheaply furnished living room.
Sven was cooking shirtless, and she could see the repaired patches along his spine where his skin had grown brittle and cracked with age. He turned and greeted her with a smile. “Bad day?”
“Somebody’s dead again,” she said.
He put the wooden spoon down on the rest. “How does that make you feel, that somebody’s dead?”
He didn’t have a lot of emotional range, but that was okay. She needed something steadying in her life. She came to him and rested her head against his warm chest. He draped one arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, breathing deep. “Like I have work to do.”
“Do it tomorrow,” he said. “You will feel better once you eat and rest.”
Peter must have slept in a ready room cot, because when Roz arrived at the house before six AM, he had on the same trousers and a different shirt, and he was already armpit-deep in coffee and Dolly’s files. Dolly herself was parked in the corner, at ease and online but in rest mode.
Or so she seemed, until Roz entered the room and Dolly’s eyes tracked. “Good morning, Detective Kirkbride,” Dolly said. “Would you like some coffee? Or a piece of fruit?”
“No thank you.” Roz swung Peter’s spare chair around and dropped into it. An electric air permeated the room—the feeling of anticipation. To Peter, Roz said, “Fruit?”
“Dolly believes in a healthy diet,” he said, nudging a napkin on his desk that supported a half-eaten Satsuma. “She’ll have the whole house cleaned up in no time. We’ve been talking about literature.”
Roz spun the chair so she could keep both Peter and Dolly in her peripheral vision. “Literature?”
“Poetry,” Dolly said. “Detective King mentioned poetic justice yesterday afternoon.”
Roz stared at Peter. “Dolly likes poetry. Steele really
“That’s not all Dolly likes.” Peter triggered his panel again. “Remember this?”
It was the cleaning sequence from the previous day, the sound of the central vacuum system rising and falling as Dolly lifted the brush and set it down again.
Roz raised her eyebrows.
Peter held up a hand. “Wait for it. It turns out there’s a second audio track.”
Another waggle of his fingers, and the cramped office filled with sound.
Music.
Improvisational jazz. Intricate and weird.
“Dolly was listening to that inside her head while she was vacuuming,” Peter said.
Roz touched her fingertips to each other, the whole assemblage to her lips. “Dolly?”
“Yes, Detective Kirkbride?”
“Why do you listen to music?”
“Because I enjoy it.”
Roz let her hand fall to her chest, pushing her blouse against the skin below the collarbone.
Roz said, “Did you enjoy your work at Mr. Steele’s house?”
“I was expected to enjoy it,” Dolly said, and Roz glanced at Peter, cold all up her spine. A classic evasion. Just the sort of thing a home companion’s conversational algorithms should not be able to produce.
Across his desk, Peter was nodding. “Yes.”
Dolly turned at the sound of his voice. “Are you interested in music, Detective Kirkbride? I’d love to talk with you about it some time. Are you interested in poetry? Today, I was reading—”
“Yes,” Peter said. “Dolly, wait here please. Detective Kirkbride and I need to talk in the hall.”
“My pleasure, Detective King,” said the companion.
“She killed him,” Roz said. “She killed him and wiped her own memory of the act. A doll’s got to know her own code, right?”
Peter leaned against the wall by the men’s room door, arms folded, forearms muscular under rolled-up sleeves. “That’s hasty.”
“And you believe it, too.”
He shrugged. “There’s a rep from Venus Consolidated in Interview Four right now. What say we go talk to him?”
The rep’s name was Doug Jervis. He was actually a vice president of public relations, and even though he was an American, he’d been flown in overnight from Rio for the express purpose of talking to Peter and Roz.
“I guess they’re taking this seriously.”
Peter gave her a sideways glance. “Wouldn’t you?”
Jervis got up as they came into the room, extending a good handshake across the table. There were
