The picture of innocence
“Have you taken your pill, Mr. Beecher?”
It was nice of Bwephulp to check in on me to make sure I was keeping up my allergy medication, but it was sometimes lonely in my disease-free zone to only have that as a daily contact from another sentient being. My junior, Dexter, was on holiday, which meant I got more work done, and I had done it all. Besides, I had specified ‘sentient.’
It was, consequently, a quiet time in the office. Bwephulp and Sshphilb were enjoying some together time, and had shyly admitted to producing a pair of eggs.
I couldn’t have children of my own, without risking dying of allergy to any woman I slept with, so perhaps I might be a sort of uncle to the Tsshst infants. And as I had no problems with allergies to Tsshst, I might even sit them on my knee and tell them stories. So long as I sat in a bath to do so, so as not to hurt them.
In any case, I was able to let my mind drift a little, since nobody was on my back. Always a welcome relief in some respects, but dead boring in others. There are only so many games of solitaire one can play before trying to catch oneself out at cheating.
On the rare occasions this happens, I turn my mind to cross-correlating all news items to see what comes out of it, which is usually amusing conspiracy theories, of dubious use to the imperium but vital for my sanity to construct huge and unlikely conspiracies.
Well, be serious! Is it likely that domestic felines, secretly uplifted, have taken over the fashion world as well as demanding new flavours of cat food? The correlation of new flavours of cat food and some particularly stylish new fashions could simply be traced to the growth of Kelso Industries, which has fingers in both. It just amused me to write a memo which was never for sending. [I shall be in trouble if Bwephulp ever finds that file and sends any of them; note to self, keep them thoroughly well pass-protected. I can only imagine the mayhem that might ensue if anyone took seriously the idea of a Wiłanu plot to decimate Solcentric humans using a confection which caused them to drown. Seriously, check out the statistics of the incidence of eating ice-cream with the incidence of drowning. There’s a close statistical correlation. This is because people rush on holiday to places of sun and swimming, stuff themselves rigid with ice-cream, and take the sort of risks when swimming they would never take outside of a vacation. Does the chill of ice-cream contribute to cramps? Sure it does, but the fact of swimming plus ice-cream equals vacation idiocy is a truer cause. But Wiłanu do not eat ice-cream; they were separated from the human population before the mutation permitting the ingestion of non-human milk took place. Hence, as no Wiłanu eat ice-cream, and tend to view the Solcentric concept of swimming for pleasure with amused contempt, it is possible to skew the facts and come up with a conspiracy. Which is entirely wrong. And yes, I use these to remind me not to get carried away with theory.]
Sometimes correlations of facts and statistics are merely coincidence; and sometimes correlation is not causation, but both have a common root.
However, what was a bit odd was that a famed digital artist produced a picture which was followed rapidly by a significant, and well organised, burglary.
The most unhinged psychologist cannot say that an artwork could cause dishonesty; but it was a close enough correlation to get me interested.
I sent for expanded copies of all the artwork, on hard copy, and museum quality. It was anomalous enough to justify it under expenses, and if I used them to brighten the office later, well, that was neither here nor there. Fortunately, stuck out in the back of beyond as I was, I had access to top grade replicators. Which are no such thing, of course, but the trade name had stuck when Kelso Industries – they get their fingers in a lot of pies – had combined 3D printing with nanite buildup of other materials than resins, permitting me a genuine oil painting with impasto on real canvas from a work which otherwise existed only as a bunch of computer data.
I wonder what the old masters would have made of that.
Probably they’d have had collective fits, as a few minutes could produce what took them weeks to paint, and years to learn how. And yet, without them, we would not be able to produce such works.
The ones who would be most put out, I thought, were those who appreciated the feminine pulchritude they painted in more... personal... ways during the sittings.
Or whatever position they explored between painting sessions.
The pictures were what I would call Medical Waiting Room work; pretty, soothing, uncontroversial, inoffensive.
Well, apart from my proctologist [I tend to suffer lower gut problems] who has a surreal painting of a massive pair of buttocks with an eye between them, and the legend ‘If you looked after your arse, I wouldn’t have to look up it.’ I like my proctologist, who tells it like it is. And who also makes the most awful puns, and laughed when I said that at least I hadn’t been given the bum’s rush. We’re discussing new technology involving a cyber-rectum with allergen filtration, allied with an all-new regrown liver.
It might make me able to live a near normal life. And yes, worrying about that was one reason I was undertaking hobby correlations.
So; my eight innocuous paintings, and seven big robberies.
Picture one; still life with roses, still the empire’s most popular flower, pink, white and red with bicolour variations still the most popular colours despite gene-splicing to make genuinely black roses, blue roses, green roses [why have green roses? Just buy a cabbage] and roses with patterns on them. This was an arrangement of nine roses in pink and creamy yellow, with eleven pink shaggy-petalled things around them. [The encyclopedia told me they were carnations, another Terran flower.]
The store hit was Peace and Son, on the eleventh of September. Yes, I know using Terran months is inappropriate for somewhere like Deneb, but the military needs to know when things are in ways the tiny brains of flag officers can think their way around.
Next picture was of a couple of girls in long dresses, in the sort of idyllic countryside which probably only exists on art these days, one of them carrying a bunch of a dozen or so flowers, and the robbery was on the second of December, when Victoria’s Secrets was knocked over.
Third was a painting of half a dozen Arcturan swibble chicks, in a nest, There were a number of blossoms on the branches bearing the nest.
The company stolen from was Pugasi AG, an Arcturan company... well, that was interesting. The theft was on the sixth of December, right on top of the previous.
Fourth was a painting of a heroic looking archaeologist, the archetypal female with more on display than a self-respecting archaeologist would manage, carrying an artefact. The attempt had been made on Kelso Industries on the first of January. It was unsuccessful. Indira employs Babari as security guards, and anyone who wants to tangle with better than seven foot tall, muscular, furry individuals whose body weaponry contravenes the laws on places where carrying knives is banned, well, you are totally insane. A miscalculation.
It was a bit nasty, actually. One of the sec guards had a mouth lock on the ankle of a fleeing thief, and the man’s fellows fried him with a laser hot enough to melt his features and burn off any fingerprints and disrupt his DNA. The sec guard copped it as well; so Indira would not be pleased. She had probably cuddled him when he was a cub.
There was a bounty on the thieves. Why was I not surprised?
The next theft was not until the fourteenth of February; and the picture was of sweethearts holding hands, surrounded by little birds. It was quite noisomely twee. The man was in military uniform.
The payroll of the local militia was hit.
Sixth, another still life, three Morivian orchids, with as many Morivian fern blossoms. This theft was slightly different, hitting a courier carrying cred-sticks from a firm to the bank on March the third. With the speed of travel being the speed of communication, this hampers such things as bank transfers, so downloads onto cred-sticks makes them negotiable currency.
I checked.
The company was Morivian.
Seventh, three ladies drinking tea around a table, with a selection of biscuits; the twentieth of March, New Pradesh Famous Tea And Groceries was the victim.
I went back to do some counting before I looked at picture eight.
Today was April the second.
The picture was of four kittywings, the winged feline-like pet species bred by Anulgu AG, chasing fourteen butterflies. Or moths. If they weren’t Wiłanu ragwings.
I wondered if Indira Kelso was still around Deneb, and put through a call.
She answered.
“Hello, Jim,” she said. “I’m trying to find some murderous thieves.”
“I know,” I said. “I might have some information for you, and where they are going to strike next and when.” I paused. “You aren’t on Deneb, you answered too quickly.”
“I was on my way to see you,” she said. “I’ll be with you in an hour or so.”
“Cheers, I’ll see you, then,” I said. “I can get my notes written up.”
Indira sauntered into my office, rather more pink than her usual coffee-colour, having been through a scout-level decontamination for my convenience. You can say what you like about ‘Mad’ Indira Kelso, but she’s always ready to go the extra mile for a friend, and I knew she was smarting with decontaminants to help keep me healthy.
“Indira, good to see you,” I said.
“Jim, always good to see you,” she replied. “You have me itching with impatience.”
“Shall I sound omniscient and tell you that the thieves will strike on the fourteenth of this month at Anulgu AG?” I said.
“In the darker days of Terran history, you’d be burned at the stake,” said Indira. “I see you’ve taken up art criticism.”
“There’s an art forum, and Collin Matabele publishes a piece of art typically four to ten days before a big, well-organised theft,” I said. “I don’t get all the links yet, but the month and the day is indicated by the number of main and secondary subjects in the painting.”
Indira was regarding the paintings, hung on my walls with the thefts underneath them.
“Peace roses, for Peace and son,” she said.
“There’s a rose called ‘Peace’?” I said.
“Victorian dress – it’s the generic name for that type of long dress – and Victoria’s Secrets,” said Indira.
“And now you are filling in the blanks of the things I didn’t know,” I said. “Pugasi are Arcturan, obviously the heroic archaeologist represents you – don’t pull faces – and then the military, from the uniform.”
“The date is the Terran love-fest day,” said Indira. “Once known as Valentine’s day.”
“The hell!” I said. “The Colonel in Chief of the militia is Festulo Valentine.”
“Well, that says which military pay,” said Indira. “And yes, once knowing the code, the inference is clear. Segellamu Angulu won’t listen to a warning, you know.”
“I have to send one, you know,” I said.
“Of course,” said Indira. “He won’t even tighten security, so it won’t interfere with any trap I set.”
“I rather assumed you would be interested to set one,” I said.
“You’ve got the bounty, anyway,” said Indira. “Ch’autuli’it was a good man. And he has kits.”
“I can’t accept bounties, you know that,” I said, regretfully.
I could pay for all the treatments my proctologist had suggested if I could. Civil Service rules are strict. The Scout Service had done all they could, with what they had at the time, but I entered the Civil Service with this condition, and it paid my medical insurance, but it would not cover off the wall treatments for ongoing conditions. I had Bwephulp look up all the regulations, and bless her, she worked her little amphibian guts out to try to find a loophole, but according to medical rules section 6, subsection 42, paragraph 17, pre-existing conditions may be maintained under the medical care protocol [see medical rules section 1, subsection 4, paragraph 3] but no further treatment may be expected without a worsening of the condition demonstrably caused by the workplace [see medical rules section 9, subsection 33, paragraph 1] as certified by a Civil Service approved doctor. I knew the bloody rule by heart. She had apologised that she could not swim against the tide, bless her.
“Well, now, supposing someone happened to need particular treatment, and a donor offered to pay for that treatment of the first person needing it so long as they signed an agreement for their data to be used for medical science?” said Indira.
“You know about it?” I gasped.
“I know what’s recently come on the market for medicine and what it would mean for you,” she said. “A cyber-trachea would help as well. And you can get those which also act essentially as gills if anyone wanted to spend more time underwater with friends,” she added. “Think about it.”
“I thought about it. The answer is yes,” I said. “But where does the artist fit in?”
“That’s what I’d like to know, Jim,” said Indira. “I’ll send you all I can find out; I have an ambush to arrange, but I’ll get my people on it right away. Give my love to Bwephulp and Sshphilb, won’t you?”
“What, are you off again?” I protested.
She stayed long enough for coffee and biscuits, but that’s Indira... she only stayed to indulge me with a bit of human company on my own level of intellect. Dexter, my junior, can be trusted with quite complex tasks, but not... well, let’s just say, it would never occur to him to look for correlations he wasn’t being roasted over by some irascible admiral.
I bid her fare well, and sent the message to Segellamu Angulu, a stiff-necked Wiłanu nobleman with a need for a ferruleproctectomy, or in other words, enough of a stick up his arse to need my proctologist’s best work.
I called her, too.
“Jill?” I said, “You’re going to get an offer to experiment on me. Schedule the surgery with the best there is and liaise with the upper respiratory tract people.”
As proctologists go, Jill is the sort who plainly have cyber-buttocks; she makes any man who sees her want to screw her arse off.
I wonder if she knew my own too intimately to ask on a date if the treatment was successful?
I had a reply from Angulu first.
Well, to be strictly accurate, I had a message from his automated ‘fuck you and the horse you rode in on’ service.
I wasn’t even going to get a sentient being to overlook it, being placed in the autobin.
His loss.
Indira could claim up to half of anything she saved for him as bounty for good citizenship.
That’s how the Imperium works.
The next thing I had through was a dossier on Collin Matabele from Indira.
I wondered if Indira was a bit paranoid not to even ask the Artists’ Forum for information, telling them that one of their artists was a crook. But then, Indira is still alive because she’s a bit paranoid.
As it turned out, it looked as though she was wise to be paranoid. There was a private chat-room where all the fine planning was done, run by the four people who had set up the forum, and who were known collectively as Collin Matabele. Their minions who did the dirty work were signed up as artists, and did the odd desultory nod to making AI images, or in the case of one, made a personal portfolio of what looked like very young women in suggestive positions and wearing very little but the odd pixel. The four who ran the forum, however, were anonymous online and in the chatroom.
It was when the money trail was followed – they actually made money from the legitimate artists – but they also had to pay their own dues or the algorithm would notice. I had names now. Martin Dissel, Mordred Dissel, Sally Dissel, and Collin Matabele.
I set Bwephulp on them.
Martin Dissel and Collin Matabele had both been fired by Angulu; the first, as far as I could see, for being lazy, and the second for failing to produce the sort of visual content in advertising Angulu wanted. Mordred Dissel was Martin’s brother, a supply sergeant in the militia, and with a warning on his docket for being on the take. Sally was their sister, and seemed to have trouble with honesty on her income tax returns.
She was dating Collin Matabele; keeping it all in the family, as you might say.
I posted the lot back to Indira, and left it to her when to dump it in the lap of the authorities.
Knowing Indira, it would send the moment she sprang her trap.
I was right; there was a spread in the news about it, relegated to a couple of pages back, and even further back the closing of the artist’s forum.
Pity, there were one or two good pieces.
Doubtless Indira would put in a bid to take it over, however, and would arrange for the artists to be able to make money from their efforts.
And then it was back to business as usual with a peremptory yapping from some supply-cretin about where his supplies were going missing.
And that one was easy.
He was indenting over and over for part 37/17/4121B44. His staff had a sufficiency of toilet rolls to build a papier maché fortress, but he was still failing to get enough lenses for the re-usable laser rifles, which burned out after a few uses.
That was part 57/17/4121B44.
As anyone should know.
