disorganised crime 3

 

Chapter 3

 

Jenni Devar was my hacker, and she was monitoring a number of public terminals between where we had had them taken and the city. It covered a couple of possible routes, and allowed for the subject to come up at a number of different points in the drive. After all, both were without their own boxes, supposedly locked up as ‘evidence.’ We listened to the conversation.

“Someone plans on springing a nasty surprise on Antti,” said Serenaa.

We’d all drawn the same conclusion, but did not mention this.

“Get our surprise in first and harder,” growled Kea.

I would not expect anything else from him, but honestly, it reflected my own feelings on the matter.

It was a suburban house. What can I say? Human suburban houses tend to comply to a pattern on any world, to some degree. Sure, here they are white, amorphous and with coloured tiles on the roof,  on Deneb they are square, utilitarian and made of grey stoncrete and only show individuality within; but a suburban house in the expensive end tends to have a garden out front with some kind of border or barrier against outsiders, whether an electrified barrier, a stone wall, iron railings or whatever. There’s usually a drive, with gates the plebs can peer enviously through, and the house is large enough for anyone to be certain that there are four or five more bedrooms than the occupant needs.

There was a butler when we rang the bell.

Of course there was a butler.

This one was flesh and blood, a conceit. Nobody had managed to make a true artificial intelligence, though there had been a few debacles on earth before interstellar traffic when the experiment had been attempted, including a seizure if the power supply of three continents by one supercomputer, and violent pro-computer rights groups, and equally violent anti-computer rights groups, all of which led to a refinement of the Turing test for the ability to learn and the needs of a sentient which were still in place to define a race as sentient today. Computers were ruled non-sentient in an inability to reproduce, if plans of computers made by humans were denied to them; and on their inability to be moved by any kind of artwork. Other species may have other forms of art, but they appreciate the skill of producing it in an emotive or visceral sense. It helped establish the Squidlies on the planet Nelson as sentient, watching them improvise water wave patterns which they could sense with their tentacles.  But there are what have come to be known as ‘sentience emulators’ which can mimic human behaviour, and in most cases perform adequately if not subject to malicious compliance to help them out. Some of them performed better than some individuals of supposedly sentient race; the bell curve covered by humanity is huge, and runs from high stable genius types like Dr. Feldmayer, who enabled access to jump-six, down to sundry low-level gophers in any bureaucracy. Some of whom might not personally pass the Turing test or sentient needs test; but they did, then, have the impenetrable armour of protective stupidity, which sentience emulators do not. They continue to attempt to make sense of what was being input, instead of just smiling vaguely and wafting off in a haze of uncaring incomprehension when informed that my identity was the yeggman, I was the walrus, after giving my age as blue, and my rank as forty-two.

Yes, I might have blown the circuits of an infernally smug sentience emulator used as a teacher at boot camp. It was finally defeated by me using ethics… I learned a lot more from destroying that thing than it ever taught me. Being given a conundrum of how human life must be preserved, especially innocents, and law must be upheld, but by arresting a man for stealing would cause his offspring to die of hunger, but not arresting him would lead to the sacking of the man not preventing the theft, whose children would then starve  caused it to start whirring in hopeless panic. Four or five similar examples were enough to burn it out.

It is against the law to have a sentience emulator which could be mistaken for a human… or indeed any sentient race, though it is the solcentric human who is most obsessed with them.

On the other hand, it is not illegal for a human to impersonate a sentience emulator.

You can learn a lot from tipsy aristocrats with a ’bot suit, a plastic mask on your face and the ability to act entirely logically.

Which is off the point, and you should have covered all this in your civics lessons. If you haven’t, go out and experiment.

You never know, you might just discover that one of the bots in your university is a security man in disguise.

The butler was human, and very surprised to see us.

He wasn’t surprised for long, as we stunned him, and stowed him in his quarters.

We went through the house with the eye to fine detail of a rampaging horde of insects which go after crops. Every world has them, and military slang for them – devised by the Scouts – is Sawrafe. Scavening Arthropods With Rapacious Appetites [Fouling] Everything. We Sawrafed ever corner of the house, and not one trace did we find of either Mr. Big, or files pertaining to illegal activities.

I was beginning to think that we had totally messed up big time, and got the wrong house when Eranuu Fłanaa started staring about the lounge. It was definitely more of a lounge than a sitting room. Almost a salon, but without the class.

“The proportions are wrong, Gunny,” she said.

Eranuu is what used to be called autistic, and now has some fancy handle called SIDS; Social Interaction Deficiency Syndrome. She is also remarkable at estimating distances, shapes, and so on. Her parents wisely turned down the chemical brain readjustment for her, and helped her work round the differences which make her unique, rather than have their adjusted daughter returned with a friendly personality and devoid of anything resembling imagination. No, I don’t approve of chemical tinkering; half humanity’s innovations good and bad came from people who can be shown to be SIDS people, and I am glad that it is not automatic or compulsory.  It does cut down the level of abuse some SIDS kids have from parents and teachers who can’t cope, but I cannot but wonder at the cost.  Just because you can do something, does not mean you should.  Anyway, Eranuu was cranky, solitary, downright homicidal for three days out of twenty-eight, cynical as hell for the other twenty-five, and capable of handing out pithy, if not always immediately obvious advice.  And her spacial awareness was awesome. “The proportions of this room are all wrong,” she said. “It’s a metre too long on one side, which is concealed somewhat by that bar.”

We found the mechanical opening to the hidden space, nothing electronic, so we could neither trace a circuit, nor could Mr. Big get trapped by the turning off of the power. It was a staircase down to an underground room, with its own generator, and enough on the computer to convict the owner three times over.

Then we waited.

The secret room was behind the bar, and most conveniently had one way mirror glass, where a couple of us could wait and watch; and the bar itself hid a couple more. Kea was too big, and Phwedulp declared that he was too cowardly, and went to make sure all our evidence was ready to send to the marines for mass overnight arrests. I lurked behind the curtains, just because it tickled my sense of the dramatic.

Oh, and I discharged the power in the laspistol which someone had thoughtfully left on the bar. It was now harmless.

 

Antti had managed to delay Kuraashi long enough that it was only now that the car was turning into the driveway. It is always a little unnerving to see cars throw themselves around in what appears to be pitch darkness, because of the light pollution laws on many worlds, which demand that car lights are in the ultra violet range, and visible to the driver because of the windshield’s composition. Where I grew up, light pollution was not an issue, and cars did not have built in braking for large bodies in the road. It was a little more exciting than more high-tech dwellers like, and yes, playing chicken with the traffic was a thing for youths.

Why do you think I joined the marines? I liked excitement.

Anyway, Kuraashi was muttering something about the door being left unlocked instead of the butler greeting them.

“Perhaps Mr. Big told him to get lost so we have no witnesses,” said Antti, innocently as he was ushered into the not-quite-a-salon.

“Preposterous!” said Kuraashi.

“He might have misunderstood what you meant,” said Antti.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you are Mr. Big, aren’t you?” said Antti. “I thought the inference was obvious, myself. And that you were asking for something like that laspistol to be available to shoot me.”

Kuraashi predictably picked it up, and shot Antti, who sat down on a spindly antique chair which looked must unsafe under his broad Nifleheimer backside.

“What?” yelped Kuraashi.

“The blue safety light is on, showing the power is low,” said Antti. “You like watching your dirty work done, but you don’t actually do it yourself.”

“Nice work,” I said, strolling out from behind the curtain. “You’re back under arrest, and so, by now, are most of the crime bosses and high ranking cops and judges in the city.”

“But… how?” Kuraashi’s eyes flicked to his bar.

Serenaa and Jenni opened the secret panel.

Kuraashi fell apart at this point.

 

We didn’t have much sleep for the five days it took to track down and arrest anyone involved in, or paid off by, Kuraashi’s organisation.  The trials gripped the populace for months, and my face became well-known on local trid shows.

Oh, well, as planetary count, it was more or less inevitable.

And it showed that I was not ready to just blink at crime.

So, now, I hoped Serenaa and I might just be able to get on with things.

For a while, anyway.

The next five days? None of your damn business.

 

Fin

 

 

Set in the same universe fifty years on; an essay by Duke Colonel Professor Emeritus of Civics, Henrik Kowalski.

 

The concept of using Imagaashuu technology to plug the consciousness so deeply into a machine as to become that machine seemed a good idea at first.

It was a boon to those people trapped in horribly damaged bodies, or born with degenerative diseases, who could live active, fulfilling lives.  And it made certain jobs more efficient.  A plug-jock, as they were known at first, could do any job needing a machine far more efficiently than any person driving a machine. It was discovered that the way to enable someone to survive long periods in space when plugged in did so better surrounded in a nutrient soup, much like an artificial womb, which was quickly called a ‘cocoon’ and those who inhabited it ‘butterflies.’ This was a rather jeering epithet at first, as long periods in their goo, even with electronic muscle stimulators, tended to leave these early plug-jocks physically weak. Once they had experienced it, however, there were few who would give the lifestyle up. Apparently, the feel of space on your skin, and the sensation of running between the stars was too intoxicating. And that problem was solved because, in doing jobs too dangerous for other people, the premiums earned were incalculable, and the butterflies could afford a team of trainers, sport equipment, muscle modifications, genetic tweaking and so on which made the term refer rather more to their perfect bodies and graceful movement than to being weak little bugs. Suddenly, there was a new elite, feted, celebrated, able to outbid almost anyone for anything. Able to fund research outside of the budget of anyone else.

Able to have clones of themselves grown, and their memories recorded and transferred to the new clones when their bodies started ageing, as anargathic drugs interfered with the chemical soup in which they spent much of their lives.

And now?

Now some moron has invented a way to project their personalities from the recorder on their jack-in point via those miniature  wormholes which were so new when I was Gunny Kowalski, digging up treason. So, even accident will not kill them, as long as they have at least one clone prepared. And most have several.

It’s going to have an impact on law and order.

There is the good news, however.

Only three in ten thousand solcentric humans can bear the solitude of being the ship; which is about one in ten of those who pass the psychological tests to be permitted to try. The other nine in ten die screaming.

And because the support system is now so complex, you have to be wealthy, very wealthy, to start off with, to set up the system. At least they let you take the tests first to see if you flunk out right away. It’s a mustering-out benefit of both the navy and the scouts to those they think will use it well, but for most people, it’s a pipe dream. And being so remote, of course, there are ruder terms about than ‘Butterflies.’  ‘Egglings’ is another, ‘Saccers’ and the truly offensive, ‘Wormers’ or ‘kennel-hounds,’ a Wargrin term of abuse.

Oh, I specified Solcentric humans, I think; there has never been a Wiłanu who could handle it, and I’m not sure about mixed blood. Probably depends more on the upbringing than the bloodline.

Wargrini are even rarer. Not only do they have to be alphas, they have to have the ‘lone wolf’ gene. However, at least for them, genetic testing shows amost 100% whether they can handle it. Babari take to it well enough, but mostly choose not to do so. They like their physical prowess to be physical. The only people I’ve ever known to give up being butterflies are Babari.

It goes against the religion of the Tsshst;  I don’t know exactly why, and I haven’t asked. I have, however, heard mutters about ‘corrupted pools’ referring to the cocoons. And the Imagaashuu, who started all this?  They refuse to work anywhere but on planetary or asteroid surfaces, and lock themselves up with tranquilisers when travelling in space vehicles. So, it’s a solcentric human thing.  Whether that is going to cause problems or not, I don’t know.

Watch this space.

Harry.

                                                                                                                                                           

disorganised crime, 2

 

Chapter 2

 

I realised that we were dealing with more than a few bent cops when the sergeant taking the complaint asked for a registry fee to see that the complaint was filed.

“The registry fee for seeing this complaint filed is five credits,” he said. “Ten, if you want it expedited.”

“You’re asking for a bribe,” I said, flatly. “A bribe not to lose or delay my paperwork.”

He shrugged.

“Call it what you will; I call it a registry fee.”

“You’re fired,” I said. “And I’ll be prosecuting you.”

He goggled.

“And who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded.

“I know I’m your ultimate boss on this planet,” I said.

He didn’t want to leave, but I managed to persuade him.

It wasn’t that far to the ground; only the second floor, and there were flowerbeds to break his fall. Not to mention an ornamental lake. He made a good splash; I wonder if he could swim?  But then, I found myself indifferent to that conundrum.

I called my father-in-law, who was the best person I could think of.

“Dad?” I said. “I need a dozen squads of marines.”

“Whatever for, Gunny?” demanded Major-General Kerufin.

“I’m declaring martial law in the city until I find out how many police are corrupt,” I said.

“Oh, like that, is it?” said the major. “You’ll have them.”

He was as good as his word.

A troop ship arrived in the park within fifteen minutes, and disgorged a couple of hundred men, most of whom drew up to attention as the ship took off; and the officers came in to find me. We shook hands, and I briefed them.

Now I had to page every cop on this shift and bring them into the squad room, preferably after the marines had arrived, and tell them they were on administrative leave whilst I had their integrity investigated.

The babble was almost deafening.

I dodged out of the room, and threw in a flash-bang-crash grenate, known in the trade as a ‘peacemaker.’

It knocks anyone in the room half silly, overwhelms their optic nerves, half deafens them, and subdues almost everyone.

I went back in when they were subdued. I should maybe have

 

 

This would be a job for Phwedulp, bullying… er, coercing.,. other civil service Tsshst. Phwedulp would be in the Prime Pool as Tsshst designate what solcentrics refer to as seventh heaven.

And as if on cue, Phwedulp came in, followed by the rest of my squad.

“The Big Man is some aristocrat, the other criminals of the city believe,” said Phwedulp, in his precise tones.  “We should get some information from this precinct house if that fat man was allowed to call him, or if the captain alerted him, as I have had all outgoing signals tapped, and ingoing signals to the office of the captain. So far he has alerted three other high-ranking police officers that the new count is going to be difficult.”

“Bwurrf and I shook down a few Wargrini heavies,” said Arffrur, barking a laugh. “Thought they were tough, they did. Well, they weren’t.  We have the names of the chiefs of gambling, prostitution, protection, and theft.”

“What did you do with the less than tough heavies?” I asked.

“Gave them to a recruiting sergeant from the marches,” said Bwurff, and they both gave another bark of laughter.

Well, that disposed of them neatly. No testimony, but then, fewer to fight.

“We discouraged a few in the protection racket business,” said Antti. “Keaanurr and I found some of their heavies shaking down some mom and pop store, so we shook back, and harder.”

I winced. Keanurr is a mobile army on his own, and with Antti’s strength and resilience, the pair of them move from ‘army’ to ‘natural disaster.’ They’re an odd pair of friends, Kea is almost twice as tall as Antti, but they get on well.

“And how far did you shake?” I asked.

“We might have found the rest of the heavies?” said Antti. “And the head of that branch. We might have accidentally broken him beyond repair. Sorry.”

“Witnesses… I do need witnesses,” I said.

They both beamed very feral smiles at me.

“So, what was our fat man?” I asked.

“A branch of the protection racket, I think,” said Kea. “Some kind of ‘police force’ to discourage other hard types from operating.”

“They were on to us very quickly,” I said. “That either places the Big Man centrally, or your damaged protection racketeer, or good communications.”

“I’m guessing good communications,” said Serenaa. “We need to get to the Big Man before he moves, casually, and escapes to set it up again.  So, we need a volunteer to be a prisoner, and spring Arseface from jail, and go to him.”

“Why is everyone looking at me?” asked Antti, plaintively.

“Because he hasn’t seen you other than in uniform, briefly,” I said. “And because we can dress you up to look fat rather than stocky, so he sees you as a good sort of greasy grafter like him.”

Antti sighed, dramatically.

Serenaa giggled.

“It’s fun, you know, playing a part,” she said.

“You really did pick well for yourself, Gunny,” said Antti.

I tried not to look smug, I really did.

I don’t think I succeeded.

 

I heard all about it via the bug we put on Antti.

 

He was thrown roughly in a holding cell next to Arseface, whose name was Telemaan Kuraashi.

“You’re all a bunch of piddling amateurs and you’ll never amount to anything!” shouted Antti.

“It’s this new count,” said Kuraashi. “What’s your beef?”

“It was a beautiful racket,” mourned Antti. “I cooked it up with… well, let’s just say a senior police officer. Go round places with a dodgy record, and have those cops in on it stop people for minor traffic violations, and suggest they can get round any hassle by taking out a subscription to ‘Police times’ and buying an advert in it. So, you know, they know it’s a bribe, so they can’t complain about it, but you tell them to erase any citation they are messaged, and ignore them, and their subscription will make it right. O’course, the suckers will get arrested for failure to pay fines or turn up in court, sooner or later, but by then, there are other suckers.”

“I haven’t heard of that one,” said Kuraashi, interested. “You work for the Big Man, I suppose?”

Antti sneered.

“I work for myself,” he said. “There’s a big man? Maybe I should contact him; we could expand this no end. Who is he?”

“That’s none of your business,” said Kuraashi. “But maybe I can put in a word for you some time.”

 

Antti settled down. The next phase was up to me.

And it involved Antti and Kuraashi being cuffed together and taken out to a small military establishment.

They were put in a cell, still cuffed, with a guard outside.

“This is preposterous!” said Kuraashi.

“Shut it, number sixty-three,” said the guard. “You and sixty-four are going to get a trial without any prejudice or interference. And be pleased not to be number sixty-nine; so many jokes, so little time.”

Kuraashi had run out of swear words when a Wargrin in marine uniform came into the office, and put his briefcase on the table of the guard.

“Hullo,” he said, and shot the guard.

It was a tranq dart, obviously; and the Wargrin involved was Arffrur, who is about as ordinary looking Wargrin as you can get, being a brindled brown all over.

He attached a device to the lock of the cell, and walked out. A fuse hissed.

Antti pulled the bed over and got behind it.

Not a moment too soon; the explosive device went off, hurling bits of prison bars about.

“Is this a rescue attempt or is someone trying to kill us?” asked Kuraashi, nervously.

“I bought some help, but you know how Wargrin are,” said Antti. “Straightforward. And that’s the limit of what he’ll do. Come along. We’re about to have company.”

 

Antti knew the layout of the joint, but could act well enough to be sufficiently hesitant over leading Kuraashi – still cuffed to him – out. There was a ground vehicle parked, and Antti chuckled like a casino floor man when he meets a man with a system. He felt in the wheel arch and found a key.

“I wasn’t banking on being cuffed to you, you know, so just co-operate,” said Antti. “And you’d better direct me to this Mr. Big of yours, so he can separate us, see us taken care of, and expand on my scheme.”

“He’d have bailed us both out, if you’d have let me explain about you, you know, no need for this uncomfortable escape,” huffed Kuraashi.

“In a pig’s eye,” said Antti. “Did he have any way of knowing we were going to be transferred? Does he have informants in the military?  I do. It’s how my man got the tipoff and was able to get us out, but he doesn’t dare do more. I can pay for my own face and fingerprint makeover, all your big man has to do is arrange it. And tell me where I’m going at the cross-junction ahead.”

“Straight; head back for the city,” said Kuraashi. “He has a villa in the suburbs.”

This was pretty much what we wanted to know. The car was stiff with trackers, as was Antti himself, and we were a couple of streets over and five minutes behind, so as not to alert Kuraashi, who was watching every vehicle behind in the mirror.

It’s amazing how many planetary governments actually prefer ground vehicles over anti-gravity ones, since the advent of tiny fusion engines rendered fossil fuel and the even more polluting battery cars totally obsolete; I suspect it’s because it’s easier – read, cheaper – to register the number of miles travelled with pressure sensors on the roads and scanners to the car’s unique registration number for the purposes of taxing them.

Anyway, to cut a long drive short, Antti returned to the city, following instructions.

“I… I need to contact Mr. Big to let him know we’re coming,” said Kuraashi.

“There’s a public terminal here,” said Antti, pulling over, to the screech of breaks and horns sounding as he crossed three lanes. Most people communicate by their own pocket box, but there are still public terminals with higher power than the cheaper boxes, and with contacts to various helplines hardwired in for emergencies, from the fire service to youth chatline. And in a way, that was one of the main reasons for the public terminals; kids at risk whose own pocket boxes had been taken away or were monitored. That alone justified the cost of maintaining the little domes with their terminal.

Kuraashi hid the number, of course. Not that it would do him much good, Antti had crossed three lanes of traffic to pull in at this terminal for a reason; it was one we were monitoring.

“Hello? Can you tell Mr. Big this is Kuraashi?” said Kuraashi, when the signal was answered. “I’m bringing in someone who needs taking care of.”

He called off.

Antti smiled, cynically.

Taking care of was a phrase which could be taken several ways.

This would likely be an ambush, and his idea taken up without involving his participation. It was a brilliant scam, and one I had run to earth when we were involved in martial law on some one-spaceship dump of a planet, and the local bad boys had been impersonating cops.

Antti was fairly certain that the ambush should be on, as you might say, the other foot by the time they got there.

He groaned.

“I haven’t eaten since this morning, those bastards haven’t fed us; let’s pick up a meal so we can at least be coherent when we get there.”

“How the hell are we going to pick up a meal with our hands linked together like this?” demanded Kuraashi.

“There’s a drive-thru Spice-u-Like over there,” said Antti. “And we hold hands and make like it’s our anniversary.”

Kuraashi shuddered, but Antti was the one behind the wheel, buying time for our people to get in place.

Antti drove over to the take-out, and ordered two hagga birry-yummy and a lentil soup. Hagga are the local meat beast, able to process the local mineral cocktail which comes up in the vegetation, and I believe they process the dung for some of them. It was something I needed to learn more about if I was to make a good job of being count, as it was part of the local economy. Hagga-house is a widely spread eatery where you can eat hagga meat in various incarnations, from steaks to sausages, and they advertise by hagga wandering freely on the blue-green roofs where their favourite herbs have been planted. They make plenty good guard beasts too; that single, lethal horn and armoured head are formidable. Oh, did I hear some one say, ‘Oh, the Hamilcar Unicorn?’ full marks for getting there eventually.  Anyone would think they weren’t widely exported to hear some of you being so long recognising them.

So, Antti parks up to eat his meal, with Kuraashi picking at his, while we do our thing.