Part 72 (2/2)

The male's face was soft. Compa.s.sionate. Sickening. He tilted his head. ”You'll be dirty,” he said, pitiless as the Master, ”or you'll be dead. Being hungry is being human. Can they bear more than you?”

Gretchen recoiled. Tamara thrust her thumb into her mouth, sucked the clean moon crescent of soap onto her tongue. She swallowed, hard, and again, and again, sucking each finger clean, feeling the soap reach her stomach, acid and alcohol hissing around it.

The male would not stop talking. She didn't think he'd stop if she jammed her fingers in her ears. ”And that's the human condition. None of us can get clean. The world is sticky.

”And we don't have to like it.

”But you can't be an angel anymore. So you're going to have to learn to talk to each other.”

you can't know that Tamara didn't know if she'd said it, or Gretchen. Gretchen, from the lift of her shoulders, the upward glance, did not know either. The sound was dim, broken.

”I know,” Pinky said, and held out one ugly hand, with its filed thick nails and its bulging knuckles. The webs that stretched between the fingers were vestigial, greenish, vascular along the underside of the membrane. He spread them wide. ”I used to be a terrible angel too.”

The soap, the words, the dirt, the blood. Something was coming back up. Something. Tamara went to her knees beside Gretchen, smacked down on the slate floor (so smooth, so hard, so planar). She retched. A thin stream of frothy bile trickled between her gritted teeth. She heard Gretchen whine.

And then someone was there, holding her, stroking her hair, pus.h.i.+ng the flat feathered strands out of her eyes, his sleek aluminum props splayed out on either side. ”Shh,” said the monster, the fallen angel, the inhuman man. ”Shhh,” he said, and held her head as she bent down again and vomited soap and liquor on what had been a scrubbed floor, her belly clenched around cramping agony. ”We don't eat soap,” he said, and petted her until she stopped choking. ”We don't eat soap. Silly angel.”

She lifted her head, when she could, when the yellow slaver no longer dripped down her jowls. Pinky Gilman leaned over her, his wattled throat soft, tender, so close to her aching jaws. She lifted her head and saw her sister staring back at her.

A held breath. A quick shake of the head. Sharp silence, so hard that it might have ricocheted.

And Tamara, looking at Gretchen, heard the answer not because she knew it, but because she would once have known.

Dolly On Sunday when Dolly awakened, she had olive skin and black-brown hair that fell in waves to her hips. On Tuesday when Dolly awakened, she was a redhead, and fair. But on Thursday-on Thursday her eyes were blue, her hair was as black as a crow's-wing, and her hands were red with blood.

In her black French maid's outfit, she was the only thing in the expensively appointed drawing room that was not winter-white or antiqued gold. It was the sort of room you hired somebody else to clean. It was as immaculate as it was white.

Immaculate and white, that is, except for the dead body of billionaire industrialist Clive Steele-and try to say that without sounding like a comic book-which lay at Dolly's feet, his viscera blossoming from him like macabre petals.

That was how she looked when Rosamund Kirkbride found her, standing in a red stain in a white room like a thorn in a rose.

Dolly had locked in position where her program ran out. As Roz dropped to one knee outside the border of the blood-saturated carpet, Dolly did not move.

The room smelled like meat and bowels. Flies cl.u.s.tered thickly on the windows, but none had yet managed to get inside. No matter how hermetically sealed the house, it was only a matter of time. Like love, the flies found a way.

Grunting with effort, Roz planted both green-gloved hands on winter white wool-and-silk fibers and leaned over, getting her head between the dead guy and the doll. Blood spattered Dolly's silk stockings and her kitten-heeled boots: both the spray-can dots of impact projection and the soaking arcs of a breached artery.

More than one, given that Steele's heart lay, trailing connective tissue, beside his left hip. The crusted blood on Dolly's hands had twisted in ribbons down the underside of her forearms to her elbows and from there dripped into the puddle on the floor.

The android was not wearing undergarments.

”You staring up that girl's skirt, Detective?”

Roz was a big, plain woman, and out of shape in her forties. It took her a minute to heave herself back to her feet, careful not to touch the victim or the murder weapon yet. She'd tied her straight light brown hair back before entering the scene, the ends tucked up in a net. The severity of the style made her square jaw into a lantern. Her eyes were almost as blue as the doll's.

”Is it a girl, Peter?” Putting her hands on her knees, she pushed fully upright. She shoved a fist into her back and turned to the door.

Peter King paused just inside, taking in the scene with a few critical sweeps of eyes so dark they didn't catch any light from the sunlight or the chandelier. His irises seemed to bleed pigment into the whites, warming them with swirls of ivory. In his black suit, his skin tanned almost to match, he might have been a heroically sized construction paper cutout against the white walls, white carpet, the white-and-gold marble-topped table that looked both antique and French.

His blue paper booties rustled as he crossed the floor. ”Suicide, you think?”

”Maybe if it was strangulation.” Roz stepped aside so Peter could get a look at the body.

He whistled, which was pretty much what she had done.

”Somebody hated him a lot. Hey, that's one of the new Dollies, isn't it? Man, nice.” He shook his head. ”Bet it cost more than my house.”

”Imagine spending half a mil on a s.e.x toy,” Roz said, ”only to have it rip your liver out.” She stepped back, arms folded.

”He probably didn't spend that much on her. His company makes accessory programs for them.”

”Industry courtesy?” Roz asked.

”Tax writeoff. Test model.” Peter was the department expert on Home companions. He circled the room, taking it in from all angles. Soon the scene techs would be here with their cameras and their tweezers and their 3D scanner, turning the crime scene into a permanent virtual reality. In his capacity of soft forensics, Peter would go over Dolly's program, and the medical examiner would most likely confirm that Steele's cause of death was exactly what it looked like: something had punched through his abdominal wall and clawed his innards out.

”Doors were locked?”

Roz pursed her lips. ”n.o.body heard the screaming.”

”How long you think you'd scream without any lungs?” He sighed. ”You know, it never fails. The poor folks, n.o.body ever heard no screaming. And the rich folks, they've got no neighbors to hear 'em scream. Everybody in this modern world lives alone.”

It was a beautiful Birmingham day behind the long silk draperies, the kind of mild and bright that spring mornings in Alabama excelled at. Peter craned his head back and looked up at the chandelier glistening in the dustless light. Its ornate curls had been spotlessly clean before aerosolized blood on Steele's last breath misted them.

”Steele lived alone,” she said. ”Except for the robot. His cook found the body this morning. Last person to see him before that was his P.A., as he left the office last night.”

”Lights on seems to confirm that he was killed after dark.”

”After dinner,” Roz said.

”After the cook went home for the night.” Peter kept prowling the room, peering behind draperies and furniture, looking in corners and crouching to lift up the dust-ruffle on the couch. ”Well, I guess there won't be any question about the stomach contents.”

Roz went through the pockets of the dead man's suit jacket, which was draped over the arm of a chair. Pocket computer and a folding knife, wallet with an RFID chip. His house was on palmprint, his car on voice rec. He carried no keys. ”a.s.suming the ME can find the stomach.”

”Touche. He's got a cook, but no housekeeper?”

”I guess he trusts the android to clean but not cook?”

”No tastebuds.” Peter straightened up, shaking his head. ”They can follow a recipe, but-”

”You won't get high art,” Roz agreed, licking her lips. Outside, a car door slammed. ”Scene team?”

”ME,” Peter said, leaning over to peer out. ”Come on, let's get back to the house and pull the codes for this model.”'

”All right,” Roz said. ”But I'm interrogating it. I know better than to leave you alone with a pretty girl.”

Peter rolled his eyes as he followed her towards the door. ”I like 'em with a little more s.p.u.n.k than all that.”

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