K– mart chased down a few hyperlinks and found the information. "Ixsys submitted all the documentation and beta-test results on them six months ago. The NUdies approved the Blankies for the domestic market a month after that. Global licensing from the WTO still pending."
"What's their market-share?"
"Only ten percent. The Blankies don't have a lot of the higher functions of other childminders. Most parents still favor Carebears and Mother Gooses when the prodge gets a little older. But the Blankies are cheap and easy for round the-clock sanitary functions and monitoring. They never sleep, for one thing. Helps explain how they went from a zero to ten share in just under half a year… "
I got up from my imipolex seat, which flattened out into its default shape, awaiting the next occupant. "Sign a lie-detector out of the stables." I didn't work with the IRS splices directly anymore, leaving that part of the job to K mart. "We're going to pay the swellheads and trumps at Ixsys a little visit."
"You smell corprotage?"
"Does the Goddess's Daughter on Earth wear Affymax tits?"
Like many peltsies and beeves, Ixsys had no centralized headquarters per se, being a distributed organization. The local node was just a few minutes away from central Boston, in the edge city of Newton.
I met K– mart down on the street. He had signed out both a cruiser and a lie detector. The vehicle was a standard Daewoo Euglenia, the hydrogen source for its ceramic engine plain water continuously and smoothly broken down by a bioreactor full of cytofabbed algae with photon input piped from roof solar traps. The lie-detector was an Athena Neurosci Viper model. With a combination of infrared, vomeronasal and lateral-line sensory input, the transgenic creature could read epidermal and subdermal blood-flow, as well as ambient pheromone and respiratory data, right off a suspect to make its judgment on veracity. With basal humans, its accuracy rate approached unity; highly modified subjects introduced varying degrees of uncertainty. But most innocent citizens didn't sport the kind of moddies necessary to defeat a Viper, and the presence of such blocks was in itself evidence of a sort. In my book, if not a court of law.
"I'll drive," said K-mart, and we all got in, the Viper sinuously slithering into the backseat without saying anything.
The bawab at the Ixsys node was one of their massive Ottoman Eunuch models, 15 percent human pedigree, the
rest a mix of simian and water buffalo. I saw the same kind as doorman at my apartment complex every night. He towered over us, his shaggy head level with the door's lintel. The scimitar by his side was, I knew, really a quick-lysing device: liquid protease compressed in the handle could be released as a spray from micropores in the blade, melting flesh in picoseconds.
The Eunuch growled wordlessly when he saw our lack of Ixsys tags. But a flash of our UPCM idents triggered a hardwired servility response, and he let us in.
We hadn't called ahead, not wishing to precipitate any kind of cover-your-ass reaction. (Although news of the Day-Lewis murder had already been culled from the net and disseminated by millions of newsie demons throughout the metamedium, and any half-smart executive with damage suits glimmering in his brain would have already gotten ready for our visit.) So we had to wait while the receptionist arranged for one of the Ixsys trumps to meet us. I spent my time admiring the colorful, throbbing, hot-blooded plants in their terrariums and trying to decipher the circuit diagrams of signaling pathways that hung decoratively on the walls.
The company rep finally emerged: a broadly smiling young plug with a modest crest of small bronze-colored dragon-like spines running from his brow over his head and down his back, his suit slit to accomodate them. Pride in a recent degree in biobiz administration was written all over his face. Sacrificial lamb, an expendable toe dipped into possibly shark-infested waters. Achieve maximal deniability at all costs. It made me sick.
He stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Officers. I'm Tuck Kitchener, in charge of community relations and risk bubble analysis. How can I help you?"
"You're aware of yesterday's Blankie murder, I take it?"
Kitchener tsk-tsked. "Most unfortunate and deplorable. A clear case of warranty violation. The Blankie should never have been exposed to exo-avian secretagogues under any circumstances. The owners of the Blankie were clearly at fault. I hope you agree. There's no question of corporate responsibility, is there?"
"I don't know yet. That's why we're here. I'd like a look at your design facilities. Talk to the team members responsible for the Blankie."
"Why, certainly! Nothing could be easier. If you'll just accompany me to the sterilization lock-"
Before long, K-mart, the Viper and I were sluiced, dusted, and wrapped. The exit procedure would be even stricter, involving internal search-and-destroy, to insure we didn't try to smuggle any proprietary secrets out.
Once through the lock, we made our way past breeding vats and reactors, paragenesis chambers and creches, wunderkammers and think-tanks, all staffed by efficiently bustling Ixsys staff.
"As you can see," Kitchener said boastfully, "we run a tight ship here. All by the regs. No spills, no chills, that's our byword-"
K– mart interrupted. "We're not inspectors from NUSHA, Peej Kitchener. We're the Protein Police. And we're trying to solve a murder. A murder involving one of your products."
It still amazes me that anyone falls for good-cop-bad-cop, but they do. Uncertain of who was senior, Kitchener looked imploringly at me. But I just raised my eyebrows. The young trump began nervously to stroke his cranial comb, which bent like stiff rubber. "Ah, yes, of course. Why don't we proceed directly with your interview of the Blankie team?"
"Why don't we?"
So Kitchener took us to the swellheads.
Although I had dealt with doublebrains in the line of duty before, the sight of their naked bulging encephaloceles always made me somewhat queasy. Cradled in their special neckbrace support chairs, surrounded by their digitools and virtuality hookups, their basal metabolisms necessarily supplemented with various nutritional and trope exofeeds, they seemed to regard us visitors with a cold Martian scrutiny.
K– mart appeared unaffected by the massed clammy gaze of the eight Cerebrally Enhanced-or at least capable of putting up a better front than I-and plunged right into querying the swells.
"Okay– how many backdoors did you jokers install in the Blankie ganglia?"
The team members exchanged significant glances among themselves, then one spoke. "I am Simon, the leader of the octad. I shall answer your questions. There are no hidden entrypoints. All is as the published specs declare."
"For the moment, I'll assume that's true." K-mart glanced meaningfully at our Viper, who had not objected yet. But I wondered how good its skills would be against the swells. "Who did you steal from to build it? Come on, I
know you seebens are always plundering each other's finds. Who's got a mindworm against Ixsys and wants you to look bad?"
Simon actually betrayed a tiny measure of affronted dignity. "We derive all our insights and findings direct from the numinous sempiternal sheldrakean ideosphere. Our labors are unremitting and harsh, as we prospect among uncharted territories of ideospace. To accuse us of theft is to demean our very existence!"
The rest of the interrogation went just as awkwardly, yielding nothing. Finally even the tenacity of K-mart wilted.
As we were leaving, my partner turned to the recumbent CE's and said, "See y'all at Madame Muskrat's, boys!"