Was she a robot spy, sent to watch him? Possibly: top-price teaser androids could fool lonely chumps into thinking the artificial was real… at least for a while. And duping an Oolom would be easier than fooling a Homo sap; Chappalar might dismiss glitches in the android’s programming as normal human idiosyncrasies. Why should he know how our species behaved when things got breathy?
If Maya was a robot… but then, what about the other proctors who got killed? Did they have robot spies watching them too?
No need. According to news reports, three of the proctors were killed in their homes, and another two in their offices — no inside information required to find any of them. The final two were attacked together as they waited to present a report to a parliamentary committee… a presentation that was publicized days in advance.
So: the killer/killers had no trouble finding seven of the eight dead proctors. The exception was Chappalar… whose schedule that morning was known only to me and Maya.
"Let’s check Chappalar’s office," I said suddenly. "See if we can find anything about this mystery woman."
"The police searched the place carefully," Tic answered. "So did I."
"But neither you nor the police were specifically looking for information about Maya. Were you?"
Tic frowned, then said, "True." He headed for the door.
MINDLESS MACHINE
Three of the four walls in the elevator were vidscreens, showing a panoramic view of the city around our office — what you’d see if the elevator were glass and the tree trunk transparent. Oolom architecture used that trick a lot: cramped enclosed spaces like elevator cabs were prettied up with airy visuals (not to mention wind sounds and artificial breeze) to make them seem wide-open to the world.
Standing back by the elevator door, Tic quietly gazed at the cityscape. He had good stillness — no slouching, no, fidgets, no sighs. Presence in the present.
I had plenty of time to watch him. (More devil-be-damned waiting.) Oolom elevators climb slug-slowly… only as fast as you can glide up a lazy air thermal. Their elevators go down a lot faster, matching the typical airspeed of an Oolom in landing descent.
This particular elevator had no lights of its own — just the glow of the stars and the dried-pea moon. From below came the subdued spill of streetlamps. There was also the glittery flicker of crocus-flies, already out of hibernation and flashing their tiny mating beacons: hoping to do the dance and get eggs laid before predators woke for spring… just as I hoped this clump-hole of an elevator would reach our stop before the blessed cream-blossoms opened next month…
In the twinkling quiet, Tic asked, "What did the Peacock Tail feel like?"
He hadn’t moved from that perfect stillness. Just a soft-voiced question in the dark.
"I never touched whatever it was," I told him. "It didn’t come that close to me."
"Not physically," Tic said. "What did it feel like emotionally?"
I shook my head, not knowing what he wanted to hear. "My emotions were running on a different track at the time: scared out of my skin that I’d get my face burned off."
"Even so," Tic said, "the Peacock was something new and surprising. The instant you saw it, didn’t you have a reaction? ‘Dear-dear, more trouble’… or maybe, ‘Hurrah, I’m saved.’ "
"Does it make a difference?" I asked.
"One never knows. What does the elevator feel like to you?"
"Like an elevator!"
"Just a mindless machine?"
I gave him a sour look. "Don’t tell me the elevator is smart like the windows."
Tic smiled. "You still remember the windows?"
"Sure."
"Then Xe likes you. Even if you insist on playing obtuse. What does the elevator feel like?"
"It’s tired," I answered, saying the first thing that came into my mind. "Feeling cruel overworked. In the old days, it had nearly nothing to do — the Ooloms didn’t use it much. But now that we’ve got three human proctors…"
Four.
"Sorry, four counting me, so now that we’ve got four human proctors…"
I stopped. Tic’s mouth hadn’t moved; so who said Four?
The world-soul?
The elevator?
"Yipe," I said. "Yipe, yipe, yipe."
"It’s a stimulating world once you hear the machines." Tic had a smug dollop of I-told-you-so in his voice. "If you insist on challenging the metaphors, an elevator can’t really feel tired, of course. It’s just due for maintenance… since it does have to work harder carrying you lead-weight humans several trips a day rather than delicately light Ooloms a few times a year. But when the elevator reports it’s wearing out, the world-soul represents that as being tired… at least in the minds of those who are properly attuned."
I groaned. "I’m picking up sob stories from an elevator."
"No. The world-soul is projecting information in a form you can easily grasp. Would you prefer a deluge of cold performance statistics? We’re both animals, Smallwood: social animals with abundant brain space evolved for analyzing emotions, and a scanty pittance for analyzing numbers. The world-soul likes to present data in a form our brains are best equipped to understand — that the elevator is deplorably fatigued from lugging around you human lardasses."
Who’re you calling a lardass, bone-boy? I came close to growling that. But for all I knew, Tic might ask the elevator what it thought… and I did not want to have this blasted machine tell me, Just between us, Faye, you could stand to lose a few kilos…
Time to change the subject. I said, "Why’d you ask how the Peacock Tail felt? Do you think it’s tied up with the world-soul too?"
"No. Mere curiosity." Tic looked out over the city. "These days, I pick up emotions everywhere. Not just from machines, but from truly inanimate things. Rocks. Trees. Running water. I can actually feel…" He stopped, shook his head. "Tico. I anthropomorphize everything. Except people, of course. Even my poor beleaguered brain can’t anthropomorphize them."
He lapsed into silence. One of his hands gently stroked the elevator wall.
When the doors opened on the sixth floor (finally!), I stepped into the narrow area that circled the elevator shaft — a wretched excuse for a foyer providing access to the four offices at this level. The entrance to Chappalar’s old office was already gliding open. Tic must have called ahead with his link-seed.
"I’ve left things as they were," Tic muttered as we went inside. "Tradition — you know."
That was grin-worthy. Ooloms never redecorated when they took over someone else’s property, especially if the previous owner had died. It might have been a religious thing, but I doubt it — whenever the subject came up with humans around, Ooloms got a sheep-guilty look. Not like true believers with devout moral objections to change; more like people who were just too lazy to renovate.
Whatever the excuse, they didn’t take things down, they didn’t move things around, they didn’t modernize, repaint, or refurbish. Furniture stayed where it was till it literally fell apart… and even then, the inhabitants might step over the broken pieces for years unless circumstances forced them to buy a replacement. (By "circumstances" I mean when they ran out of places to sit.) I’ve visited Oolom homes with dozens of painted portraits on the wall, all unknown strangers — pictures left by former owners, generations old and never removed.
So it didn’t surprise me Chappalar’s office hadn’t changed. The desk slanted at the same angle toward the door. The racks of file packets still tilted ten degrees off level. The water-filled crystal wind chimes dangled in their usual halfhearted glumness above the window. ("Oh… should we tinkle now? Is it really necessary? Bother…")