TITLE: "Along a Knife's Blade" An "A.I." / "Blade Runner" crossover -- Chapter One
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Diane Fletcher, an agent for Rogue Retrieval, tracks down a mysterious suspect who may be more than he seems
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. Nor do I own "Blade Runner", it's characters, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: I combined a lot of elements here: Diane Fletcher comes from the "Who Killed Evan Chan?" Internet Mystery Game that served as part of the publicity surrounding the release of "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"; in the Mystery Game, Diane is an agent working for Rogue Retrieval, an organization whose purpose is to track down and contain Mechas that have gone rogue for various reasons; they often work in conjunction with the police and the Sentient Property Crime Bureau... and though technically Rogue Retrieval isn't part of the police, it reminded me oddly of the Blade Runner or "RepDetect" units in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (and the Philip K. Dick novel it's based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). So for that reason, I borrowed a few characters and ideas from "Blade Runner". And also, Diane's quarry, Harlen Merrot, is a character I created for a campaign for the "A.I." Roleplaying Game on Yahoo! Groups.
Chapter One -- Immigrant
Seattle -- 2208
Diane Fletcher, Rogue Retrieval Agent, had just flown in from a job on the East Coast when the call came in. Or rather, the call came to her.
She stood at the baggage carousel in the main hyperjet terminal, waiting for her bags to turn up, when she heard a man's uneven step behind her.
"Hey, meess. You the blade runner?"
She turned to find Gaff, one of her boss Bryant's underlings, grinning at her. The small, stocky-bulit man's limp prevented him from being a full-fledged agent, but it didn't stop him from serving as Bryant's gofer.
"I wouldn't say that too loudly, Gaff," Diane warned. "There's too many ears here."
"What, you afraid of plastic-job now?"
"No more than I'm afraid of flesh and blood humans," Diane replied, fishing her dufflebag from the bags and boxes on the baggage carousel. She noticed a few scuffs on the green vinyl shell of her bag, that hadn't been there when she'd checked the bags in at the Trenton, New Jersey terminal. "What's going on that Bryant sent you to meet me here?"
"He got a job for you," Gaff said, as she headed out of the terminal. "He tell you more."
"All right, take me to headquarters," she said, cancelling the intention to call a cab and head back to her own apartment.
Gaff grinned and led her out to the skimmer waiting for them in the parking lot.
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Rogue Retrieval wasn't a police unit per se, but it often worked in tandem with the RepDetect units of the local police, and with the Sentient Property Crime Bureau of the FBI. Diane had joined Retrieval seven years ago; since then, she'd worked dozens of cases of runaway artificial intelligences of all kinds: nanny-bots that had strayed away from a family on an outin; lover-Mechas that had eloped with a client; house security AIs that had escaped into the data stream. She'd had such a high success rate that Retrieval's central headquarters in Sao Paulo had started loaning her out to different branches all over the U. S. of A. She didn't mind: it beat being like the old-timers stuck with desk work in one office.
But she considered Seattle her home: she'd settled here ever since Retrieval had merged with the RepDetect units on the west coast -- or at least, the small apartment Retrieval had found for her had started to seem like her home base, for all the times she got called out here. And the beefy face of Harry Bryant, the former LA chief of RepDetect, was almost as familiar as her own.
"Ah, the hunting dog's back in town," Bryant said, as Diane and Gaff stepped into his office. "Hope you snoozed during your flight, Di: INS handed us a job. Ten plastic-jobs snuck in over the border from Canada, trying to pass as Orga. Estavez bagged nine of 'em, but he twigged off trouble: the CRF started riding his ass like a bicycle."
Why would the Coalition for Robotic Freedom go after Rogue Retrieval? Aloud, she asked, "Why, what did Estavez do?"
"Nothin' besides his job. It's all because of this Mann Act that's up for the vote. They're jumpin' the gun: sayin' the act is such a done deal, we oughta let undeclared Mecha go through like people," Bryant said.
"So, what happened to Estavez? Why didn't he pick up the tenth suspect?" she asked.
"CRF assassins plugged him: He'll be out of the hospital once the doctors can attach new legs to 'um. But he'll never trail a plastic-job or a skin-job again. I need you to finish what he can't; you're smart enough to stay out of the CRF's way. And you wouldn't do anything stupid to make them decide to take you down."
"Did Estavez destroy one of the suspects?"
"He claimed it was self-defense. Thing had a blaster but it was questionable if the thing knew how to use it. But then again, Estavez was a little too quick with an EMP when he was in the field. He had somethin' coming."
Diane spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced over in time to see Gaff making a fist with one hand and tracing a flame-shape over it with the middle finger of the other, in a mock version of the insignia for the Anti-Robot Militia.
"Since then, I got every agent watchin' his -- her back every time they go out into th' field. Resch caught a CRF nut following him last night," Bryant continued. "I'm pairin' you up with Gaff. I know he's as good as useless, most of the time, but if somethin' happens to you, he'll be there to make the call."
"This is just for one suspect, correct? I think I can handle that on my own," Diane said.
"Suitcherself," Bryant said, reaching for a vinyl dossier lying on the desktop. He took a disk from it, slotted it into the drive on the hotdesk and called up the file. He turned the monitor around to give Diane a better view of it.
A window opened, showing a scan of a French passport page with a photo of a slender man in his early forties, with grey-green eyes peering out of a narrow face with sharp features, a high forehead topped with bushy reddish-brown hair, an aquilline nose (more obvious in a profile shot), his sensuous mouth hinting of delicate cruelty undercut by the playful smirk in one corner. The kind of man women describe as "distinctive" and "oddly attractive", though his looks fell short of really being that.
"Harlen Merrot, age 43. Came over from France two weeks ago. We're not sure if he's legit or he's a passer. He set off a metal detector at the hyperjet terminal: claims he has replacements in all his joints. Wierd if you ask me. See if you can't get him to agree to a Voight-Kampff test. I'm sure he'll agree to it -- he's French after all. Just him seein' you might turn up more evidence than the VK."
"In that case, just sending me in as a test subject would be useless: if he were a lover-Mecha, he'd merely be following his programmed directives," Diane said coolly.
Bryant held up his hands, grinning sheepishly. "Hey, I meant that as a joke. No harm intended."
"Do you know where I can find this Merrot?" she asked.
"He's got an address: 1223 Planter Street, apartment 220. Just get him to agree to a DNA test and a VK."
"I'm on it," Diane said, taking the file Bryant handed to her. She noticed Gaff fiddling with something. She moved aside as the Mexican-Japanese set something on the desktop in front of her: an origami-style paper folding of a dog.
"You callin' her a bitch, Gaff? That ain't nice," Bryant said.
"You say it, not me," Gaff replied.
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With Gaff accompanying her as "back-up", Diane took a skimmer to the high rise where Merrot had settled in.
She studied most of Merrot's file on the way over. A copy of his birth certificate: Mother: Jane Doe Father: Henri Armand Lambert de Meroveque. That made this Merrot one of the many by-blows the father of the Europan Empire had produced. Date of birth: 5 November 2164. The paper bore the seal of Rennes-le-Chateau, Languedoc, France, the de Meroveque family estate, which probably meant Merrot's mother was some anonymous servant girl the grand old man of the Empire had called to his bed one night.
Education records: there was a transcript from the Paris L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, Photography Department. Employment records: his last job was a photography studio in Paris.
As she got out of the skimmer and headed for the front doors of the apartment building, she noticed a man in a rumpled dark grey suit standing by a lamppost, looking at her around a newspaper. So many men eyed her up all the time, she gave this one the same treatment she gave the rest: she ignored him.
She let Gaff accompany her in the elevator, but when he tried to step past her getting off on the top floor, she got one step ahead of him.
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She rapped on the door of the sole apartment on the top floor. No answer. She knocked again.
"May I ask who is knocking?" asked a feminine voice speaking through an Art Deco ornamental speaker grate to the left of the door. The small optical lens over it indicated this was clearly a com-unit for a security AI.
"I'm Diane Fletcher, I'm working with the INS," Diane replied, showing her ID to the optical lens. "I'm here to speak with Mr. Harlen Merrot."
"Monsieur Merrot is busy, but he will be free to see you in a moment," the voice replied. The locks on the double doors hummed, then clicked open as the doors swung open. "Please come in."
Diane stepped in to look around. Whoever Merrot was, he clearly had money. The front room alone was as big as some people's whole apartments: floor to ceiling windows extending up to meet the SmartGlass ceiling overhead. Her shoes clicked on the natural stone floor as she crossed the room, looking about her and listening. A set of foldind doors to her left, beyond the kitchen area, opened into a workroom, clearly a photographer's studio, complete with banks of lights, one wall covered with shelves of equipment. Beyond the living room was a bar area and a set of glass doors opening onto a rooftop garden terrace.
She turned a corner and stepped into a short hallway between the bedroom on her left and the bathroom on the right. She entered the bedroom, looking for Merrot. Someone had laid out a black canvas shirt, black pants and a gentleman's underlinens on the bed, but the room stood empty. On a table by the bed, a photo album lay open. She flipped through it: most of the photos were of a small man with reddish brown hair and sharp features, who looked a lot like Merrot, except that he was at least a foot shorter. These had to depict his father, unless Merrot was a dwarf who'd had a pituitary transplant. Not likely: the man in the photos had a proportionate build, so that ruled out that possibility.
She heard water sloshing in the bathroom. She went to investigate the sound.
The bathroom door stood open. Noticing steam on the mirror, she nudged the door open and looked in. Water stood in the whirlpool bath within, but no one appeared to occupy it. She stepped into the room.
A man who had to be Merrot lay on his back in the bath, submerged and still. She nearly called to Gaff over their comlink to call emergency. But then she noticed something: His feet protruded from the water, the soles braced against the end wall of the bath; no drowned man would do that.
As if to confirm her realization, he sat up, opening his eyes and tilting his head back as he brushed his dense, dripping reddish-brown hair out of his face.
He paused, his grey-green eyes swivelling toward her. With a jerk, he leapt from the water and perched on the side of the bath, his lean body gathered like an alert hyena.
He narrowed his already slit-like eyes at her. "Who are you, Madame?"
"Mr. Harlen Merrot: I'm Diane Fletcher..., I'm with the INS. I'm just here to check on your immigration papers: there's been a number of... foreign Mechas coming into the country on false papers, pretending to be Orgas."
His lips twisted, threatening to curl in a suspicious smirk, but they relaxed. "All right, but could you at least let me put on some clothes first? I should add, it's not very seemly for a lady to sneak up on a strange gentleman when he is in his own bathtub."
Diane replied with a humorless smirk of her own. "I'm not a lady." She stepped out of the bathroom, keeping the door open, but standing where she could see him without being seen.
He reached for a towel, then blotted himself dry, starting with his hair and working his way down, standing with his back to her, the lightly-defined muscles rippling under his skin as he moved -- If that was actual musculature under there.
He wrapped the towel around himself as he stepped out of the bathroom and headed for the bedroom. She watched as he dressed, putting on the clothes laid out on the bed.
He emerged a moment later. "So... I gather you'll be wanting to see my papers?" he said, stepping out of the bedroom and heading for the study. She followed him, giving him his space.
"Yes, just to see if you're legitmate," she said. As he opened a drawer of the desk, she asked, "Have you filed a DNA sample?"
"Yes, I have," he said, handing over a file with the copies of the forms he'd filled out for his green card. You can ask your department superiors to check their records."
"All right: you're clean on that count," she said. "Just stay close to home for the next few days: I'll be back."
He shrugged gracefully. "You're welcome to return as you need to, Madame Fletcher," he replied. He rose. "If you are leaving, may I show you to the door?"
"That won't be necessary: I can find my way out," she said. "Thanks anyway."
She stepped out into the hallway leading to the front door and let herself out.
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"You likin' heem, Mees Fletcher?" Gaff asked as she climbed back into the skimmer.
"He's a suspect," she said, not looking at her partner.
Gaff flicked something across the dashboard toward her. A small paper-folding of a frog fell into her lap. She set it back on the dashboard, hardly looking at it and avoiding Gaff's teasing leer as the skimmer rose up.
To be continued....
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Diane Fletcher, an agent for Rogue Retrieval, tracks down a mysterious suspect who may be more than he seems
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. Nor do I own "Blade Runner", it's characters, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: I combined a lot of elements here: Diane Fletcher comes from the "Who Killed Evan Chan?" Internet Mystery Game that served as part of the publicity surrounding the release of "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"; in the Mystery Game, Diane is an agent working for Rogue Retrieval, an organization whose purpose is to track down and contain Mechas that have gone rogue for various reasons; they often work in conjunction with the police and the Sentient Property Crime Bureau... and though technically Rogue Retrieval isn't part of the police, it reminded me oddly of the Blade Runner or "RepDetect" units in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (and the Philip K. Dick novel it's based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). So for that reason, I borrowed a few characters and ideas from "Blade Runner". And also, Diane's quarry, Harlen Merrot, is a character I created for a campaign for the "A.I." Roleplaying Game on Yahoo! Groups.
Chapter One -- Immigrant
Seattle -- 2208
Diane Fletcher, Rogue Retrieval Agent, had just flown in from a job on the East Coast when the call came in. Or rather, the call came to her.
She stood at the baggage carousel in the main hyperjet terminal, waiting for her bags to turn up, when she heard a man's uneven step behind her.
"Hey, meess. You the blade runner?"
She turned to find Gaff, one of her boss Bryant's underlings, grinning at her. The small, stocky-bulit man's limp prevented him from being a full-fledged agent, but it didn't stop him from serving as Bryant's gofer.
"I wouldn't say that too loudly, Gaff," Diane warned. "There's too many ears here."
"What, you afraid of plastic-job now?"
"No more than I'm afraid of flesh and blood humans," Diane replied, fishing her dufflebag from the bags and boxes on the baggage carousel. She noticed a few scuffs on the green vinyl shell of her bag, that hadn't been there when she'd checked the bags in at the Trenton, New Jersey terminal. "What's going on that Bryant sent you to meet me here?"
"He got a job for you," Gaff said, as she headed out of the terminal. "He tell you more."
"All right, take me to headquarters," she said, cancelling the intention to call a cab and head back to her own apartment.
Gaff grinned and led her out to the skimmer waiting for them in the parking lot.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rogue Retrieval wasn't a police unit per se, but it often worked in tandem with the RepDetect units of the local police, and with the Sentient Property Crime Bureau of the FBI. Diane had joined Retrieval seven years ago; since then, she'd worked dozens of cases of runaway artificial intelligences of all kinds: nanny-bots that had strayed away from a family on an outin; lover-Mechas that had eloped with a client; house security AIs that had escaped into the data stream. She'd had such a high success rate that Retrieval's central headquarters in Sao Paulo had started loaning her out to different branches all over the U. S. of A. She didn't mind: it beat being like the old-timers stuck with desk work in one office.
But she considered Seattle her home: she'd settled here ever since Retrieval had merged with the RepDetect units on the west coast -- or at least, the small apartment Retrieval had found for her had started to seem like her home base, for all the times she got called out here. And the beefy face of Harry Bryant, the former LA chief of RepDetect, was almost as familiar as her own.
"Ah, the hunting dog's back in town," Bryant said, as Diane and Gaff stepped into his office. "Hope you snoozed during your flight, Di: INS handed us a job. Ten plastic-jobs snuck in over the border from Canada, trying to pass as Orga. Estavez bagged nine of 'em, but he twigged off trouble: the CRF started riding his ass like a bicycle."
Why would the Coalition for Robotic Freedom go after Rogue Retrieval? Aloud, she asked, "Why, what did Estavez do?"
"Nothin' besides his job. It's all because of this Mann Act that's up for the vote. They're jumpin' the gun: sayin' the act is such a done deal, we oughta let undeclared Mecha go through like people," Bryant said.
"So, what happened to Estavez? Why didn't he pick up the tenth suspect?" she asked.
"CRF assassins plugged him: He'll be out of the hospital once the doctors can attach new legs to 'um. But he'll never trail a plastic-job or a skin-job again. I need you to finish what he can't; you're smart enough to stay out of the CRF's way. And you wouldn't do anything stupid to make them decide to take you down."
"Did Estavez destroy one of the suspects?"
"He claimed it was self-defense. Thing had a blaster but it was questionable if the thing knew how to use it. But then again, Estavez was a little too quick with an EMP when he was in the field. He had somethin' coming."
Diane spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced over in time to see Gaff making a fist with one hand and tracing a flame-shape over it with the middle finger of the other, in a mock version of the insignia for the Anti-Robot Militia.
"Since then, I got every agent watchin' his -- her back every time they go out into th' field. Resch caught a CRF nut following him last night," Bryant continued. "I'm pairin' you up with Gaff. I know he's as good as useless, most of the time, but if somethin' happens to you, he'll be there to make the call."
"This is just for one suspect, correct? I think I can handle that on my own," Diane said.
"Suitcherself," Bryant said, reaching for a vinyl dossier lying on the desktop. He took a disk from it, slotted it into the drive on the hotdesk and called up the file. He turned the monitor around to give Diane a better view of it.
A window opened, showing a scan of a French passport page with a photo of a slender man in his early forties, with grey-green eyes peering out of a narrow face with sharp features, a high forehead topped with bushy reddish-brown hair, an aquilline nose (more obvious in a profile shot), his sensuous mouth hinting of delicate cruelty undercut by the playful smirk in one corner. The kind of man women describe as "distinctive" and "oddly attractive", though his looks fell short of really being that.
"Harlen Merrot, age 43. Came over from France two weeks ago. We're not sure if he's legit or he's a passer. He set off a metal detector at the hyperjet terminal: claims he has replacements in all his joints. Wierd if you ask me. See if you can't get him to agree to a Voight-Kampff test. I'm sure he'll agree to it -- he's French after all. Just him seein' you might turn up more evidence than the VK."
"In that case, just sending me in as a test subject would be useless: if he were a lover-Mecha, he'd merely be following his programmed directives," Diane said coolly.
Bryant held up his hands, grinning sheepishly. "Hey, I meant that as a joke. No harm intended."
"Do you know where I can find this Merrot?" she asked.
"He's got an address: 1223 Planter Street, apartment 220. Just get him to agree to a DNA test and a VK."
"I'm on it," Diane said, taking the file Bryant handed to her. She noticed Gaff fiddling with something. She moved aside as the Mexican-Japanese set something on the desktop in front of her: an origami-style paper folding of a dog.
"You callin' her a bitch, Gaff? That ain't nice," Bryant said.
"You say it, not me," Gaff replied.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With Gaff accompanying her as "back-up", Diane took a skimmer to the high rise where Merrot had settled in.
She studied most of Merrot's file on the way over. A copy of his birth certificate: Mother: Jane Doe Father: Henri Armand Lambert de Meroveque. That made this Merrot one of the many by-blows the father of the Europan Empire had produced. Date of birth: 5 November 2164. The paper bore the seal of Rennes-le-Chateau, Languedoc, France, the de Meroveque family estate, which probably meant Merrot's mother was some anonymous servant girl the grand old man of the Empire had called to his bed one night.
Education records: there was a transcript from the Paris L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, Photography Department. Employment records: his last job was a photography studio in Paris.
As she got out of the skimmer and headed for the front doors of the apartment building, she noticed a man in a rumpled dark grey suit standing by a lamppost, looking at her around a newspaper. So many men eyed her up all the time, she gave this one the same treatment she gave the rest: she ignored him.
She let Gaff accompany her in the elevator, but when he tried to step past her getting off on the top floor, she got one step ahead of him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She rapped on the door of the sole apartment on the top floor. No answer. She knocked again.
"May I ask who is knocking?" asked a feminine voice speaking through an Art Deco ornamental speaker grate to the left of the door. The small optical lens over it indicated this was clearly a com-unit for a security AI.
"I'm Diane Fletcher, I'm working with the INS," Diane replied, showing her ID to the optical lens. "I'm here to speak with Mr. Harlen Merrot."
"Monsieur Merrot is busy, but he will be free to see you in a moment," the voice replied. The locks on the double doors hummed, then clicked open as the doors swung open. "Please come in."
Diane stepped in to look around. Whoever Merrot was, he clearly had money. The front room alone was as big as some people's whole apartments: floor to ceiling windows extending up to meet the SmartGlass ceiling overhead. Her shoes clicked on the natural stone floor as she crossed the room, looking about her and listening. A set of foldind doors to her left, beyond the kitchen area, opened into a workroom, clearly a photographer's studio, complete with banks of lights, one wall covered with shelves of equipment. Beyond the living room was a bar area and a set of glass doors opening onto a rooftop garden terrace.
She turned a corner and stepped into a short hallway between the bedroom on her left and the bathroom on the right. She entered the bedroom, looking for Merrot. Someone had laid out a black canvas shirt, black pants and a gentleman's underlinens on the bed, but the room stood empty. On a table by the bed, a photo album lay open. She flipped through it: most of the photos were of a small man with reddish brown hair and sharp features, who looked a lot like Merrot, except that he was at least a foot shorter. These had to depict his father, unless Merrot was a dwarf who'd had a pituitary transplant. Not likely: the man in the photos had a proportionate build, so that ruled out that possibility.
She heard water sloshing in the bathroom. She went to investigate the sound.
The bathroom door stood open. Noticing steam on the mirror, she nudged the door open and looked in. Water stood in the whirlpool bath within, but no one appeared to occupy it. She stepped into the room.
A man who had to be Merrot lay on his back in the bath, submerged and still. She nearly called to Gaff over their comlink to call emergency. But then she noticed something: His feet protruded from the water, the soles braced against the end wall of the bath; no drowned man would do that.
As if to confirm her realization, he sat up, opening his eyes and tilting his head back as he brushed his dense, dripping reddish-brown hair out of his face.
He paused, his grey-green eyes swivelling toward her. With a jerk, he leapt from the water and perched on the side of the bath, his lean body gathered like an alert hyena.
He narrowed his already slit-like eyes at her. "Who are you, Madame?"
"Mr. Harlen Merrot: I'm Diane Fletcher..., I'm with the INS. I'm just here to check on your immigration papers: there's been a number of... foreign Mechas coming into the country on false papers, pretending to be Orgas."
His lips twisted, threatening to curl in a suspicious smirk, but they relaxed. "All right, but could you at least let me put on some clothes first? I should add, it's not very seemly for a lady to sneak up on a strange gentleman when he is in his own bathtub."
Diane replied with a humorless smirk of her own. "I'm not a lady." She stepped out of the bathroom, keeping the door open, but standing where she could see him without being seen.
He reached for a towel, then blotted himself dry, starting with his hair and working his way down, standing with his back to her, the lightly-defined muscles rippling under his skin as he moved -- If that was actual musculature under there.
He wrapped the towel around himself as he stepped out of the bathroom and headed for the bedroom. She watched as he dressed, putting on the clothes laid out on the bed.
He emerged a moment later. "So... I gather you'll be wanting to see my papers?" he said, stepping out of the bedroom and heading for the study. She followed him, giving him his space.
"Yes, just to see if you're legitmate," she said. As he opened a drawer of the desk, she asked, "Have you filed a DNA sample?"
"Yes, I have," he said, handing over a file with the copies of the forms he'd filled out for his green card. You can ask your department superiors to check their records."
"All right: you're clean on that count," she said. "Just stay close to home for the next few days: I'll be back."
He shrugged gracefully. "You're welcome to return as you need to, Madame Fletcher," he replied. He rose. "If you are leaving, may I show you to the door?"
"That won't be necessary: I can find my way out," she said. "Thanks anyway."
She stepped out into the hallway leading to the front door and let herself out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You likin' heem, Mees Fletcher?" Gaff asked as she climbed back into the skimmer.
"He's a suspect," she said, not looking at her partner.
Gaff flicked something across the dashboard toward her. A small paper-folding of a frog fell into her lap. She set it back on the dashboard, hardly looking at it and avoiding Gaff's teasing leer as the skimmer rose up.
To be continued....
