Act Fifteen – Scene Six: Leg Work

"One thing that I taught Roger Smith was how to do a little polite digging and find your own buried treasure. Something that's been bothering me since the night of the Ball was why there were two of them. Because I'm absolutely certain that the dour, reserved young woman staying with Roger and the off-kilter one that was on Beck's arm were two different people."

"I am very sorry, Major Dastun, but Roger Smith has not left his bedroom since returning home two days ago. I will make sure that he gets the message that you dropped by."

"Thank you, Mr. Berg." He leads me down the entrance hall and opens the door for me.

"Have there been any leads on the whereabouts of Miss Dorothy?"

"Not a peep, unfortunately. I was hoping that Roger could shed some light on something for me."

"And what might that be, Major?"

"Why ever were two of that same robot built?"

"She is an android." The butler looks at me with an uncanny silence about him. His single eye widens slightly, and then narrows in contemplation. When he finally speaks, it is not to answer my question, but instead, "I will think on that, Major, and get back to you. Have a pleasant day."

I step out onto the street and adjust the cap on my head. Shelby snaps to attention as I near the squad car, but when she makes a move to start the engine, I wave her off. "I'm going to head back on my own. I've got to do a little walking. It'll clear my head."

The Speakeasy.

I showed Roger this bar when he was first a rookie in my squad on the force. Told him it was a good place to find information, if you had to. From the looks of it, still is.

"Dan Dastun. Been quite some time since the back of the room was graced with your presence." He glances down his newspaper without meeting my eyes. "Wouldn't have anything to do with the Negotiator's sudden illness, would it?"

"Perhaps it does."

"Information on that little turn of events would be a hot commodity, if anyone had it."

"I'm not interested in speculating why Roger's gotten ill," I reply, taking a seat beside the man. I never remember his real name, I just know that when I need something, the pink glasses and newspaper are always waiting to tell me. Big Ear is his cover name, if I recall.

"Then what is it you're looking for on this side of town? It's a long way from the headquarters."

"I need to know a little bit about Timothy Waynewright."

"The dead scientist who created R. Dorothy."

"Yeah."

"Cases generally close when someone dies, Dan."

"Not this one."

"All right. Timothy Norbert Waynewright had a daughter before the Incident. Whatever there was of that daughter that he remembered went into the memory banks of the android he created in her likeness-"

"What about the daughter?"

"I wasn't finished."

"I'm more interested in finding out about the daughter."

"The only thing I can tell you about her is that supposedly she was the spitting image of the android created to be her living monument."

"What did you just say?"

"Android?"

"Living…"

"Monument."

I get to my feet quickly, tossing idle thanks to the man as I turn to the door. There was some record of a 'monument' in the case files on Waynewright that were made when he was killed at the Nightingale Club.

"Major Dastun, there is something else you should know."

I freeze in my tracks, turning to regard the man, who is not looking at me, but rather at his newspaper. I slowly sit back in my chair. "Go on."

"There are people in Paradigm who don't mind what happened to Roger Smith. There always have been. He's made some definite enemies there where before they was only mistrustful opposition before. Be careful you don't get caught as his only defender there."

"You're saying that Paradigm is behind this?"

"Someone, but no one at all."

I look at Big Ear for a long moment, waiting to see if he has more to say. He still does not meet my eye, and then when he does, I know that there were some things that he would not say to me anywhere. It is the problem with being an informant, you have to know who could be given what you knew. He obviously has told me everything that is prudent to tell me, and it seems like there was more to it than that. He has told me more than he felt he should have.

I rise, again, and head out the door of the tavern.

I eventually find myself back at the precinct. It was hours between my two stops, and I do not know what passed between them, but I drove the streets outside the domes as I hadn't since before Roger left the Force.

I am surprised to find Roger's butler seated and waiting outside my office. He rises the second he sees me enter the hallway.

"Has something happened to Roger, Mr. Berg?"

"No. But I was running the day's errands, and I thought about the question that you asked. Why two were built."

I unlock the door to my office and push it open, motioning for him to follow as I step inside and shrug out of my jacket. He closes the door behind him, and sits down in the chair across from my desk. "Coffee?"

"No, thank you, Major."

I pour myself a cup, thankful it is still hot. It's a long hard day that's spent walking a beat looking for information that no one wants to give. It was always one of Roger's specialties, not mine. I step around my desk and sit down, leaning back and setting my hat on the desktop. "Go ahead."

And as Norman begins to speak, I know the day can't have been a total loss.

"You have to realize that the way that Master Roger came into his position as Negotiator has always been something that I have never been quite sure I remember correctly," Norman says. "But that not withstanding, something in my own memory that came to mind after you left this morning was that there is no reason to build only one expensive thing when you can build two without the cost looking much different."

"You'll forgive me if I don't follow, Mr. Berg," I say, taking another sip of the warm coffee in my hands. "I've never been much for corporate strategy."

Norman glances at me with a look that tells me he sees through that particular statement, and then continues in the same gentle way. "I think that perhaps it was a way of Soldano justifying his investment in Timothy Waynewright's dream that caused him to have the second android built."

"That doesn't make any sense. Why would Waynewright have built two of the same robot, if it was to replace the vision of his daughter that seemed to be haunting him so?"

"That question came to my mind as well, Major," the butler says, glancing down at his hands, which are resting on his long black coat. "And the only answer I have for that is to say that it was not Timothy Waynewright who built the second android."

"Which would explain the differences in the programming of the two robots."

"Androids," Norman corrects me again, his voice stiff and proper. "Miss Dorothy is an android, not a robot."

I shrug and get up off the desk, pacing. "But Waynewright made that second one, didn't he? Dorothy I, wasn't it called? The megaduce…"

"Yes." Norman stands. "But that is what I thought of, and I believed that it could be of some use to you. I do hope your search is going well."

"Right, my search," I run my hand over my head. It hasn't been going much of anywhere, really. I don't want to let Roger down, but…

"I'm sure you are doing your best, Major," Norman says, fixing his own coat over his shoulders before turning for the door.

I sigh, and sink down into my chair.

As the butler steps out of the office, closing the door behind him, I contemplate what I've learned. It does smell horribly like Paradigm is tired of him, in hindsight, in regards to what Big Ear said. Ever since that curious incident before the three Megaduces showed up out of the bay, I've had that feeling.

But I always thought he could take care of himself, I guess, and with the robot…

No.

Android.

No.

With the android around, and the butler…

No.

With Dorothy and Norman, I thought he would be all right. I knew he would be.

Even if he couldn't tell me, I've known there was some secret he has. Something dangerous. Norman knows it as well, whether he remembers it or not, and won't betray his master. More dangerous than what lead him to leave the Military Police.

I guess I just wasn't expecting the secret that he'd kept from me would be this dangerous to him.

And I can't protect him now. He's put himself too far on the other side of my jurisdiction for it to seem like casual interest. Private, non-dome dwelling citizens are not my concern, officially.

But even I have friends.

There is something that I can do, I am sure of it. Now I just have to figure out how to get it done. I do not know anyone in Roger's clientele, they aren't the sort of people that turn to the police for assistance. I cannot confront Paradigm with accusations, especially not based on sources I will not name. I learned that… a long time ago.

But I cannot just sit by and do nothing.

In the background, the clock ticks, and I think of the sand in an hourglass.

Roger has some fascination with them, and I am beginning to understand, more and more, why that could be. They are good for thinking with. Something to hold the trouble and release it slowly at the same time. My mind goes blank for a long moment.

I think of Roger laying in his bedroom.

Hiding there.

But from what?

If the kidnapper, if you can call it that, of this R. Dorothy of his was after him, there was as much a chance to injure him or attack him at the ball as there was to grab her. Nothing like this has ever affected Roger this much.

He's been left by all sorts of women in his time.

I close my eyes. He must really care about this one.

I laugh. She's an android. No one cares that way about an android.

But then, again, the image of Roger's closed bedroom door comes to mind.

He must.

I wonder, picking up my coffee again, how long can this hold?