Murder on Capella Space Station

In his discussion on the matter with Mrs. Malkin, the Justice of the Peace, Arthur was sympathetic to both requests, especially the request from Raleigh's family. The victim who hired Hana from the Nakatani Corporation was a married man. Whether or not an affair with a sex-robot counts as adultery on Earth, it must be utterly shaming to his widow. Carmen Raleigh deserved to know how the case was proceeding.

Permission was duly granted for the interested parties to observe the robot expert's examination.

Hestia was keen to remain involved in the case. Having heard nothing for a few days, she called Mary to suggest they pay a visit to Arthur for an update.

They caught up with him in the late afternoon at his office just as he was leaving to give a report to the governing council. After Hestia briefly checked on Hana, who hadn't moved and seemed peaceful, his special deputies let Arthur rush off to his meeting.

Hestia had a suggestion for Mary.

"Let's go out tonight. I'll take an evening off and we'll go dancing. It'll be fun."

"Sorry, I have work to mark and lessons to prepare."

"Oh, come on!"

"I'm serious, Hestia."

"Well let's go and have a coffee and talk about it, at least."

Mary couldn't refuse, so they went to a cafe and sat at an outside table to watch the passers-by in the street. A waiter came out to serve them and returned to fetch two coffees. A man at another table beckoned the waiter as he passed and said something to him. When the waiter returned with their drinks, Hestia offered her credit stick to pay but the waiter said: "The gentleman over there bought your coffees. He hopes you enjoy them."

The girls took a look at him. He was the consummate wolf. In a grey jacket, light grey trousers and expensive shoes, his white shirt was open to reveal black chest-hairs. He had a day of stubble expertly groomed, thick black hair combed back and mirrored sunglasses.

Hestia waved to the man to thank him for the coffee while Mary stared disapprovingly. No stranger had ever bought Mary a drink before but it happened all the time to Hestia, who loved compliments and always responded happily.

When the man came over to ask Hestia out, Mary was impressed by the kind but efficient way she let him down. Bubbly and with giggles, Hestia thanked him for the coffee, saying what a lovely gesture it was and how much she and her friend appreciated the compliment. Unfortunately, she couldn't go out with him because she was an Entertainer, but he was exactly the kind of generous man she preferred as a customer.

Flattered, despite being turned down, the wolf left sheeplike, carrying Hestia's business card.

"That was fun," Hestia said. "I love the game."

"What game?" Mary asked.

"The contest between the sexes. I don't really get to play it for real, not in my job."

"What are you talking about, Hestia?"

"I mean that the man wanted to know what it would take to get me into bed. The coffee was a bid. Just to talk to me. Then he would up the ante with a movie, flowers, dinner, clothes, even jewellery, depending on how much I fancy him. It's a shame I had to cut him off, but I may get a new customer out of it. Which is nice. He's very attractive."

"Yuck!"

"You don't like him?"

"Not at all. He's too sure of himself. And what's with the hairy chest? I'm surprised he doesn't have a medallion."

Hestia laughed.

"That's another thing I like about the game: we all have our own preferences."

Mary pondered that statement for a second. Much as she liked the lively beautiful girl, something in Hestia also irritated her. She knew what it was but she didn't want to admit it.

"Do you know you acted all girly when that man came over to talk to you?" Mary asked.

"Oh, yes. He may pretend to want a feisty kind of woman, all flashing eyes, jealousy and Latin temperament, but he's really the sort of man who wants a submissive little Miss who looks up to him."

"Don't you get sick of being treated like a bit of fluff?"

"But I am a bit of fluff!" Hestia insisted, not offended by what any other woman might have taken as an insult.

Mary couldn't hide her contemptuous look but Hestia only smiled. She lent over and kissed Mary on her cheek.

"Don't be angry with me, darling. You're right, except for one little thing. I like being a bit of fluff. And I especially like that a bit of fluff can afford Leora West shoes and Madame Spontini evening gowns."

In the first split-second, because Mary was jealous of Hestia, she thought this was a dig at her, who could afford only a knock-off Spontini skirt. But she quickly realised that Hestia was completely artless and sincere.

Hestia was always open about her profession. It was the first thing she told any man who showed an interest in her. It was not as if she was stringing men along just for what she could get out of them.

So why shouldn't Hestia trade on her good looks and friendly nature to make a living? And why shouldn't men give presents to Hestia and buy her drinks if they were besotted enough to do so?

In fact, Mary could admire Hestia, now she had seen through her 'pretty little airhead' act. But Mary knew that Hestia could see straight through her own 'spinster schoolteacher' act, which she invented only because random strangers didn't pay for her drinks or ask her out immediately they saw her.

Anyway, Mary couldn't stay annoyed with Hestia because the real problem wasn't Hestia's fault. The real problem was that Arthur was one of the men besotted with her. All the time the three of them had been together, Arthur looked only at Hestia. True, he opened doors for them both and he helped Mary in the lift; but he did so only after Hestia told him to.

Mary never confessed that she fancied Arthur but Hestia knew it. Because she was kind enough not to say anything, this was reason enough for Mary not to blame Hestia any more for causing her jealousy.

"Hestia," she said, "I've changed my mind. I'd like to go out with you tonight."

"Good girl! That's more like it. And I know exactly what we should do."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to show you how much fun we can have just being bits of fluff. We'll go to your hotel room, dress you in your sluttiest clothes and then we'll go clubbing!"

Hestia linked her arm in Mary's and hauled her along the pavement, despite Mary's plaintive objection: "But I don't have any slutty clothes!"

"Then we'll cut some interesting slits in one of your cardigans!"

"That was a low blow," Mary said, but she laughed.

That night, the girls had a good time. Mary didn't mind that most of the men who came to dance with her did so to get close to Hestia because Hestia loyally sent them all away (some of them with a wink and an invitation to come and see her at The Goat and Chariot another time, with their credit sticks).

Next morning, in a spirit of liberation, Mary threw out all her cardigans.

******

Three days later, Professor Maurice Erskine, the robot scientist, Mr. Raleigh's family lawyer and a roboticist from the Nakatani Corporation arrived on the same hyperspace flight. All three men presented their credentials to Mrs. Malkin, the Justice of the Peace, who met them in her office at the school, with Arthur in attendance.

Professor Erskine was tall, dignified and about seventy years old, with unruly grey hair and a bow tie. He wore his lab coat as if it were a uniform. Mrs. Malkin offered him the use of a classroom for his examination of Hana.

Mr. Raleigh's family lawyer was named Robert Festing. He was sharp suited and sharp witted, respectful and concise, though he represented the injured and shamed party. The Nakatani Corporation roboticist was called Daisuke Ishikawa. He was cautious and overly polite. He seemed worried, asking permission to question Hana and make his own examination of her basic program.

Mrs. Malkin refused his request and gave Arthur a clear order that no one other than the professor, he himself and his deputies were to have contact with Hana or to be alone with her. It was such a strange case that it was important to prevent even the suspicion of a badly-conducted investigation.

Maurice Erskine began his preparations to test Hana immediately, setting out computers, cameras, a three-dimensional holographic projector and various kinds of data probes to record Hana's responses and download her program. He expected the examination to take all the next day.

That evening, Maurice asked to hear first-hand the events that led Arthur and his deputies to Hana's capture.

Happy to help, Hestia and Mary came to the police station to meet the professor, whose manner was charming.

"I've studied the project that produced Hana," he said, looking at the dormant robot, "but I've never met a production model. It's a privilege to meet the best sex-robot ever made. And," he said to Hestia with a little bow, "it's an even greater honour to meet the unsurpassable beauty on whom she was based."

"Ooh!" cooed Hestia. "Aren't you just the sweetest man? Mary, did you ever hear such a nice compliment?"

"No," Mary said with a wry smile. "Not personally."

The interviews morphed into a long conversation that ran on late into the evening, as Mary, Hestia and Arthur had as many questions for the professor as he had for them. They sat at Arthur's desk in the station with a take-out dinner and were on first-name terms.

Maurice Erskine was a man in love with robots and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of them.

"What can you tell us about Hana?" Arthur asked.

"She is one of three production models from the original project. Her basic program has five modules: care for others, obedience, self-preservation, femininity and sexuality. These are the sources of her emotional responses, which are designed to be supernormal. Hana feels everything more strongly than a human would."

"You mean she's designed to exhibit enhanced behavioural responses," Mary insisted.

"Yes, Mary, that's what I mean, although it's an open question in the theory of Artificial Intelligence whether or not a robot also feels what it exhibits."

"It's not only her behaviour that's enhanced," Hestia said. "Her tits are bigger than mine. Why did they make her like that?"

"I think it was an adjustment for this particular customer. And it's a sad indictment on the man, in my view, that instead of being satisfied with something naturally perfect, he wanted something unnatural and physically impossible."

"Plastic boobs," Mary said.

"Exactly. Hana caters for other kinds of tastes as well, poor soul, with her submissive response to punishment."

"What else is special about Hana?" Mary asked.

"Like all advanced humaniform robots, she can learn. For example, she's programmed with forty languages but can acquire new languages by listening and observing. Her primary subject of study is sexuality, however, which she learns on the job (as it were). But nothing she learns ought to interfere with her basic program modules, so I'm keen to discover how her harm/care module got corrupted."

As this was what Maurice would investigate the next day, the conversation turned to the question they had previously left unresolved. They wanted to know if the professor thought robots were really conscious (as Hestia believed) or did they merely simulate consciousness (as Mary believed)?

"I agree with Hestia," Maurice said. "If a robot seems intelligent, conscious and moral then it is all of those things. I believe that Hana's feelings of guilt and remorse are genuine."

Mary objected, making her point that a robot's simulated morality can be changed at any time and the robot would never know the difference.

"Yes, Mary, that's true," Maurice agreed. "It's an important difference between robot behaviour and human behaviour, and not so clearly in favour of men. Consider: if Hana's basic program has been hijacked to turn her into a killer, then this wicked act was certainly done by a man."

That made Mary ponder.

******

All next day, Professor Erskine worked on downloading Hana's program and her memory to his computer using data outputs on her neck and analysing the results. When they had free time, Hestia and Mary came to watch and supply the professor with coffee.

The lawyer, Mr. Festing, and the roboticist, Mr. Ishikawa, sat at the back of the classroom, taking notes. Arthur or a deputy stayed with them at all times. Only Professor Erskine was ever alone with Hana.

Every check for viruses and malicious code in Hana's brain that might hijack her behavioural instructions showed nothing foreign in either her basic program, her acquired behaviour or her memories.

The professor projected Hestia's program onto the classroom wall as a seemingly endless cascade of computer code. He ran comparisons with a copy of Hana's basic program but it revealed no differences.

At the end of the first day's examination, Maurice made an announcement:

"I believe that Hana's program has been infiltrated but I can find no trace of a hijacker. If there's rogue code in her program, then it's too well hidden to be revealed by the crude means available to me here."

"I need to get Hana under the magnetoscanner in my lab where I can unpeel the layers of her brain activity and prove for sure whether or not her program has been hijacked."

Daisuke Ishikawa, the Nakatani Corporation roboticist, jumped up with an objection.

"I forbid it!" he declared, his politeness discarded. "Hana is the property of the Nakatani Corporation. This procedure is dangerous. It will leave Hana destroyed or impaired!"

Robert Festing, the lawyer for the Raleigh family, joined in Mr. Ishikawa's protest, though more calmly. He said in a smooth voice:

"I dispute that Hana is the property of the Nakatani Corporation. She was hired by my client's husband and is her legal property for the moment. None the less, I agree that the procedure is too risky. There must be another way to retrieve the data."

"Gentleman," Arthur said, "Our JP will decide if Hana is to go to Earth with Professor Erskine. However, I wonder why Hana needs to go under a risky procedure now that you have downloaded her program. Can't you just load it up to another computer and scan that?"

"No, Constable, I can't. Hana's basic program is designed specifically for her brain and body. It wouldn't work except in an exact copy of the robot."

"Well, can you guarantee that your magnetoscanner will not damage her?"

"Sorry, I can't do that, either. As you know, I prize Hana highly as a remarkable creation and would do nothing deliberately to harm her; but if I'm to test properly for a hijacker in her basic program, then I have to probe her brain layer by layer. I will go as carefully as I can but there's always a risk of damage, especially if the rogue program is buried very deeply."

"If there is a rogue program at all," Robert Festing said.

"My company built Hana," Mr. Ishikawa said. "We can disassemble her in our laboratory without causing damage."

"As the representative of the victim here, I clearly cannot agree to that," Mr. Festing replied.

"I will put your offer to Mrs. Malkin," Arthur said, "but her ruling already is that nothing will be allowed to compromise proper procedures in this case."

The men had to be content with this, though Mr. Ishikawa seemed unhappier than Mr. Festing.

Mary and Hestia were assisting the professor at the time and Mary had a question for him.

"Maurice, when you say that Hana's program wouldn't work except in an exact copy of the robot, are you saying her mind is similar to a human mind? You can't download a human mind and upload it to a different person because the architecture will be different."

"Exactly right, Mary. Computer functioning occurs on distinct levels that we call hardware, firmware, middleware and software, but human mental functions are distributed about the whole nervous system, not just the brain but muscles, senses and hormones. The same is the case for Hana. Her program is distributed about many different levels of function that cannot easily be disentangled."

"This is another big difference between humans and most robots. It's a deliberate difference, of course, because we want robots to have downloadable programs and interchangeable parts so that they can be easily reprogrammed and mended if they go wrong. Hana is more human than most robots, which is why it took such a devious method to reprogram her."

"If you could re-enact the whole event that led to Mr. Raleigh's death, would that reveal the rogue program?" Mary asked.

"Yes, I think it would. If a rogue program runs, taking over Hana's normal programming, then it would show up on the holographic projector. However, there is no guarantee it would rerun again and a re-enactment would be very risky for the man playing Mr. Raleigh. Also, I don't know what moral questions it would raise to use Hana for sex while she's a suspect in a criminal investigation."

"I don't think either question is a problem if we use a male sex-robot to play Mr. Raleigh's role," Arthur suggested.

"Yes, that would work," Maurice said. "Are there any such robots on Capella, or would we need to send to Earth for one?"

"I know where I can find one," Arthur said. "Leave it to me."

The professor's temporary laboratory was shut down for the night and Hana was returned to the police station and turned off. Arthur made a call to a business on the South Causeway.

When he wasn't filling in his hated paperwork after pacifying drunk freighter crews, Arthur enjoyed wandering around the workshops of the South Causeway, chatting to the mechanics and repairmen. On these visits, he often saw an old and battered male sex-robot that the owner said would still work.

Arthur bought the robot on behalf of the governing council and went to collect it.

"It's a basic humper," the repairman said as he powered up the old robot. "I've wiped its memory. Its basic program has variable settings between sensitive and rough, the tongue and fingers have inbuilt patterns, but its main use is to shag like a jackhammer. Twenty years ago, some rich wife of a Prospector owned him, until her husband came back."

Half-an-hour later, Arthur was back at the station with the robot in tow.

"Is that the best you could find?"

Hestia was offended on Hana's behalf at the quality of the robot she would have sex with.

"Hana won't care," the professor said.

"No, but I care. Come on Mary, help me clean him up at least."

Covered in dust and cobwebs, its skin was discoloured and peeling in places. There were dents on the body and head. Half the hairs on its once shaggy chest were gone. Its clothes were stained and threadbare, its eyes lifeless and artificial, but the teeth were good and the cock maintained its elasticity, despite heavy use.

They all took part in cleaning and preparing the robot. They washed it in the shower, shaved off its remaining chest-hairs, glued back the peeling skin and touched it up with makeup. They borrowed some clothes from lost property and, when they finished, were pleased with their work.

Hestia asked:

"What's his name?"

"I've no idea," Arthur said.

"Well what did the repairman call him?"

"He just said he's a basic humper."

"Then we'll call him Humphrey," Hestia ruled.

With that, Humphrey was ready to receive a new program compiled from Hana's memory of the sexual encounter in the hotel room. When the program ran, Humphrey would do everything that Ashmore Raleigh did, including speaking the same words at the same time, with the hope that he would provoke the undetectable hijacker in Hana's program to reveal itself.

******

Next day, they took the two robots to the classroom laboratory, which now contained a bed from the school clinic. Small broadcast caps adhered to the data points on the back of Hana's neck. They reported to the professor's computer how the basic program was running. The output was projected onto the wall as cascading lines of program code, slowly at the moment, while Hana was not doing much.