Free Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) by Mel Odom Page A

that never happened.
    Cartman Dawes’s face floated in front of me. He looked younger and more robust. In my “memory”—which couldn’t be an actual memory—he was angry and spoke in strident tones, though I oddly couldn’t remember the words he was saying.
    For a moment, I was lost in my recollections as I searched for when this meeting might have taken place.
    Shelly nudged my shoulder. “Drake?”
    “Yes?”
    “What’s the matter with you?”
    I ran a quick diagnostic. “Nothing. I am performing at peak levels. Is there a particular facet of me that concerns you?”
    “You’re being quiet.”
    “I am often quiet.”
    “Not when we’re looking for doers.”
    “Doers” is cop slang for perpetrators that are definitely guilty. “I am often quiet when—”
    Shelly interrupted me. “No. You’re distracted.”
    “I am incapable of distraction.”
    “You’re distracted now.”
    I’d learned not to argue with her over indefinable subjects. The more esoteric a matter was, the more I merely listened.  
    “I apologize.”
    I had also learned to apologize for things that were beyond my control. Shelly’s husband had taught me that. It was one of the best pieces of advice he had ever given me. He’d told me it would make my partnership with Shelly easier, and it had.
    “Don’t apologize. Focus.”
    I did. I looked at the ductwork. My infrared vision had picked up a trail that I felt certain the murderers had left.
    “There is a trail.” I studied the faintly orange smudges that led through the ducts.
    “What trail?”
    “The doers were in contact with the carbosteel of the ductwork. Even that brief contact left heat signatures.” As I spoke, some of the orange smudges grew fainter. “We must hurry.” I plunged ahead at greater speed.

 
     
     
    Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    At the next juncture, the duct intersection had a six-way path. The intersection was a primary maintenance channel, so rungs stood out against the sides of the vertical ductwork.
    The orange smudges marked the rungs, but they were fading fast.
    “They went up.”
    “The hopper pad is that way.” Shelly nudged in against my shoulder.
    I put out a hand to stop her from toppling when she got too close to the edge. In the darkness, she couldn’t see the drop, and her hand reached out over empty space. She pulled back and balanced herself easily enough, but I was there.
    “I guess there’s a drop?” Her voice sounded tight.
    “Yes.”
    “Great.”
    I didn’t understand what was great about it. The fact that there were rungs leading below was only common sense. I saw no reason to comment on her assessment and chose not to.
    “A long drop?”
    “It goes to the bottom.”
    She sipped her breath. “I guess the objective here is not to fall.”
    “That would be optimum.” The saying was one of hers, and I had learned to use it sometimes when she was tense. I didn’t always use it appropriately.
    “I think I liked you better when you didn’t have a sense of humor, Drake.”
    I knew she wasn’t serious. But, I also knew I didn’t have a sense of humor. I was not an entertainment bioroid, nor did I have a positive reinforcement subroutine that included humor. I was programmed to put her at ease, but I often felt that programming was substandard when it came to Shelly.
    “So let’s go up. And not fall.”
    I reached out, caught one of the rungs, and pulled myself into the vertical shaft. Then I reached back, took Shelly’s hand, and guided her onto the rungs. Though she trusted me, I felt resistance in her and moved accordingly.
    We went up.
    Although Dawes’s room was housed on the top floor of the L’Engle, there was another floor above it. The top floor was reserved as space for emergency fire suppression equipment and water reservoirs. Tall buildings that used a lot of water, like a hotel, required the presence of water reservoirs to increase water pressure. Gravity was the greatest aid in creating a positive