Irontown Blues Read online

  Tired of living in an environment that simulates a medieval castle courtyard? Prefer to live on a St. Louis street from the year 1900, but one doesn’t exist? Just put your desire up on a board and if you can find a few dozen, maybe a hundred others of the same mind, a developer will be happy to dig out enough space and fill it with clapboard houses with front-porch swings, big oak trees in the yard, and a dog named Spot.

  * * *

  —

  Though there is no sign approaching Irontown warning you as you enter that “From here on in, you’re on your own,” there really ought to be. Or maybe “Here be dragons!” Or “Your remains will not be sent back to your relatives.”

  Remember those ancient habitats, the no-frills corridors and caverns that the first, second, and third generations of Lunar survivors lived in? They are still there. No one ever bothered to fill them in, or wall them off. They are almost all abandoned, owned by no one, and yet still a part of the city. They have air and water and are kept at temperatures compatible with human life. But who would want to live there?

  One answer is simple: losers.

  Somewhere beneath every apparent paradise like the Mozartplatz, there exists a subculture of people who have opted out.

  Some people are born criminals, sociopaths, violent offenders. They are just unable to learn to get along with others. They usually end up with long prison sentences. Many opt to go to Irontown when they get out, if they don’t force the police to kill them first.

  Then there are the “tinfoil-hat” people: paranoids, delusional, what my mother used to call barking mad or fucking nuts. Many of them wind up in Irontown, where no one cares if they stand on a street corner and preach about the Galactic Emperor Xenu or warn of the end of the universe.

  There are hoarders, people who fill their apartments with junk they can’t part with. They can hoard freely in Irontown.

  There are some people who think of themselves as political refugees. The government is out to imprison them, and they feel safer from the forces of tyranny when in their little Irontown enclaves. Those at the extremes of libertarianism and capitalism and communism, anarchists, weird religious cults. Heinleiners.

  There is a certain percentage of people who really dare not leave Irontown because they are wanted for a crime. The great advantage to them is that the police seldom visit Irontown, and only in groups of four or more, and only in search of the most extreme criminals.

  Other than that, law enforcement leaves Irontown alone. The authorities turn a blind eye to the place, viewing it as an important safety valve for the world’s malcontents. Good luck getting a cop or a bobby to investigate a crime committed in Irontown.

  * * *

  —

  Why, you may ask, as many people do, have we not stamped out crime and criminals, misfits, the disturbed and the insane?

  The scary fact is, we could. Mind-altering techniques exist to turn the most obstreperous sociopath into a mild-mannered, productive, genial—though rather dull—model citizen. And, of course, if someone persists in psychotic behavior that threatens the peaceful members of the populace, they can be confined.

  But a cornerstone of the civilization we fought so hard to establish after the Invasion is the sanctity of the mind. Unless someone asks for help, actually wants to have a spoon stuck into his or her cerebrum and have it stirred into a more average consistency, society is forbidden to interfere.

  You have the inalienable right to do any fool thing you want to do as long as it doesn’t endanger others.

  My going to Irontown was certainly a damn fool thing to do.

  * * *

  —

  After dinner I nursed a bourbon and looked out at Noirtown.

  Sherlock was curled up in his bed. But he couldn’t seem to get comfortable. He looked up again, took a few deep sniffs, then lumbered to his feet and ambled over to where I sat, bathed in the alternating neon glows of red, blue, and green. He used his muzzle to slip his head under my hand, and I found myself scratching him behind his big, floppy ears. He looked up at me again, mournfully.

  There was no way to fool Sherlock’s sense of smell. He had detected the distinct odor of fear from across the room.

  four

  Any of my pulp-fiction heroes would have gone charging toward Irontown, trench-coat collar up against the drizzling rain, fedora riding casually on his head, his gat loaded with six lead pills and firmly jammed into the leather shoulder holster. However . . .

  Ms. “Smith’s” disease was not going to kill her nor infect anyone else. There was no ticking time bomb. I could take my time, and ever since the Big Glitch, I always take time to study the situation before rushing headlong into danger.

  No, I needed time to think, to come up with an approach. And when I need to think, there is one thing I do that usually helps with that. I moonlight as a bobby.

  * * *

  —

  Our police force is layered, its functions divided.

  None of the Eight Worlds has what you could call a standing army, though a few have small navies; in fact, since the Invasion no one has much of a military at all. Who would we fight? A space war might attract the attention of the Invaders, and nobody wants that. The last time they noticed us we nearly became extinct.

  So though there are endless trade disputes and other reasons for any and all of the major planets to get angry about, war in space is impractical, no matter what the writers of thrillers might tell you. No one has even talked seriously about going to war with anyone in my lifetime, and for at least a century before.

  Luna and some of the other planets have a voluntary paramilitary, strictly monitored and severely limited in scope, because rebellions, insurrections, uprisings, and even full-fledged revolutions have happened. There was a bad one on Oberon only ten years ago. Mars has had three violent upheavals since the Invasion. Luna had one about fifty years after the Invasion.

  At the patrol level, police work largely consists of keeping order in the streets and rounding up felonious perpetrators . . . to use a bit of cop-speak. More commonly known around the precinct as the more technical term, dirtbags.

  Then we get down to the level of misdemeanors, and we have a separate force for that, popularly known as bobbies. The equivalent back on Old Earth might have been traffic cops. We bobbies walk the corridors and the wide-open spaces, issuing summonses to litterbugs, jaywalkers, staggering drunks, and other menaces to society.

  Okay, it’s not glamorous, but as the guy said whose job was to sweep up after the dinosaurs in the circus, at least I’m still in show business. So I’m still in police work.

  I find it oddly relaxing to be out on patrol. As for Sherlock, it’s what he lives for. He loves it best when he tracks down the violator himself. After all, he is a bloodhound.

  * * *

  —

  Sherlock is too obedient and far too smart to ever need something as gross as a leash, real or electronic. But the closest he comes to that indignity is when he is on the trail, or on the hunt. He lopes ahead of me, snuffling along the ground or hoovering great drafts of air into his mighty snoot, which is said to be one million times more sensitive than the human snoot and about four or five times more sensitive than any other dog breed.

  The man I got him from as a puppy claimed the best bloodhounds “could track a mouse fart across a square mile of shit” and I’ve never had any reason to doubt that assessment. It is sheer pleasure to watch him cast about from right to left, left to right, to figure out which direction a fleeing desperado has run by the intensity of the scent he left behind.

  He’s impossible to fool, and he never falls for any of the old traps, like spreading ground pepper or dried cat urine behind you. He detects that a mile away, from the tiniest trace, and just goes around it. Once in a great while a repeat offender gets an unexpected visit from me to explain the consequences of trying
to hurt my dog. The explanation seldom results in broken bones but is apt to entail a little bruising. It never results in any charges against me. Sherlock is adored by all the regular cops in the neighborhood.

  * * *

  —

  Today we were in hunt mode, not tracking, so his nose was held high, sampling the breezes. We weren’t looking for any particular person, we were seeking anybody who wasn’t in compliance. That can mean several things, but most of the time it is OAPH, Offences Against the Public Hygiene. Sherlock and I intended to catch a few reekers.

  There can be a broad range of disagreement on what is a great smell, a good one, a neutral one, a bad one, a terrible one. But there are some that are almost universally loathed, never to be allowed out in public.

  The list of these is surprisingly long, and every year it grows by a few as petitions are submitted and put to a vote concerning one scent or another. Right now Sherlock is authorized to seek out and report to me when he detects one of five hundred and seventeen distinct smells.

  We live close together in a closed environment. There are dozens of layers of air scrubbing, of course, but no system like that is perfect. We simply can’t allow someone to pollute the environment that millions of people have to live and work in.

  And wouldn’t you know it, if anything is forbidden, there are some people who will crave it intensely.

  Many people were incensed (so to speak) at the narrow options for permissible odors, such as burning incense. Years ago they would hold “burn-ins,” and invite arrest, but it didn’t do them any good. They can still burn the nasty stuff at home, or as part of religious ceremonies in air-isolated and filtered churches.

  Scenting oneself in various ways is quite an ancient custom. People have devoted their lives to the identification and concoction of exotic essences, but as more and more people were won over to the side of smeller’s rights, they saw one formulation after another put on the prescribed list. It eventually reached the point where only the blandest, most nearly undetectable perfumes were permitted.

  The situation that prevails now seems to satisfy most people. You can wear scent at home, and there are clubs and bars and dance floors and such where you can drench yourself in Chanel #5.1 to your heart’s content, just as long as you shower thoroughly before you leave.

  Another thing that should have surprised no one is that anything that is forbidden will acquire a cachet among some people, become a trendy thing, a hip thing, something that “everybody is doing.” The darkest side of the scent fetish involves something that you would think would appeal only to dogs, who seem to find the smell of other dogs’ butts to be endlessly fascinating, and probably quite wonderful. I’ve asked Sherlock about it, but as usual, he is silent on the matter.

  But in police work you encounter pretty much any type of human behavior there is, and we are all aware of an underground that enjoys really nasty smells. It stays underground because most people don’t really want their neighbors to know that they host stench parties. Most citizens would be repulsed by the idea of people sitting around inhaling the smells of stale sweatsocks, vaginal yeast infections, and rotten fish.

  * * *

  —

  When Sherlock picks up a scent, he comes as close as he ever does to losing control. He does everything but grab me by the trouser leg and pull me where he wants to go.

  He never howls during the chase, but makes a high-pitched and almost inaudible whine. The game is afoot, Bach, he seems to say. Why are you lagging behind?

  Now he raised his nose as high as it would go and tensed all over. In other breeds the ears would have stood up straight, but the best Sherlock can do with his enormous earflaps is shake them sharply, making a sound like a wet towel snapping.

  Then he was off to the races.

  Even though I was jogging, he quickly left me in the dust.

  His limit is about fifty meters ahead of me. When he reaches that point, the GPS chip in his head gives him an alert, and he stops. If he is still casting around, he will come back to me, but if he is on the trail, he will just stop and wait for me to catch up, fidgeting impatiently. He never faces away from the scent. When I catch up, he resumes the track.

  * * *

  —

  We only nailed one desperado. I was feeling vaguely depressed when we returned to the apartment. The whole purpose of wasting a day harassing the olfactory challenged was to come up with an approach to entering Irontown without endangering my one and only hide. I had come up blank.

  I figured it was time to go to Mom for help.

  five

  SHERLOCK’S TAIL

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  Since the art and/or science of interpretive assisted translation of the thoughts and experiences of Cybernetically Enhanced Canines (CECs) is new and still developing, it seems useful to introduce this account with a short explanation of what it is, and what it is not. Most people have never had contact with a CEC and may have only a vague idea of what one is, and even less of an understanding of how interpretive assisted translation works. Therefore, this prefatory tutorial will begin with the basics.

  First, the method.

  Genetically modified companion animals have been around for a century. They were built on the foundations of knowledge gained by the creation of genetically modified food plants and animals, which have been around much longer. Most animal GMCAs were created with the instinct for aggression and predation turned off, backed up, of course, with implants that render the animal unconscious if violent behavior threatens. It was not possible in the past to have a full-grown tiger or bear as a suitable companion for a child. That news comes as a shock to many pet owners. This writer invites the reader to look at old nature documentaries to learn how dangerous these big, lovable, affectionate creatures could be.

  Unlike other animals, dog GMCAs were engineered with transplanted and custom-made genes mainly intended to enhance their intelligence, since violent canine behavior toward humans a dog regards as “pack” was largely bred out of the species thousands of years ago. The only additional work needed was to extend this “created instinct” of nonaggression to all humans. Today, all dogs (except those trained for security work and guard duty) have this happy trait.

  The next step in the first real in-depth communication between human and animal was the implantation of neural nets, very similar to those in most humans, in enhanced dogs. If done during puppyhood, it has been shown that a dog is capable of interfacing with the neural-net cloud, just as humans can. This is not possible with “normal” dogs.

  What a translator/interpreter does is tune in on the thoughts passing between the cloud and the dog, and between the translator and the dog, and between the cloud and the translator. This three-way hookup enables the translator to understand what the dog is “saying.”

  Misconception: The intelligence of an enhanced dog is about equal to an IQ of 70 in a human being. This is true, but an unfair comparison. Rather than a mentally challenged human, the dog should be compared to other dogs, in which case it is best regarded as a genius.

  A problem with an untrained person attempting interfacing with a CEC dog is that dogs do not think in “words.” That is, they do not string together concepts such as “food” and “eat” to make sentences: “I want to eat food.” Nevertheless, they do have thoughts that can be expressed in words, though a translation of such must always be accompanied by a disclaimer that the interpretation is probably not 100 percent accurate. The best translators have been shown to be 97 percent right, to the extent such matters can be tested. Each certified CEC translator is tested by the Translator Examining Board (TEB) of the Cybernetically Enhanced Canine Translators Association (CECTA) and assigned a ranking, from novice to adept. (This adept translator has a confirmed score of 96 percent, but believes the examiners misunderstood part of one answer!)

  Dogs do understand what we call “pr
onouns,” knowing the difference between self and other, between me, you, and they. Their translated statements can be accepted, subject to limitations, as witness testimony in misdemeanor proceedings.

  Misconception: Dogs do not remember events for very long. Again, this is true of normal dogs. It has been shown that a puppy does not remember having made a mess for much more than a few minutes, and so is mystified as to why she is being scolded. Adult dogs are not much better. Most animals, except higher primates, are not time-binding in the sense of remembering things sequentially.

  Learning in most animals is a process of imprinting by repetition. Thus, an ordinary dog can be taught many different tasks, but will not understand them the way humans do. Repetition of a command such as “sit,” emphasized by a reward of food or affection, will build a pathway in a dog’s brain. When he hears the word “sit!” he will sit, without really knowing why he is doing it except that he feels better for having done it.

  This is not true of CECs. Their memories for events is as good as our own, partly because of the enhancement of their brains and partly because of the neural net that enables them to store information in the cloud, just as we do. This relates to events and their sequences only, what we call the passage of time. Did something happen five minutes ago, five days ago, or five years ago? CECs can tell you.

  All dogs are just as good at storing memories of the things they see as we are, and much, much better at remembering sounds and, especially, scents.

  Interpretation of scents, in fact, is the major stumbling block in a translator’s job. There are simply no words, no concepts, in any human language, for the incredible wealth of sensory data in the huge part of a dog’s brain that deals with smells. One translator/interpreter has likened the tiny bit of such “scentsory” data we can experience from interfacing with a dog to a human shut up in a black box and able to perceive the universe only through the tiniest hole. We are awed by what little we can see and are tantalizingly aware that we are seeing only a thousandth of what is out there! There seems to be no way around this barrier. It would be like teaching a blind cave fish to see.