Organo-Topia Read Online Free

gave yesterday, blast your ass!” he said, swinging the door open.
    The slight, sour-faced man staring at him wasn't whom he'd thought it would be. “Maris Peterson, Investigations, Special Branch.” The man flashed a badge.
    “I been regular with my donations, I swear! Take me to booking if you have to, but I'll drag your bank account to court for false arrest—yours and the Coalition's!”
    The blank-faced, raised-eyebrow look he got wasn't what he expected, either. The man looked him up and down. “Bremale Vitol?”
    “If you need to ask, you're in the wrong place.” He slung the door.
    It stopped short of closing and bounced back open, shuddering.
    “Need steel toes.” The Detective was holding his gumshoed foot in one hand. “I need your help.”
    “I'm not makin' extra donations to anyone's account.”
    “I'm not askin' for sperm.”
    Bernhard stared at the other man, bewildered. “You gonna stand there all day? Or do you want some tea?” He retreated toward the kitchen, navigating the clutter. “Those goddamn whores'd be here five times a day if I let 'em. And the last time I tried to slash my vas deferens, they locked me up.” He whirled back around and shoved his face into the Detective's. “For spermicidal behavior!”
    He stepped around a statuette, which wobbled when he brushed it, and found the least corroded cup in the sink. “Cleanest I got,” he said over his shoulder. “Ex-wife won't wash the dishes anymore.”
    The water was instantly hot, and he threw in a half-used teabag.
    The Detective took the cup he'd shoved into his hand.
    Back in the living room, Bernhard returned to his desk. “I got a reliability regression covariate histogram to finish. Have a seat.”
    He jacked back into his mastoid, and the room disappeared from view, data swirling around him like the chaotic mess in his house. The neighbors were constantly complaining of the smell, and the landlord had threatened to evict him for it.
    Bernhard jerked the numbers into line, knotted the two-tailed regressions into a unified mutual exclusion, plotted the result, and yanked the jack from his processus mastoideus. “All done, Detective. See that?” He pointed to a holo of the result he'd just generated.
    “Yeah, but what is it?”
    “That's how long Homo sapiens will continue to reproduce naturally at our current rate of infertility.”
    The close-set eyes went wide.
    “Any question why we have mandatory donations?”
    The Detective shook his head slowly, eyes fixed to the holo. “Worse than I thought.”
    “So bad, the government won't tell anyone about it. What can I help you with?”
    The other man sipped his tea, his gaze on Bernhard. “Two murders, seem unrelated.”
    “I didn't kill 'em, I swear.” Bernhard grinned and added, “I wanted to, but I didn't.”
    “You knew one of them,” he said. “The other was a tech at Sabile Nanobio, Eduard Sarfas.”
    “Junk peddlers, that place.” Bernhard snorted, shaking his head. “How'd he die?”
    “In a puddle of proto outside his laboratory.”
    Bernhard whistled softly. “Can't even protect their own. What'd I tell you? You gonna shut 'em down?”
    “Least of my worries—even if my place is rigged to the rafters with their faulty nanotectors. The whole corporation needs an orange allsuit and a bunk at a corporate prison for fraud.”
    “You said I knew the other.”
    “Liene Ozolin.” The Detective stared at him, hard.
    “That her last name? Never knew it. Yeah, she was here about a week ago. Nice kid.”
    “Cracked the pavement in front of her penthouse.”
    Bernhard winced. “Sorry to hear it. She deserved better. Didn't you say murder?”
    “Yeah, I did.”
    The Professor waited a moment. “So you gonna tell me how, or is that classified?”
    Peterson stared at him.
    “I said I didn't kill her. You want to do a neuro on me, worm the truth outa me? Go ahead. Won't get you anywhere.”
    “Did you know she was married?”
    “She never mentioned