Chapter 148: Leon’s old shirt
"That was a team leader on a transport bound for the ports," he said. "Complaining about me. On a channel the Association calls secure."
"It is secure, master."
"It was."
"Units Nine through Fourteen," he said, without looking up. "Attack me."
Six large black robots stepped out of the line. Blades slid from their forearms with a sharp scrape of metal.
They charged.
The floor shook under their weight. Two came from the left, two from the right. One leapt over the table. The last dove low for his legs.
Batnac didn’t even stand. He lifted one finger.
The robots stopped.
All six of them, at once, mid-stride, blades inches from his throat.
"Boring," he said.
He curled the finger.
The two on the left spun and drove their blades into the two on the right. Metal shrieked. The leaper twisted midair and crashed down on the one beneath it.
A moment later, the six of them knelt in a smoking line, blades pointed at the floor.
"Strength is cheap," Batnac said. "Any fool with a good talent can hit hard. I don’t need to."
"Of all the S-ranks in the world, I’m the only one who never has to leave his chair."
"Units Nine through Fourteen are damaged, master."
"Then fix them."
"Last year, the Association spent a month hunting a smuggler who sold dungeon cores on the black market. A month! Do you know how long it took me?"
"No, master."
"One afternoon. I found him in a cellar, eating noodles."
"Did he surrender, master?"
"He cried. Then he surrendered."
"And before that, a transport with two hundred passengers lost its controls above the sea. Guess who landed it."
"You, master."
"Me. And do you know who got the credit?"
"The Association, master."
"Exactly," Batnac said. "They take the credit, and I do the work. That’s the Association."
He spread his arms wide. "Leon Allistar can hide wherever he likes. Even if it’s in a village at the end of the world. If there’s a single machine within reach of him, I’m already listening."
"They say he’s dangerous. Every report says it. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous."
His smile flattened for just a moment.
"Machines don’t care how dangerous a man is. They only care where he is."
"You have been standing with your arms spread for forty seconds, master."
"It’s called presence."
"Your smile has also reached maximum width."
"Excellent."
"Master," the service unit said. "The Association has been hunting him for three days. If you are so capable, why have you not found him yet?"
Batnac’s grin stayed where it was. His eyes didn’t.
"Because I’m still missing the first thing I need."
"Which is, master?"
"A scent. Even a hound made of steel needs one."
He walked to the steel table at the center of the room. A narrow glass case sat on it beneath a small white lamp, sealed shut. It had been sitting there since the day he brought it home.
He pressed his thumb to the lock. It clicked open.
Inside lay a folded piece of cloth. It was plain, and a little worn at the collar.
He lifted it out with two fingers, careful, almost gentle, and held it up under the light.
"That is a shirt, master," the service unit said.
"An old one," Batnac said. "From the Allistar house. Left in a drawer when its owner was thrown out."
"With respect, master, it is only a shirt."
"Only a shirt?" He turned it in the light as if it were made of gold. "It’s the most valuable shirt on this continent."
His grin stretched wider.
"Something left behind by Leon."
Batnac carried the shirt across the room with both hands, as if it were something fragile, and the robots standing along the walls moved aside to give him a clear path.
"Unit Twenty-One," he called. "Wake up."
At the far end of the room, a tall robot unfolded itself from a charging rack.
It had a thin body and long limbs, and a dozen slender arms were folded against its chest like the legs of a spider.
A glass dome sat where its head should have been, and a single blue lens glowed inside it, turning slowly until it found Batnac.
"Analysis unit online, master," it said in a soft and careful voice. "I would like to note that I have not been used in four months."
"You have been resting."
"I have been gathering dust, master."
"Then today you get to be useful. I have a sample for you."
Batnac laid the shirt flat on the steel table and smoothed the collar with two fingers. He had not shown that much care toward anything else all morning.
The service unit rolled up beside him and tilted its red lens toward the cloth.
"Master, may I ask a question?"
"You may."
"Why has this shirt been sitting in a glass case ever since you brought it home?"
"Because I was waiting."
"For what, master?"
"For the Association to fail." Batnac straightened up and brushed some imaginary dust from his chest plate.
"If I had found him on the first day, they would have said the trail was still warm and that I only got lucky."
"After three days of nothing, nobody can say that anymore. Now everyone will know exactly how much they needed me."
"That is petty, master."
"It is strategy."
"Logged as petty, master."
"Log it as strategy."
"Both entries have been saved."
Batnac decided to ignore it and turned back to the tall robot.
"Unit Twenty-One, I need the genetic signature of whoever wore this shirt. I want it clean and complete, and I want it in a form my map can read."
"Understood, master. Beginning surface scan."
Three of its arms unfolded at once and spread out above the shirt.
A thin sheet of pale light slid out from the tips of its fingers and passed slowly over the cloth from the collar down to the hem, then back up again.
Small numbers flickered across the inside of the glass dome as it worked.
Batnac watched with his arms crossed and a satisfied smile on his face.
"You know, the Association has a forensic office in the capital," he said. "Do you know how long their waiting list is?"
"No, master."
"It is forty days long. They make their own investigators wait forty days for a single sample." He shook his head. "I asked their machines about it last week, and the machines were embarrassed."
"Machines cannot feel embarrassment, master."
"Then they were very convincing."
The first pass finished, and the lens in the dome flickered.
"Master, the sample is contaminated."
"Explain."
"I have detected dust, detergent residue, and genetic traces from at least four different people. The shirt was kept in a house with many residents, so it was likely handled by servants who washed and folded it."
Batnac’s smile faded a little. "Four people. Can you separate them?"
"Yes, master. Most of the foreign traces are weak and sit on the surface of the cloth. The strongest and oldest traces are concentrated around the collar and the underarms, where the wearer sweated the most."
"The owner of the shirt should be the person who wore it the longest, and his traces will have soaked deep into the fibers."
"Then he is the one I want."
"That is a reasonable conclusion, master."
"It is a correct conclusion."
Another arm lowered toward the collar. A pair of tiny silver tweezers was fixed to its tip, and it lifted a few threads from the fabric with great care.
The threads went into a glass tube, which the robot sealed and slid into a narrow slot in its chest. A low hum started up inside its body.
"Sequencing has begun, master. The process will take approximately four minutes."
"Four minutes." Batnac clicked his tongue. "That’s a bit long."
"The player guild association can’t do something this awesome like I can, master. Isn’t that right?"
"Of course they can’t."
A cleaning robot rolled across the floor with a fresh cup of tea balanced on its head. Batnac took it and drank, then winced.
"It is too hot."
"You said the last one was too cold, master," the service unit said.
"That was the last one."
He glanced at the cup, and the steam faded away until the tea was exactly the right temperature. He drank again and nodded, satisfied.
Then he wandered over to one of the dark screens on the wall and looked at his reflection for a moment. The pale face looked back at him, still smiling a little too widely.
"Master," the service unit said, rolling up behind him. "May I ask another question?"
"You ask a great many questions for a machine that does not have beliefs."
"I have been curious since this morning, master. Even if the sequencing succeeds, there are billions of people in the world. How will you find one single man among them using only his genetic signature?"
Batnac turned around, and for the first time that day, his grin looked completely sincere.
"Because a man can lie about everything except what his body leaves behind."
"Please elaborate, master."
"Listen carefully, because I only explain this to people I like." He raised one metal finger.
"A man can change his name. He can cut his hair, grow a beard, wear a different coat, or even pay someone to give him a new face. None of that matters in the slightest."
"Every time he touches a door handle, he leaves some skin behind. Every time he sits on a bench, he leaves some sweat. Every time he breathes in a crowded station, a little piece of him floats in the air."