Murder on Capella Space Station

"They're Leora West," Hestia said. "I can show you where I got them. I couldn't afford them when I lived on Earth but there's nothing to spend your money on here except shopping, so I've gone up a notch in fashion."

As his deputies chatted about clothes, Arthur led them half-a-mile along the causeway to a point where the videos ran out. It was a thin alleyway between a row of shops and an apartment building. Arthur guessed that the fugitive ducked in here to change her clothes. Sure enough, they found her old clothes and Mary's suitcase behind a large wheeled dustbin. Mary checked her belongings to see what was missing.

"She took my lemon yellow dress and a red cardigan."

With the exact styles and colours noted, the image of the woman could be updated. Soon Arthur's video feed showed the fugitive running further anti-clockwise and then disappearing into another alleyway, from which she didn't emerge.

In the second alley, a hatch down to the maintenance levels had been forced open, its handle broken off. Arthur made a call to a volunteer deputy, telling him where they were. He then climbed into the hatch and started down the ladder.

Pausing halfway into the hatch, Arthur said:

"I suppose there's no point in my asking you two to wait up here where its safe?"

"No point at all," Mary said, even though she already had her suitcase back.

"Come on man," Hestia added. "Move along. You're blocking the road."

"Men always do that," she added as an aside to Mary.

******

The maintenance level on the outside edge of the space station rim was a continuous white corridor with access doors on each side. It was eerily quiet in the corridor. Their footsteps echoed off the walls. To save energy, lights went on before them and turned off behind them. They checked the doors were all locked shut.

One-hundred yards along the corridor, they found a door that had been forced open. It led into a long room that spanned a whole sector of the rim. The walls of the room were lined with shelves stacked with the kind of maintenance equipment space riggers used to work on the thousands of communications dishes that mushroomed over the surface of the space station.

Every hundred yards or so, in recesses behind supporting struts, were compression chambers with inner and outer airlocks giving access to the deadly vacuum of space.

The only place to hide was in a compression chamber. Arthur contacted his deputy again and told him where to come, with a firearm.

"We need to check the chambers," Arthur said. "We'll split up to do it more quickly. We're making visual inspections only. If there is any sign of the fugitive, then you're to call me and come back here immediately, where we'll wait for backup. We know that Hestia's doppelganger is very strong. None of us can tackle her on our own. Agreed?"

"Agreed," they both said.

They took a third of the room each and began to check the chambers.

It was Hestia who found the fugitive. She wasn't hiding but sat with her back against the airlock. Her legs were stretched out. Her hands lifeless by her sides. Head bowed.

The girl looked so sad that Hestia ignored her orders from Arthur and opened the outer door. She went inside.

"Hello," she said.

The woman looked up. She was the spit and image of Hestia, with a face of angelic beauty, despite her smeared makeup, black streaks of tears on her cheeks and her hair in a mess.

Hestia knelt down by the woman, talking gently.

"What's your name?"

"Hana."

"Hello, Hana. I'm Hestia."

The woman focussed and recognised her.

"You're Sharon."

"Yes, I'm also called Sharon. How do you know me?"

"I don't know you."

"Do you know why we look alike?"

"Yes," Hana said, but added nothing more.

"Are you all right?"

"I killed a man. ... I didn't mean to. We were in bed, making love. ... It was our first time. ... He said: 'Choke me,' so I held his throat and squeezed. ... I couldn't stop. Something was controlling me. ... He struggled, trying to get up, so I held him with my legs. ... I held him tightly. I heard bones crack but I couldn't let go. ..."

Fresh tears ran down her face and she heaved with sobbing.

"Hestia," she said between sobs: "I squeezed the life out of him."

Hestia's heart broke for the girl and she put her arms around her.

"Careful, Hestia," Arthur Jeffries said from the doorway. He and Mary had caught up with her and heard the whole confession.

"Hana didn't mean to do it," Hestia said, turning to him, her eyes filled with sympathetic tears. "It was an accident."

"No," Arthur said, "it was deliberate, but it wasn't her fault. My guess is that someone reprogrammed her."

"Reprogrammed?"

"Hana is a robot. That's why she's so strong."

"A robot?" Hestia was incredulous.

In most of the Anglosphere, robots were fancy domestic appliances: self-driving vacuum-cleaners or self-cooking ovens. Only Japan specialised in humaniform robots: robots so lifelike they were indistinguishable from people.

"I'll show you," Arthur said.

He came into the chamber and stood over Hana. She looked up at him. He took out his badge.

"Hana, do you recognise this badge?"

"Yes, sir," Hana said. "You're a law officer."

"I am. And you're programmed to obey me."

"Yes, sir."

"Then get up and come with me to the police station."

Hana stood. She meekly accompanied Arthur all the way to the police station, while his deputies followed behind, too astounded to speak.

4 Interrogation

The police station on Capella was little more than an office for the Constable, with a desk (spick and span, due to Arthur's clear desk policy), a freshly painted steel safe, a brand new coffee-maker on top and a water cooler against one wall. A projector screen stood against the other wall and there was a bathroom out back but no jail. In a recess where a jail might have been, there were storage cabinets and some padded benches where drunks could sleep off a night's excesses, handcuffed if necessary to a steel leg of the bench.

Hana sat with the others in a chair at Arthur's desk. There was no point in handcuffing her. If she wanted to break free and leave, only Arthur's orders could stop her.

"Do you want something to eat or drink?" Hestia asked Hana because no one else had offered and she was hungry herself.

"It's a robot," Mary said. "You should ask if it needs to be plugged in."

"Actually, I do eat and drink," Hana said. "I can metabolise food and I have all the usual human secretions, for which I need to ingest liquids."

Arthur took Hestia's hint and ordered dinner for them all from a nearby caterer.

"You deputies deserve a proper dinner. You did good work today. Thanks."

"We're not done yet, my lad," Hestia said.

"I suppose not, though it's up to our Justice of the Peace how I pursue the case."

"We can ask it questions, though, can't we?" Mary asked.

"You can," Arthur said. "Hana, I'd like you to answer my deputies' questions."

"I feel you should go first, Hestia, under the circumstances," Mary said.

After all, she had her suitcase back and Hana had changed into her own clothes again, returning Mary's dress and cardigan.

The most obvious question was, why did Hana look like Hestia? She did so, even down to her naked skin and intimate parts, as Hestia had checked when Hana undressed.

"Is there anything you want to say first, Hana, before we question you?" Hestia asked.

"I want to apologise to you, Ma'am," the robot said to Mary, "for stealing your suitcase. I needed to disguise myself. I expected to be caught immediately, but in a disguise, I could run further."

"Why did you go to the maintenance levels?" Arthur asked.

"To throw myself out into space. I feel so guilty for what I did. If I were out in space, my power cell would drain and the pain would end."

"Why do you feel pain?" Hestia asked.

"I'm programmed never to cause harm to a human being. It's like an instinct for me. But I killed a man. I shouldn't have been able to. Knowing I defied my programming makes me feel so ashamed that it hurts all over. It hurts when I remember and it hurts if I try to blank out the memory. It hurts most that I can't put it right or apologise."

Hestia was moved to tears again but Mary looked calmly at the robot and was unmoved.

"Why didn't you go out the airlock?" Arthur asked.

"I'm also programmed not to harm myself. My programs conflicted. I couldn't open the air lock and I couldn't move away from the hatch. I was frozen until you ordered me to come with you, sir."

"Why can't you harm yourself?" Hestia wondered.

"I'm a very expensive model. The most expensive sex-robot ever built. I'm programmed not to let myself be irreparably damaged."

The buzzing of his communicator told Arthur that Mrs. Malkin, Headmistress of the school and Justice of the Peace, wanted to speak to him. He nodded a few times as she spoke. Then he said:

"Yes, Ma'am, I understand. I'll be discrete and if it becomes political, then I'll refer everything to the governing council. But I agree with you: for now it's a police matter. ... Thank you, Ma'am. I had excellent help."

"Ladies," Arthur said to the girls.

"Deputies, I think you mean," said Mary.

"My apologies. Deputies: I have some information for you. Our JP has learned that Hana was built by the Nakatani Corporation of Japan and that she was on hire to Ashmore Raleigh directly from the manufacturer. I will ask police forces on Earth to interview Raleigh's family, his business associates and the Nakatani Corporation."

"I'm authorised to keep Hana here while a robotics expert is sent from Earth to examine her. If I deem it safe, then we can keep her functioning. Otherwise, I can command her to turn herself off."

The name Nakatani was a reminder to Hestia, who thought she knew why Hana was her double. She needed to speak to the robot to confirm it.

"Arthur, I think you should turn Hana off to ease her pain, but can I ask her a couple of questions first?"

Arthur nodded.

"Hana, do you mind?"

"I'm a servant," the robot said. "I will do what I'm told."

"When you recognised me as Sharon, you said you knew why we look alike but you also said you didn't know me. Can you explain?"

"I overheard in the laboratory where I was built that the person I'm based on was called 'Sharon' but I never met her. When I saw you, I knew you must be Sharon."

"Oh, then I have an idea why Hana and I are doubles. I once did a job for the Nakatani Corporation. My story's a little confused because it all happened in a whirl and some of it's guesswork but it ends with me coming to Capella."

The food Arthur ordered arrived now. As they ate dinner (and Hana sipped water), Arthur said to Hestia:

"Why don't you tell us your story from the beginning? I'd like to know how you came to be on Capella."

"I come from an ordinary Northern English town," Hestia said, "and was brought up quite poor. I always wanted to be a model, so I left school early and moved down to London to work in the fashion industry. But my tits are too big. Also, I like food and I don't take drugs, so I wasn't skinny or ill-looking enough for the women who run the fashion industry and I missed out on the big jobs."

"But I lived with a great bunch of girls. Some of them did nude modelling. Some of those did pornography. And some of those were escorts. I didn't bother with nudes or porn. When I became eighteen, I went straight from modelling to escorting, which I loved. I love sex and I love men - all shapes, sizes, colours and types of men - so long as they're clean and polite. Now I'm paid for doing something I love more than anything else in the world."

"Last year, one of my girlfriends caught a nasty disease from a customer. I'm super-careful, but so was she. It made me think. I heard about Capella Space Station. Things are better here for Entertainers than for escorts girls on Earth. Here we're checked medically, protected by law, legally registered and safe."

"That's right," Arthur confirmed. "Because the Outworld planets are paranoid about catching diseases from Earth, and Capella is the gateway to the Outworld colonies, we have the strictest hygiene rules in the Galaxy, with medical tests and quarantine for every visitor."

"Also, Entertainers here work freelance," Hestia added. "In London, the agency kept half my fees. Here, I hang out in The Goat and Chariot, which encourages Entertainers because they attract customers, and I pay a small finder's fee for every punter they send my way."

"Best of all, though, whores on Earth are looked down on and insulted, but here I'm a respectable businesswoman."

"That's also true," Arthur agreed. "Entertaining is a respectable profession. We keep it so by prohibiting soliciting in the street. I suppose it's possible to take home an unlicensed prostitute, but only registered Entertainers are guaranteed to be honest and not rip-off the customer by emptying his credit stick or taking incriminating videos for blackmail."

"Exactly!" Hestia said, "So last year I applied to come to Capella. I got character references from two of my customers (a judge and vicar), passed my medical tests, bought an Entertainer's licence and made my travel plans. Then I got an unexpected offer: a modelling job for a company in Japan."

"The Nakatani Corporation?" Arthur asked.

"Yes. The offer included return flights, room, board and a good-sized fee, which I could keep for myself. I liked that, so I signed the contract without properly reading it."

Hestia smiled at Mary's tutting and Arthur's indulgent look.

"I know, I'm stupid like that. Anything legal or mathematical makes my eyes glaze over. I read two paragraphs into the document and said to myself: It seems fine so far, I'm sure it must be fine all the way through."

She laughed at the pitying looks on their faces.

"Well," Hestia went on, unashamed of her happy-go-lucky attitude, "I knew that the contract included nude modelling in erotic poses. I was vaguely aware that it included a full medical examination and measurements of every detail of my body and face. But it must have included something I didn't read."

"Let me guess," said Mary: "it included the use of your physical features to make a sex-robot?"

"That's what I think, that the Nakatani Corporation used my video shoot and measurements to make a sex-robot. Do you think that's the right story, Hana?"

"I do, Hestia," the robot said. "I don't know how many other models of me there are, but I know I was never mass-produced, unlike most sex-robots. I've been leased out only to the richest and most exclusive clients. The salesman introduces me as the most beautiful, most erotic and most sexually responsive sex-robot ever built."

"There now," said Hestia. "Isn't that an endorsement!"

******

"I have a question for you, Hana," Arthur said, "if you're programmed to obey me, can I command you to stop feeling pain?"

"Thank you for suggesting it, sir, but it won't work. My moral sense is a part of my basic program. I must feel guilty for my crime."

"Why do you simulate feelings at all?" Mary asked.

"It is for my role as a sex-robot. I'm programmed to feel everything more strongly than normal people and always to show my feelings. Although I'm designed after Hestia, I imagine I blush more easily than her and I probably orgasm more readily. For those clients who like to hurt me, my skin marks easily and I cry out at the slightest pain."

"I thought you said you were programmed to protect yourself against damage," Mary said, not too pleased by what Hana was describing.

"I am, Ma'am, but I receive no permanent damage from sex-play. That kind of pain recedes immediately and the bruises vanish within an hour. I'm actually programmed to enjoy it, or at least to savour its after-effects. I react with sexual excitement when I'm punished. ... But the guilty pain I feel at the moment will never fade."

Hestia thought she couldn't feel more sorry for Hana than she already did.

"Arthur, can you stop her pain, now?" she asked.

"Yes. Are you ready, Hana? Do you have anything else to say?"

"No, sir, I'm ready. Please order me to turn off. When I'm dormant, there's a microswitch under the skin behind my right ear to power me down completely."

"Mary, do you have anything more to ask Hana?"

"No. Turn it off."

Arthur told Hana to sit on one of the benches in the alcove and go to sleep. She smiled gratefully at him, then her eyes closed and she went stiff. The ghost of the smile still haunted the corners of her mouth. He found the microswitch behind her ear and pressed it.

As an experiment he put a hand to her cheek.

"She's already colder," he said.

******

There was nothing to do until the robot expert came from Earth.

Hestia thought she should go home. She worked nights: she needed to prepare her apartment and change. Mary thought she should take her suitcase to her hotel room and unpack. She had an early start the next day, being inducted into her new job at the school. Arthur thought he should do his hated paperwork and bring the regular deputies to up to date on the case.

Instead, all three sat at Arthur's desk and tried to digest the day's events. There was lots to say. Hestia started.

"Mary, why do you call Hana 'It'?"

"Because it's a machine with a program, not a person with a soul. Why do you call it 'She'?"

"Because Hana is a real person to me. I can see how much she's hurting."

"She's programmed to simulate real feelings, to respond like a human."

"Isn't that true of everyone? We don't know what's really going on in anyone's head. We can only tell what they feel by what they say and how they act, which we compare to our own experiences."

"That's true," agreed Arthur, provoking a pointed look from Mary, who said:

"But, Hestia, you seem to sympathise more with the robot than with its victim. Hana murdered a human being!"

"You're right, Mary, I don't mean to be callous and ignore Mr. Raleigh, but Arthur thinks Hana was reprogrammed. What if she's like someone who's been brainwashed or hypnotised? Then she can't be blamed."

"That's also true," Arthur said. "I agree with Hestia that Hana seems to have real emotions, so how can we tell the difference between her feelings and those of humans? But does Hana really feel responsible or is it just a simulation, as Mary says?"

"It's the same thing," Hestia said.

"Is it?" Mary asked. "Even if Hana really feels remorse, there is still a big difference between moral principles and computer programs."

"What do you mean?" Hestia asked.

"I mean that if Hana had been programmed to feel pleased rather than guilty when she causes harm, then that feeling would be just as real to her, though her morality would be completely different."

"I suppose so," Hestia admitted.

"But that's the same for all of us," Arthur said. "Education and training can also change our 'programming'."

"Not so easily," Mary insisted. "And not so much."

This was an argument that wasn't going to be resolved in an evening and they really did all have things they needed to do. Hestia and Mary stood up to leave. Arthur escorted them to the door, saying:

"If Hana does have real feelings, then it may help to have someone sympathetic here when she wakes. Hestia, will you come back when the robot expert arrives?"

"Yes, we both will, won't we, Mary?"

"I don't know if I'll have time."

"Sure, you will. It's your case as much as mine or Arthur's. Besides, we're both still deputies, aren't we, Arthur?"

"You are. I haven't discharged you yet."

"Exactly!" said Hestia. "Now Mary has to turn up."

5 The examination

The robot expert from Earth was expected in a week. Meanwhile, representatives from two interested parties contacted Arthur and asked to observe the official examination of the sex-robot. One request was from the Nakatani Corporation, the owner of Hana. The other request was from a lawyer on behalf of Ashmore Raleigh's family.