Laughton nodded, and they started walking toward the truck. The chief couldn’t help but feel that he had failed in his duties as a husband and father, that he hadn’t been there for them. “Erica asked me the other day why they made the preserve.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her it was easier to feed everybody if they were close together. That it was easier to repopulate, better for her to have human friends, just, I don’t know, the things that everyone talks about.”
“Don’t forget, so that we can get you all in one place and wipe you out once and for all,” Kir said.
“I left that one out,” Laughton said.
“Look, I can’t believe anyone thinks it, but there are a lot of robots that are angry that you were given so much land, and right on the East Coast,” Kir said.
“We were here first,” Laughton said, cringing for echoing the right-wingers.
“You were,” Kir said.
“It kills me to say it,” Laughton said, “but we made you.”
“You did.”
“It’s only right we have a place of our own.”
“I don’t disagree,” Kir said. “But…”
“What?”
“Most robots don’t realize it, but it’s still a human world. We may be the majority now, but America—still here. President, Congress, the whole thing. We’re robots, and we’re still running your government. Your government in which we were considered things, not individuals. We’re still speaking English, out loud. We’re like colonials after the empire recedes, still living under the empire’s rules.”
“Sure, by humans for robots.”
“Isn’t that better than a whole new world?”
“You realize here that we’re the indigenous people?” Laughton said.
“Right. You’re both. The occupying colonial government and the indigenous peoples.”
“Yeah. We have it all.”
There was a moment of silence, while each partner thought.
“Jesse, you know I’m on your side. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m not sure there are sides.”
“Protect and serve,” Kir said.
“Protect and serve.”
“So are we going to the docks?”
“You really think an island?” Laughton said, the corner of one side of his mouth raised in skepticism.
“Got anything else?”
Laughton turned on the truck. “Damn.”
Laughton had to call the Charleston dispatcher to find out where the Marine Police Division was located; the GPS couldn’t find it. They occupied a small wharf on the Wando River next to a private yachting club. The rusted cranes of the Port of Charleston, like mammoth, long-necked animals preparing to drink, stood to the north. Away to the south, the diamond-shaped towers of the Ravenel Bridge cut peaks in the sky, as they had since they replaced the twentieth-century structures more than one hundred years before. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire enclosed the police station property, but the gates were open, allowing access to the cracked parking area. Three fifty-foot police boats with sharp bows that were a cross between a shark’s snout and a tank sat on tractor trailers outside of a large boathouse.
Laughton and Kir headed for what looked like a bait shop, a small building built out onto the pier. There were two yellow, hard-shelled inflatable boats in the water bearing the word “Police” in large plain type, and another fifty-footer like the ones in the parking lot. The door to the station had a window in the top half, but a closed set of venetian blinds hid any view of the inside. The blinds swung to as Laughton opened the door, slapping back again with a clatter.
There were three metal desks crammed into the small office. They were all coated with the mess of electronics that could be found on every policeman’s desk—monitors, keyboards, desktops, laptops, tablets, e-readers—and the ensuing cables that dripped over the backs of the desks to power strips on the floor. One of the desks sported several model boats of a variety of sizes. An oversize photo, too large for the space, hung off-kilter on the wall, showing six men in front of one of the police boats with false grim expressions meant to make them seem imposing.
One of the men from the picture sat at the farthest desk, leaning back in a spring-backed desk chair, salt-and-pepper hair and a gray mustache, his skin the cracked leather of years spent on boats under the sun. Another man, not in the picture, sat in a metal straight-backed chair on the other side of the desk, black, with white hair and beard that formed a kind of mane around his face. “Gentlemen,” the man in the desk chair said. Then it registered that one of them was a robot, and both men’s expressions tightened for a fraction of a second, almost imperceptible to an untrained eye.
Laughton showed his credentials, and the policeman introduced himself as Chief Barston. The other man wasn’t police, but a maintenance worker at the yacht club, James. He seemed at home in the little police station.
“We want to ask you about sims trafficking on the water out here,” Laughton said.
James snorted. “Good luck,” he said.
“We get a lot of it,” Chief Barston said.
“That’s all we’ve got out here,” James said.
“You and I go fishing, and we’re not the only ones,” Barston said.
“Yeah, everyone’s fishing with a tackle box full of memory sticks.”
Barston’s eyes flitted to Kir before returning to Laughton. “We get some,” he amended.
Laughton pointed to his partner. “You don’t have to worry about him.”
“I’m not here to police you or anybody,” Kir said.
“We do our best,” Barston said, shifting in his chair.
“How many boats do you have out?” Laughton said.
Barston smirked. “None. Metals—no offense—Coast Guard shut down the harbor. Not supposed to have any boats out. I sent the boys home.”
Laughton exchanged a look with Kir.
“News said they shut the roads down too,” Barston said.
“I said no way they going to let us alone out here, just parcel off some land and give it to us,” James said. “People should read their history. Metals were made by people as much as they want to forget it, and you can see what people did when they started separating groups out.”
Kir said, “My channels are saying that they’re preparing for shutdown, but are holding for tomorrow, as we agreed.”
“Well, the Coast Guard sure as hell isn’t waiting,” Barston said. “But they can try all they want to blockade, I’ll tell you, someone wants to get through, they can.”
“Have you heard of people operating off any of the islands out here?” Laughton said. “An informant told us that there’s a new operation on some island.”
“A reason that pirates liked these waters,” Barston said. “I’m sure there are people on the islands out there.”
“Dewees Island,” James said.
“Dewees not part of the preserve,” Barston said.
“No one knows what’s part of the preserve out there.” James looked Laughton straight in the eye. “I’m telling you, there are people out on Dewees. Got lights on. Just in the past few weeks.” He looked back at Barston. “I don’t always stay on-preserve. What the hell you got a boat for otherwise?”