I ran the clothes I’d been using through the CloazValet™, but the thing seemed to be working properly again, as nothing changed colour or anything.
Then I constructively paced up and down the living room for a while, still seething in a mild sort of way, trying to work out what to do next. I thought I heard a sound out in the corridor at one point and took up station behind the door with the gun, but it was only another resident. It was Zoe, in fact, the woman who lives a few doors down. She’s a two-dimensional male fantasy figure. I’m not being sexist. It’s her job. It’s on her passport and everything. I suddenly remembered that one of the King’s consorts had looked a little like her, and for a moment that part of the dream flared up in my memory and then faded.
In case you’re wondering, pulling the gun on Alkland’s monster would have been a complete waste of time, and a dangerous one at that. Again, I know, I’ve tried. It went badly wrong. The mind is like a troubled community, with different races and creeds jostling up against each other and having occasional fist fights. If you try charging in to sort things out you end up with a riot on your hands. And mental riots are the worst: they don’t make much noise but boy do they leave a mess.
I checked my in-tray and found a note from Ji, telling me to get in touch. I rang the bar but he wasn’t in, so I left a message saying I was back for the time being. I thought briefly about calling Zenda but knew I couldn’t. Her line would be bugged to hell and I didn’t want to connect her with me any more than she already was.
I paced fretfully up and down a bit more, then made myself sit down at the desk and apply a little method. The thing to do was turn the problem into an advantage, use the time to check through what had happened and see if there was anything worth thinking about. That way I’d be better prepared when I finally managed to get back in again. Checking my watch I saw that I’d only been out half an hour. Not much could have happened to Alkland in that time, I hoped, so I sat down and concentrated.
He’d seen the babies. The first thing he’d run into was the babies. That was not good. I’d known from that moment on, really, that he was in deeper trouble than we’d realised. The babies are a very bad thing, and more than that, they’re not a natural part of Jeamland.
The fact that he had Meg Finda-style associations, on the other hand, was mildly encouraging. People who read that kind of thing as a child, who had their psyches rounded out with comfortable stories where things turned out all right in the end, those people tend to fare a little better in Jeamland. More and more children aren’t seeing that kind of thing when they’re young, and they have a pretty tough time. Nowadays everybody thinks realism is better for children, that they shouldn’t be deceived about the way the world works. I can see their point, but actually it’s a crock of shit. When your mind is as wide open as a child’s, realism is the absolute last thing you need. To a degree, the world works the way you think it does, no more so than in Jeamland. I once escorted someone who grew up in one of the harsher districts of Turn through Jeamland: boy was that a bad time.
The most significant thing was the monster. Monsters are always the most significant thing. I knew what I’d picked up from it, but there was no way of telling how close that was to what Alkland had felt, what it meant to him. One thing was clear though: there was something rotting away underneath the Actioneer’s still waters. Whatever was after him knew about it. I thought I’d better find out about it too.
My memories of the chase were pretty fragmentary. Believe me, when something like that is after you all the clever bits of your head, the storage banks, the rationalising facilities, they all go on hold. They send all the energy they’ve got to the ‘Let’s-get-the-hell-out-of-here’ centres, and let them get on with it. All I could remember was Alkland saying that something wasn’t his fault, and saying it over and over again.
Something bad had happened to him, something that he hadn’t faced in a long time. Chances were he might not even remember it himself. As it was, he wasn’t around to ask, which felt a bit weird. When you’ve spent seventy-two hours shepherding someone about the place it feels strange to be back on your own again, without anyone to look after.
I activated my desk terminal and patched through to the Centre’s Guest Data Mainframe. I have a couple of logon aliases, courtesy of Brian Diode IV, but I worked quickly in case the one I was using had been discovered. The Centre’s GDM holds the information on the Neighbourhood that outsiders are allowed to access: it’s only a fraction of the stuff on their main network, but it does hold a lot of information on the Actioneers themselves. Boasting, mainly.
I found Alkland’s family tree and went back a generation. His parents were both dead. They’d died of heart attacks over twenty years ago. Most Actioneers do, as it happens—that or gastric ulcers. They couldn’t help me, but I found something else interesting. Alkland had a sister.
Or did have. Her name was, or had been, Suzanna, and she’d been born two years after Alkland, making her sixty now. When I called up the most recent picture the GDM had, however, what came on-screen was a little bizarre. It was a picture of a three-year-old. A pretty, laughing little girl, straw-blonde hair thrown across her face by a breeze which had long ago faded to nothing. She was standing in a park in front of a playground, clutching a teddy bear tightly, and in the background knelt her mother, dressed in the fashion of sixty years ago, smiling proudly at her daughter. There was something a little odd about the picture, though I couldn’t work out what. Something about it made me feel a little sad.
Suzanna was a dead end, however. After the photo, there were no more records on her. Cautious man that I am, I logged out and then on again under another alias, and negotiated my way back towards Alkland’s tree via a completely different route. He had no cousins, it appeared, or any other family.
I sat back from the screen, closed my eyes, and tried to remember as much as possible of a poem I once memorised as a kid. It took me a while, and I was saddened to see how little of it I could get, but it did the job.
When my mind was clearer, I turned it back to Alkland, and tried to remember everything I could about him. I knew he’d worked in the Department of Really Getting to the Heart of Things. It was possible that some of the people there might know something about him, but there was no way I could get in touch with them. If I tried I might get the wrong person, and ACIA would be on top of me like a ton of heavy things. I couldn’t go into the Centre and try to approach them individually. If I tried to use my Authorisation I’d get nowhere. Well I would, but it wouldn’t be anywhere that I wanted to be. The Centre was off-limits to me for the time being.
Then I got it. I navigated back to Alkland himself again, and scrolled down a few years, searching through his early school days. Apart from a slight unexplained hiccup when he was six, the records were as good as one would expect, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. Children in the Centre have two classes during their school days. Until they’re ten they’re taught in classes of sixteen. Then the class is split into four groups of four, and they stay together until school shades into work at sixteen. They’re still technically students until age eighteen, but as most of them are already clawing their way up Departmental ladders by then, it doesn’t mean much.
I captured the names of everyone who’d been in Alkland’s original class. It was probable the person I was looking for would have been in the smaller later class, but setting a search for sixteen wouldn’t take appreciably longer than four, and it was better to cover all options.
Having clipped all the names I set the computer on a basic biog search, getting it to provide me with summary information on all the names. By the time I’d got back in with a new cup of coffee, it was finished.
Of Alkland’s original classmates, three were dead. Two of old age and one killed by a falling dog, which sounded intriguing. Of the remaining thirteen, all but two were still in the Centre. Two had transferred to Natsci. I cross-referenced to Alkland’s later class and saw that only one o
f the transfers had stayed in the same class. Spock Bellrip had to be the man I was looking for.
I grabbed my coat. My hunch was that Bellrip was the man who had arranged for Alkland to get into Stable, tucked away in a state-of-the-art computer. For him to have done that, they had to have been pretty good friends. If anyone was going to be able to help me find out more about Alkland, he had to be the guy.
It took me five hours to get to the Natsci entrance portal. I’ll spare you the details: as I couldn’t risk the chance that there might be ACIA men at the Colour portals, I had to get off a stop early and get into Fat Neighbourhood by another means. I even took the precaution of leaving my apartment building via the roof, clambering intrepidly across a couple of other buildings before surreptitiously stepping off a fire escape into the late morning crowds. Fat Neighbourhood is a newish Neighbourhood where people go to escape shapist conditioning. People who don’t conform to culture’s stereotypes of how slim or attractive you should be go there and hang out, free from pressure to feel bad about themselves. It’s a great idea, but as everyone who lives there seems to be on a diet, I don’t think it can be working terribly well. Their mono was functionally challenged, as usual: I suspect they think fixing it would constitute forcing it to conform to culture’s stereotypes of a useful means of transport.
Getting into Natsci is a relative formality. It’s not a complete free-for-all like Colour or the really relaxed Neighbourhoods, but it’s not tough. You just have to be able to name five famous computer programmers and four basic sub-atomic particles, and demonstrate a mild interest in monorail-spotting. I have no interest at all in the latter, but I know what to say. I can fit in.
I was presented with a map and told to enjoy my time in the Neighbourhood. Once I was out of the portal I switched the map on and searched for Bellrip’s address. It was only about half a mile away, so I decided to walk. The most popular leisure pursuit in Natsci is standing by the mono and noting down the serial number of the carriages. Never mind the terrifying dullness of such an activity, I personally find it a bit unnerving to keep passing knots of little men and women in white coats staring into your carriage and taking notes.
The maps are cool, actually: I think they should have them everywhere. What they are is a small tablet about six inches square, which has a screen in it. As you walk it shows a scrolling digital map of the area you’re in, telling you what each store you pass sells, who lives in what block, the whole works, updated by small beacons on every street corner. If you tap in a destination the screen shows you a red line to follow, and the tablet whispers at you to tell you when to make a turn. I configured it for Bellrip’s house and set off down the spotless street. Natsci is a very tidy Neighbourhood. They have all manner of little droids which scuttle round the place perpetually cleaning everything up.
Assuming nothing untoward had happened, Alkland should be asleep by now, unless he was sitting up awake and wondering where the hell I’d got to. I’d told him I’d be back, and I thought he trusted me enough to know that I would be. But on the other hand I’d said I’d be back for dinner, and I hadn’t been.
Ever since I’d left the apartment I’d been trying to relax my mind, ease out the tenseness which would make it harder for me to sleep. It wasn’t working: I still felt irritatingly alert. Not being able to get in touch with Zenda to check she was all right was getting on my nerves too. I wished I’d thought to check her biog when I was online, to check she was still listed as Under-Supervisor of Really Hustling Things Along. But I hadn’t.
All in all, I was a stressful little bundle of fun as I tramped down a variety of streets to one of the Neighbourhood’s residential areas, guided by quiet promptings from the map. I stopped off at a newsagents to pick up some more cigarettes and scanned a copy of Centre News to see if there was any mention of Alkland’s disappearance, but the whole thing was clearly still under wraps. Back on the streets I tossed my old packet away and a nearby catcher droid made an astounding leap to take the catch three inches off the ground.
‘Nice one,’ I said.
‘Got any more?’ asked the machine enthusiastically, scooting up close to my feet. It was a little metal cylinder with a flashing red light on the top, and had a spindly metal arm with a tiny mitt at the end.
I rootled in my pockets.
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Boo hiss.’
‘Go away, droid,’ said the map, irritably.
I found an old matchbox and held it out.
‘Brilliant! Go on, chuck it really hard,’ the droid said, poised for action.
I spun the matchbox down the street and the droid zipped after it. It was touch and go, but with another full-length dive the machine managed to get its mitt to it. It waved and then sped off down the street towards a leaf falling about a hundred yards away. Two others got there at the same time and there was an audible clang as they made contact, but one of them got it and went bouncing off down the street, waving the leaf triumphantly above its head.
Ten minutes later I turned into Res205M and found Bellrip’s block. I was saved from having to case the security door by a gaggle of white-coated men chattering happily about machine code, who held it open for me as they left. For some reason the Natscis all live in single-sex blocks, like huge halls of residence. They marry and stuff, but even then it’s a case of sleeping over in the other person’s dorm. Seems kind of weird to me, but they’re obviously all happy with it. There was a noticeboard in the reception area, covered with leaflets about societies and clubs and a sign pointing to the refectory. I was pretty hungry by then but decided to wait: maybe I could buy Bellrip lunch.
Depressingly, there was no lift, and I had to climb six flights to get up to Bellrip’s floor. When I got to his door I pushed the buzzer on the wall for quite a while, but there was no reply. The bastard wasn’t in.
Sighing, and trying to work out what to do next, I fished a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote a note asking Bellrip to get in touch with me. I left my address, my home vidiphone number, my portable vidiphone number, my transfax number, I even left my star sign. I really had to talk to the guy, and soon: I wanted to be asleep as soon as possible and with all this stress I was going to be awake for days.
I folded the note and bent down to slip it under the door. As I pushed it under, something I hadn’t expected happened. The door moved.
I stood up quickly, watching the door as it slowly swung open a couple of inches.
‘Er, Mr Bellrip?’
There was no reply. I hadn’t been expecting one, really. If he’d been going to respond, he would have done so to forty seconds of doorbell. He wasn’t there, clearly.
Casting a glance behind me I nudged the door open a little further and slipped inside, closing it behind me. From the short corridor I was standing in, the apartment looked pretty much the same as Reg Diode’s, and was compact to say the least. I coughed loudly, got no response, and took a couple of stealthy steps towards the living-room door. It was slightly ajar and I listened behind it for a moment, but heard nothing. Preparing myself for some top quality apologising if the guy turned out to be deaf, I pushed the door open.
The quality of the light in the room was strange, and it took me a moment to realise why. Bellrip was sitting in an armchair in the centre of the room, his hair sticking up at a crazy angle.
As it turns out, he was deaf. He was deaf because he was dead. He was also blind, because his eyeballs had been burnt out. One leg lay two yards away from the chair. His arms were both still attached to the body, but only by bone. The muscles had been peeled back in strips which hung like limp tentacles from his elbows. The area between his neck and his pelvis was barely there any more. It looked like his body had exploded from the inside, and the walls and windows were painted in blood, dimming the light which filtered into the room. A foot-long portion of intestine lay on the floor in front of him like a tired snake, and the room was liberally sprinkled with blood, small pieces of his insides, fragm
ents of bone and specks of partially digested food. The room smelt like some dark corner of an abattoir which they don’t clean up properly, as if someone had staggered in there and vomited blood on a warm day.
I didn’t bother to get my gun out. The blood on the walls and windows was dry, and what was left of Bellrip’s detached leg was beginning to stain with progressive rot. Even in this heat that meant he’d been dead at least five or six hours.
Carefully picking my way through the visceral debris I made my way round to the back of the chair. Bellrip’s hair was sticking up at the back because the bits of skull it was attached to weren’t where they were supposed to be. The back of the top of his head looked like a shell three inches across had smashed its way out of it from the inside.
But it wasn’t a shell that had done this, it was a hand, and I realised what I should have known some time ago. What had been there, all the time, ignored by me because I wanted to. Suddenly, horribly, pieces started to fall into place like a film of glass shattering shown backwards. I knew whose hand had done this, and I knew who was after Alkland. It couldn’t be denied any more, however impossible it was.
It was Rafe.
Part Three
REQUIEM
16
I got to Ji’s Bar just after four. I was moving as quickly as I could, but it was a hell of a long way round because I couldn’t go through the Centre, and the Red mono was fucked. I walked quickly down the disaster streets, glad that I was wearing black. The street life got the hell out of the way, which was good. I would have had to shoot them if they hadn’t.
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