"Greet The Public," Sheila said with a saccharine and nasty smirk— meaning Department Po-li-cy said visors up when you were Meeting the Man: people didn't greatly like to talk to visors and armor.
"Yeah, yeah." He finished the checks. He had a street map on the HUD, the location of 29-R sector on the overall building shape, the relative position of the cruiser as it nosed down the ramp into The Arlington's garage. "Inside view, here, shit, I'm not getting it, have you got Library on it?"
"I'll get it. Get. Go."
He opened the door, bailed out onto the concrete curb. Car treads had tracked the rain in, neon and dead white glows glistened on the down ramp behind them. High and mighty Arlington Complex was gray concrete and smoked glass in its utilitarian gut. And he headed for the glass doors, visor up, the way Sheila said, fiber cameras on, so Sheila could track: Sheila herself was worthless with the mech, she'd proven that by taking a shot from a dealer, so that her right leg was plex and cable below the knee, but as a keyman she was ace and she had access with an A with the guys Downtown.
She said, in his left ear, "Man's in the hall, name's Rozman, reports screaming on 48, a man running down the fire stairs . . ."
"Mr. Rozman," he said, meeting the man just past the doors. "Understand you have a disturbance."
"Ms. Lopez, she's the next door neighbor, she's hiding in her bedroom, she said there was screaming. We had an intruder on the fire stairs—"
"Man or woman's voice in the apartment?"
"Woman."
"What's your address?"
"4899."
"Minors on premises?"
"Single woman. Name's Emilia Nolan. Lives alone. A quiet type . . . no loud parties, no complaints from the neighbors . . ."
Rozman was a clear-headed source. Dave unclipped a remote, thumbed it on and handed it to the man. "You keep answering questions. You know what this is?"
"It's a remote."
"—Sheila, put a phone-alert on Ms. Lopez and the rest of the neighbors, police on the way up, just stay inside and keep behind furniture until she gets word from us." He was already going for the elevators. "Mr. Rozman. Do you log entry/exits?"
On his right-ear mike: "On the street and the tunnels and the garage, the fire stairs . . ."
"Any exceptions?"
"No. —Yes. The service doors. But those are manual key . . . only maintenance has that."
"Key that log to the dispatcher. Just put the d-card in the phone and dial 9999." The exception to the log was already entered, miked in from his pickup. "And talk to your security people about those service doors. That's city code. Sir." He was polite on autopilot. His attention was on Sheila at the moment, from the other ear, saying they were prepping interior schemas to his helmet view. "Mr. Rozman. Which elevator?" There was a bank of six.
"Elevator B. Second one on your left. That goes to the 48s . . ."
He used his fireman's key on the elevator call, and put his visor down. The hall and the elevator doors disappeared behind a wire-schema of the hall and doors, all red and gold and green lines on black, and shifting as the mid-tier elevator grounded itself. He didn't look down as he got in, you didn't look down on a wire-view if you wanted your stomach steady. He sent the car up, watched the floors flash past, transparenced, heard a stream of checks from Sheila confirming the phone-alarm in action, residents being warned through the phone company—
"Lopez is a cardiac case," Sheila said, "hospital's got a cruiser on alert, still no answer out of 4899. Lopez says it's quiet now."
"You got a line on Lopez, calm her down." Presence-sniffer readout was a steady blue, but you got that in passageways, lot of traffic, everything blurred unless you had a specific to track: it was smelling for stress, and wasn't getting it here. "Rozman, any other elevators to 48?"
"Yeah, C and D."
"Can you get off anywhere from a higher floor?"
"Yessir, you can. Any elevator, if you're going down."
Elevator stopped and the door opened. Solid floor across the threshold, with the scan set for anomalies against the wire-schema. Couple of potted palms popped out against the VR. Target door was highlighted gold. Audio kept hyping until he could hear the scuff of random movements from other apartments. "Real quiet," he said to Sheila. And stood there a moment while the sniffer worked, filling in tracks. You could see the swirl in the air currents where the vent was. You could see stress showing up soft red.
"Copy that," Sheila said. "Warrant's clear to go in."
He put himself on no-exhaust, used the fire-key again, stayed to the threshold. The air inside showed redder. So did the walls, on heat-view, but this was spatter. Lot of spatter.
No sound of breathing. No heartbeat inside the apartment.
He de-amped and walked in. A mech couldn't disturb a scene— sniffer couldn't pick up a presence on itself, ditto on the Cyloprene of his mech rig, while the rig was no-exhaust he was on internal air. It couldn't sniff him, but feet could still smudge the spatters. He watched where he stepped, real-visual now, and discovered the body, a woman, fully dressed, sprawled face-up by the bar, next to the bedroom, hole dead center between the astonished eyes.
"Quick and clean for her," he said. "Helluva mess on the walls."
"Lab's on its way," Sheila said, alternate thought track. "I'm on you, D-D, just stand still a sec."
The sniffer was working up a profile, via Sheila's relays Downtown. He stood still, scanning over the body. "Woman about thirty, good-looking, plain dresser . . ."
Emilia Frances Nolan, age 34, flashed up on the HUD. Canadian citizen, Martian registry, chief information officer Mars Transport Company."
Thin, pale woman. Dark hair. Corporate style on the clothes. Canadian immigrant to Mars, returned to Earth on a Canadian passport. "Door was locked," he said.
"I noticed that," Sheila said.
Sniffer was developing two scents, the victim's and a second one. AMMONIA, the indicator said.
"Mild ammonia."
"Old-fashioned stuff," he said. "Amateur." The sniffer was already sepping it out as the number three track. Ammonia wouldn't overload a modern sniffer. It was just one more clue to trace; and the tracks were coming clear now: Nolan's was everywhere, Baruque, the sniffer said— expensive perfume, persistent as hell. The ammonia had to be the number two's notion. And you didn't carry a vial of it for social occasions.
But why in hell was there a live-in smell?
"Male," Sheila commented, meaning the number two track. "Lovers' spat?"
"POSSeL-Q the manager didn't know about, maybe, lovers' quarrel, clothes aren't mussed. Rape's not a high likely here." Stress in both tracks. The whole place stank of it. "Going for the live one, Sheel. Hype it. Put out a phone alert, upstairs and down, have ComA take over Roz-man's remote, I don't need him but he's still a resource."
Out the door, into the wire-schema of the hall. The sniffer had it good this time: the stress trail showed up clear and bright for the fire-door, and it matched the number two track, no question. "Forty-eight damn floors," he muttered: no good to take the elevator. You got professional killers or you got crazies or drugheads in a place like this, fenced in with its security locks, and you didn't know what any one of the three was going to do, or what floor they were going to do it on. He went through the fire-door and started down on foot, following the scent, down and down and down . . .
"We got further on Norton," Sheila said. "Assigned here eight months ago, real company climber, top grad, schooled on Mars, no live-ins on any MarsCorp record we can get to, but that guy was real strong in there. I'm saying he was somebody Norton didn't want her social circle to meet."
He ran steps and breathed, ran steps and breathed, restricted air, Sheila had a brain for figuring people, you didn't even have to ask her. A presence trail arrived into the stairwell, bright blue mingling with the red. "Got another track here," he found breath to say.
"Yeah, yeah, that's in the log, that's a maintenance worker, thirty minutes back. He'll duck o
ut again on 25."
"Yeah." He was breathing hard. Making what time he could. The trail did duck out at 25, in a wider zone of blue, unidentified scents, the smell from the corridor blown into the shaft and fading into the ambient. His track stayed clear and strong, stress-red, and he went on real-view: the transparent stairs were making him sick. "Where's this let out? Garage downstairs?"
"Garage and mini-mall."
"Shit!"
"Yeah. We got a call from building security wanting a piece of it, told them stay out of it. . ."
"Thank God."
"Building chief's an amateur with a cop-envy. We're trying to get another mech in."
"We got some fool with a gun he hasn't ditched, we got a mall full of people down there. Where's Jacobs?"
"Rummel's closer. —We got lab coming in. Lab's trying to get an ID match on your sniffer pickup."
"Yeah. You've got enough on it. Guy's sweating. So am I." He felt sweat trails running under the armor, on his face. The door said 14. The oxy was running out. Violate the scene or no, he had to toggle to exhaust. After that, it was cooler, dank, the way shafts were that went into the underground.
"We got some elevator use," Sheila said, "right around the incident, off 48. Upbound. Stopped on 50, 52, 78, 80, and came down again, 77, 34, 33, then your fire-call brought it down. Time-overlap on the 78, the C-elevator was upbound."
"Follow it." Meaning somebody could have turned around and left no traces if he'd gotten in with another elevator-call. "Put Downtown on it, I need your brain."
"Awww. I thought it was the body."
"Stow it." He was panting again. The internal tank was out. He hoped he didn't need it again. Sheila went out of the loop: he could hear the silence on the phones. "Forty-damn-stories—"
Three, two, one, s-one. "Wire," he gasped, and got back the schema, that showed through the door into a corridor. He listened for noise, panting, while the net in the background zeed out his breathing and his heartbeat and the building fans and everything else but a dull distant roar that said humanity, a lot of it, music—the red was still there and it was on the door switch, but it thinned out in the downward stairwell.
"Went out on s-1."
"Street exit, mall exit," Sheila said. "Via the Arlington lobby. Dave, we got you help coming in."
"Good."
"Private mech."
Adrenaline went up a notch. "That's help? That's help? Tell them—"
"I did, buns, sorry about that. Name's Ross, she's inbound from the other tower, corporate security . . ."
"Just what I need. Am I going out there? They want me to go out there?"
"You're clear."
He hated it, he hated going out there, hated the stares, hated the Downtown monitoring that was going to pick up that pulse rate of his and have the psychs on his case. But he opened the door, he walked out into the lobby that was The Arlington's front face; and walked onto carpet, onto stone, both of which were only flat haze to his eyes. Bystanders clustered and gossiped, patched in like the potted palms, real people stark against the black and wire-lines of cartoonland, all looking at him and talking in half-voices as if that could keep their secrets if he wanted to hear. He just kept walking, down the corridor, following the faint red glow in the blue of Every-smell, followed it on through the archway into the wider spaces of the mall, where more real people walked in black cartoon-space, and that red glow spread out into a faint fanswept haze and a few spots on the floor.
Juvies scattered, a handful out of Parental, lay odds on it—he could photo them and tag them, but he kept walking, chose not even to transmit: Sheila had a plateful to track as it was. One smartass kid ducked into his face, made a face, and ran like hell. Fools tried that, as if they suspected there wasn't anybody real inside the black visor. Others talked with their heads partially turned, or tried not to look as if they were looking. That was what he hated, being the eyes and ears, the spy-machine that connected to everywhere, that made everybody ask themselves what they were saying that might go into files, what they had ever done or thought of that a mech might find reason to track . . .
Maybe it was the blank visor, maybe it was the rig—maybe it was everybody's guilt. With the sniffer tracking, you could see the stress around you, the faint red glow around honest citizens no different than the guy you were tracking, as if it was the whole world's guilt and fear and wrongdoing you were smelling, and everybody had some secret to keep and some reason to slink aside.
"Your backup's meeting you at A-3," Sheila said, and a marker popped up in the schema, yellow flasher.
"Wonderful. We got a make on the target?"
"Not yet, buns. Possible this guy's not on file. Possible we got another logjam in the datacall, a mass murder in Peoria, something like that." Sheila had her mouth full. "Everybody's got problems tonight."
"What are you eating?"
"Mmm. Sorry, there."
"Is that my cheeseburger?"
"I owe you one."
"You're really putting on weight, Sheel, you know that?"
"Yeah, it's anxiety attacks." Another bite. "Your backup's Company, Donna Ross, 20 years on, service citation."
"Shee." Might not be a play-cop, then. Real seniority. He saw the black figure standing there in her own isolation, at the juncture of two dizzying walkways. Saw her walk in his direction, past the mistrustful stares of spectators. "Get some plainclothes in here yet?"
"We got reporters coming."
"Oh, great. Get'em off, get the court on it—"
"Doing my best."
"Officer Dawes." Ross held out a black-gloved hand, no blues on the Company cop, just the rig, black cut-out in a wire-diagram world. "We're interfaced. It just came up."
Data came up, B-channel. "Copy that." Ross was facing the same red track he was, was getting his data, via some interface Downtown, an intersystem handshake. He stepped onto the downbound escalator, Ross in his 360° compression view, a lean, black shape on the shifting kaleidoscope of the moving stairs. "This is a MarsCorp exec that got it?" Ross asked in his right ear. "Is that what I read?"
"Deader than dead. We got a potential gun walking around out here with the john-q's. You got material on the exec?"
"Some kind of jam-up in the net—I haven't got a thing but a see-you."
"Wonderful, both of us in the dark." The escalator let off on the lower level, down with the fast foods and the arcades and a bunch of ju-vies all antics and ass. "Get out of here," he snarled on Address, and ju-vies scattered through the cartoonscape. "Get upstairs!" he yelled, and some of them must have figured shooting was imminent, because they scattered doubletime, squealing and shoving. Bright blue down here with the pepperoni pizza and the beer and the popcorn, but that single red thread was still showing.
"Our boy's sweating hard," Ross said in one ear; and Sheila in the other: "We got a sudden flash in a security door, right down your way."
"Come on." Dave started to run. Ross matched him, a clatter of Cy-loprene soles on tile, godawful racket. The exit in question was flashing yellow ahead. A janitor gawked, pressed himself against the wall in a try at invisibility; but his presence was blue, neutral to the area.
"You see anybody go through?"
"Yeah, yeah, I saw him, young guy, took to the exit, I said he wasn't—" Supposed to trailed into the amped mike as they banged through the doors and into a concrete service hall.
"Sheila, you in with Ross?"
"Yeah. Both of you guys. I got a b&w following you, he's not meched, best I could do . . ."
Red light strobed across his visor. WEAPONS ON, it said.
"Shit," he said, "Ross—" He stopped for a breath against the corridor wall, drew his gun and plugged it in. Ross must have an order too: she was plugging in. Somebody Downtown had got a fire warrant. Somebody had decided on a fire warrant next to a mall full of kids. Maybe because of the kids. "What's our make on this guy, Sheila? Tell me we got a make, please God, I don't like this, we got too many john-juniors out ther
e."
"He's not in files."
"Off-worlder," Ross said.
"You know that?"
"If he's not in your files, he's from off-world. The Company is searching. They've got your readout."
"Shit, somebody get us info." The corridor was a moving, jolting wire-frame in the black.
Nobody. Not a sign.
But the red was there, bright and clear. Sheila compressed several sections ahead on the wire-schema, folded things up close where he could get a look. There was a corner; he transviewed it, saw it heading to a service area. AIR SYSTEMS, the readout line said. "We got an air-conditioning unit up there, feed for the whole damn mall as best I guess . . . he's got cover."
"Yeah," Ross said. "I copy that."
"We're not getting any damn data," Sheila said in his other ear. "I'm asking again on that make, and we're not getting it. Delay. Delay. Delay. Ask if her keyman's getting data."
"My keyman asks," he relayed, "if you've got data yet."
"Nothing new. I'm telling you, we're not priority, it's some little lovers' spat—"
"That what they're telling you?"
"Uh-uh. I don't know a thing more than you. But a male presence, female body up there . . . that's how it's going to wash out. It always does."
"Dave." Sheila's voice again, while their steps rang out of time on the concrete and the red track ran in front of them. She had a tone when there was trouble. "Butterflies, you hear?"
"Yeah. Copy." Sheila wasn't liking something. She wasn't liking it a lot.
They reached the corner. The trail kept going, skirled in the currents from air ducts, glowing fainter in the gust from the dark. He folded the view tighter, looked ahead of them, didn't like the amount of cover ahead where they were going to come down stairs and across a catwalk.
Something banged, echoed, and the lights went out.
Didn't bother a mech. Maybe it made the quarry feel better, but they were still seeing, all wire-display. He was right on Ross, Ross standing there like a haze in the ambience. Her rig scattered stuff you used in the dark. It was like standing next to a ghost. The Dallas PD couldn't afford rigs like that. Governments did. Some MarsCorp bigwig got shot and the Company lent a mech with this stuff?
The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh Page 75
