“Yes, I suppose telling you outright would spoil it. But I could give you a tiny hint if you’d like.”
“No, I’d rather be surprised,” said Marlowe, who felt exactly the opposite.
“By the way, I’ve finished the analysis of the mushrooms. They contain psilocybin, the primary ingredient in the psychotomimetic drug known as Trippin’ Tabs. If Gomer consumed any of them last night, I have no doubt he had very interesting dreams indeed.”
“Lucky him. He goes on a trip, I get murdered. Just goes to show how unfair life can be.”
The Studebaker whizzed along, racing northeast towards the outskirts of the city. As the distance between the car and the heart of the City grew, the lanes dropped off, one by one, the buildings became squatter and grayer, and the number of Bucky Brews, a chain of ubiquitous coffee shops saturating the City, thinned out dramatically. The wind picked up, rocking the aerodynamic-in-marketing-brochures-only Studebaker. Normally, Marlowe would have enjoyed the rolling motion, found it relaxing. But he was heading towards the Ministry of Policing, and there was nothing soothing about that.
With the wind came acid rain, pelting the car like a blizzard of ball bearings dropped from a cargo plane. When he bought the Studebaker, the dealership had convinced him to buy a Teflar coating to protect the paint from the polluted rain water. Every time it rained on the car, Marlowe was reminded of that expensive waste of scrip. The cracked and peeling Teflar coating now actually trapped the acid rain, sandwiching the corrosive liquid directly against the paint. Well, not so much paint now as primer and, in spots, bare metal. Fortunately, aside from the eyeball on the hood, the car was painted rust red anyway, and from twenty meters away, while the car was moving at twenty kilometers per hour, it didn’t look half bad.
The business complexes thinned out, intermingled briefly with the industrial warehouses, and then abandoned the warehouses to their own devices. The space between buildings grew with each passing kilometer, revealing flat plains of yellowed grass and mud. The outskirts were approaching, and soon Marlowe would be matching wits with Obedere again.
The Ministry of Policing building was situated out in the middle of nowhere, with no buildings around to compete with it and easily defended, wide-open plains surrounding it. The first overt sign he was getting closer was the Great Barrier, a three hundred meter tall giant ring of hardened ceramic and concrete encircling the complex. The road ran straight up to the ring, and then stopped. Only magnetic propulsion systems and airborne flitters could proceed beyond this point. As a defense against ground traffic, this was an added feature. The magnetic conduit under the road continued up just under the surface of the barrier, and Marlowe had to check in to make sure the Ministry of Policing Traffic Controller maintained magnetic resonance. The Traffic Controller generated a cancellation field in the steel running up the steep slope of the barrier, effectively stopping all vehicles on the ground. With the proper clearance, a driver could have this magnetic cancellation field inverted, allowing the car to climb the side of the barrier, albeit very, very slowly, given the angle.
Marlowe transmitted his clearance, which would also ensure that Obedere was informed of his imminent arrival. The code was acknowledged and accepted, and Marlowe leaned back in his seat as the car reached the edge of the barrier and started up. The slope was gentle at first, about ten degrees, but grew steadily steeper until peaking out at seventy degrees. The inexorable tug of gravity pulled Marlowe into the back of his seat as he stared at the sky, and then shifted as they crested the barrier. The ‘Service Magnetron’ light in the dash that had been flickering as they traversed the slope went dark as the car returned to a normal, parallel-to-the-ground orientation. This sort of travel was very hard on the Studebaker.
The other side of the Great Barrier had a much gentler downward slope. This allowed police ground traffic on the inside to move quickly to any point on the barrier where an unauthorized intruder was attempting to gain entry. Not that they’d had anyone attempt such a suicidal endeavor in recent memory. But there was a saying in the City. “Coups happen.”
Crossing the Great Barrier meant they only had another twenty kilometers to go before reaching the complex proper. But even at this distance, Marlowe involuntarily groaned with terror as the obsidian pyramid appeared on the horizon. Thirty stories tall (and at least twice as deep), the black marble building stretched up into the sky like an inverted cone of death. Tiny elevators moved up and down along the outside slopes, and at the entrance, a set of stairs ran up to the pinnacle. Not that anyone ever used the stairs. Well, occasionally prisoners were pushed down them, but no one ever used them in the other direction.
Jet black, unmarked police flitters with dark opaque windows zipped in and out of the complex, while in the parking lot that encircled the building like a calm, midnight sea of asphalt, a fleet of more waited to be boarded by jet black armor-clad drivers with jet black guns and jet black stun batons. Marlowe felt a rush of fear as the car continued closer. His hair stood on end, and his hands shook. Memories of his last ‘visit’ to the Ministry left the taste of bile in his mouth. The sudden spike in stress levels sent the nano probes surging out of their storage sack to the far corners of Marlowe’s circulatory system, sowing a freshly manufactured cocktail of Prozium, Valzac, and Nicodeine. It helped. Marlowe’s shaking stopped, and his sense of certain death faded into a mere apprehension of doom. But the hair stayed at attention.
A couple of flitters soared overhead as Marlowe approached the entrance to the visitor’s lot. They hung above him briefly as he turned into the lot, and the Studebaker’s passive sensors detected their probes sweeping over the car. It was a rare sight indeed for an unescorted visitor to arrive at the Ministry of Policing.
The complex’s security system overrode the Studebaker’s controls as soon as he crossed through the first perimeter fence. While Marlowe had never felt uncomfortable letting the car drive itself, he felt a distinct discomfort at having the Ministry of Policing behind the wheel. Still, there was nothing he could do. The security system guided the car to a dark, covered entrance not visible from the road. Marlowe climbed out when the door popped open and after a moment’s hesitation, headed towards the entry.
In the shadows of the entrance, something moved. Something large, something ominous. Marlowe kicked on the low light filter and found himself staring down the infrared-haloed form of the Chief Minister of Policing. Obedere. His past and present nemesis. CMP Obedere had a dark, malevolent glare emanating from deeply sunken eyes, the filter-enhanced green infrared reflections from his retinas only adding to the demonic aura that clung to him like stink to a bloated, overripe peach. Well, non-GM peach, since the genetically modified ones never spoiled.
Obedere was bald, the soft fuzzy pink flesh of his head bunching up in fatty layers that cascaded down to his cheeks, where they sagged into puffy jowls that swallowed up his neck. Beady eyes set into a sagging, rotting peach festering on the fruit cart of his shoulders. He wore the standard obsidian black City Constable’s uniform, but on the banded collar that rode up against his chin, jowls, and ears rested a small gold pin of a hammer pounded into an anvil, indicating his rank as Chief Minister of Policing.
Marlowe remembered the last time he was here. The BondoRestraints holding his hands together, the shock sticks prodding him forward into the darkness, Obedere grinning gleefully. Ministry of Policing Inquisitors had held him in a small room at first, glued to a Truth-Be-Told Table, asking him questions he couldn’t answer, urging him to confess to something he hadn’t done and knew nothing about. After hours of intense, violent questioning, he’d been willing to confess to anything, but the Truth-Be-Told Table prevented him from lying. Probably Obedere had expected such an outcome and had relished the irony. But that particular memory wasn’t what haunted Marlowe now as he stood staring once again at Obedere in that dark doorway.
The Inquisitors had stopped asking questions. They peeled him off the Truth-Be-Told Table, leaving a thick layer
of his skin behind, and dragged him into the next circle of Hell. Down halls, stairs, and into dimly lit elevators. Until they reached the theater. The operating theater. All the way there, Obedere had walked alongside him, a spring of anticipation in his step and a grin of gleeful mirth splashed across his face. When they arrived at the theater, Obedere slipped off, chuckling, as the medical techs strapped Marlowe to a gurney, legs together, arms spread apart.
Technicians gowned in black smocks with black face masks and caps covering most of their heads crowded over him like a gaggle of grim reaper interns. They remained silent, only their eyes visible, none looking directly at Marlowe. And then, for a moment, he was alone, naked and cold but too spent to shiver, the icy metal steadily sucking the heat out of his body. Obedere reappeared above him, taking a seat in the observation lounge and languidly watching the detective through the glass ceiling.
“Are you comfortable, Gervase?”
Marlowe had still been Gervase Fen at that point.
“You are about to become part of a most important project. I want you to know this so you won’t feel your suffering is in vain. Don’t worry, no questions. No more questions. We don’t need your answers any more. We know all we need to know about that particular crime. A convincing confession with the appropriate details has been manufactured despite your lack of…cooperation. So concern yourself no more on that particular matter. Besides, this is much more important. What you are about to embark upon is a scientific endeavor. A pet project of mine. You will help us determine nothing less than the biological origins of sedition!”
Marlowe hadn’t fathomed exactly what was coming next. He remembered the innocent confusion those words had sparked, the hope that maybe he wouldn’t die.
“After this latest attempt on the Governor’s life, he has authorized a study I have been advocating for years. We are taking a sampling of the criminals guilty of sedition and treason, and studying and comparing them to see if there are any physical or genetic commonalities. Imagine, if we could find that! We could selectively breed out all rebellion and civic mischief, or design a retro-virus that removes the offending genetics from the human genome. Peace, tranquility, and obedience, now and forever!
“Now I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, planning exactly what to look for and how to get it. Alas, you will be the first participant of the study, so we may take a misstep here or there as we fine-tune the methodology. But rest assured, your participation will only pave the way for future members of the study to have a…smoother experience.”
Icy fear had begun to seep into Marlowe as he listened, but it was nothing compared to the plummet into abject, helpless terror that the next words brought.
“We will be taking blood and tissue samples. We will be removing organs for study. We will dissect your brain to look for abnormalities. We will begin now.”
Bright lights temporarily blinded Marlowe and the dark silhouettes of surgeons crowded over him.
“We’ve decided, in the initial draft of the protocol, that sedatives and anesthetics may cloud the results. I hope you don’t mind.”
Something cold and smooth was placed against his abdomen. A shock jolted through him, not entirely painful, but certainly not pleasant.
“And we can’t have your nano probes interfering, trying to undo our work. That would only slow things down. The shock you just received has neutralized them. Gervase, though you may not enjoy this, remember that science and future generations salute you.”
After awhile, they tired of his screams and piercing shrieks, so they gagged him. Then all Marlowe could do was whimper. And with his head strapped in place, all he see was Obedere’s shadowy form above him, a cherubic angel of death.
He didn’t remember much of the rest. Subsequent therapy had succeeded in blocking his ability to remember those last horrible moments before the call came in, the order to stop, the exposure of the true culprit. He knew Madeline had been responsible for that. Madeline, Obedere’s personal assistant who had always had a soft spot, for some reason, for Marlowe. Madeline, who had disappeared during Marlowe’s recovery. He wanted to believe she’d escaped the City, had found freedom and peace in another place, but knew better.
The soothing warmth of AnxietyAway began its characteristic flow through Marlowe’s limbs. The intensity of the memories had triggered their release, and while Marlowe didn’t like the thought of having a crutch like that, he had to admit it allowed him to step back and view the world around him more calmly and with greater focus. He forced himself back into the present.
Marlowe noted, as he always did when he saw Obedere, that the uniform itself was a marvel of engineering, considering the great girth it endeavored to encase. All constables wore a plasma-resistant, reactive armor fabric uniform, and according to a City tailor Marlowe had struck up a conversation with at a bar, it was a very difficult material to work with. Considering the great swathes involved, it must have required a superhuman effort to make Obedere’s. But then, Obedere inspired superhuman effort once he made clear the consequence of failure.
There was something new this time. It took Marlowe a moment to pick out just what it was, but when he did he had to choke back a laugh. The happy drugs were working a little too well now. He could just make out an exo-skeleton, matte black and very discreet, wrapped snugly around Obedere’s bulk. Marlowe guessed the Chief Constable’s body could no longer battle gravity unassisted. It was only a matter of time before he ended up in levitation boots.
Obedere stepped mechanically out of the shadows. “Ah, Marlowe, my old friend. It’s so nice to see you again. I’ve missed having you as my…guest.”
His voice was shrill and warbled at first, but then dropped into a deep baritone. Marlowe fought back a chuckle. Obedere was using vocal chord enhancers, and they obviously weren’t fully warmed up.
“Hello, CMP Obedere.” Marlowe gagged as the faint odor of formaldehyde wafted over him. Obviously Obedere had been dabbling in his rumored favorite hobby before this business began. “I understand you have a prisoner for me to pick up.”
“Pick up? I’m afraid I don’t have any orders to transfer the prisoner to you.”
“If you’re reluctant, we can always call my brother for clarification.”
Obedere frowned with distaste. “Oh, the less we involve him the better. You can have her, for now. But until her case is…resolved, well, she’ll be your responsibility. If anything should happen that prevents justice from being served in her case, such as escape, you will be held accountable.”
“Of course. I expect nothing less of you.”
Obedere eyed Marlowe, suspicious he’d just been somehow slighted. “Will you be heading out to the crash site, old friend?”
“In due course. You’ve been there?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“Lots of fire. A big hole in the ground. Smoke. Civic Defense Stormtroopers scrambling across the landscape, weapons drawn, death in their eyes. Like a tasty appetizer from Hell, a delicious sample of things to come.” A smile crept onto Obedere’s face. It scared Marlowe. “Come, my old friend. Let’s introduce you to the…hehehe…spacewoman.”
Marlowe followed the corpulent Chief constable into the darkness. Only his low light filter prevented him from tripping over the stone knobs set into the ground at random intervals. Set there, no doubt, to slow down anyone trying to storm the building, should such an unlikely event ever occur. The dark passage ran about ten meters, the hard marble floor clicking with each step of Obedere’s exo-skeleton. Marlowe almost felt sorry for the man as he struggled in obvious pain with each step. But then he remembered the torture he’d endured at Obedere’s hands during his last visit. The fat bastard couldn’t suffer enough.
They reached a dead end, a solid slab of marble that suddenly recessed into the wall and slid back. Beyond was a blindingly bright hallway. Marlowe stifled a cry of pain as his low light filter overloaded and burned a white rectangle of ligh
t onto his retina.
“Oh, sorry, old friend. I should have warned you to turn off the low light filter. My apologies.”
“That’s alright. It auto compensated,” lied Marlowe.
“Speaking of sorry,” continued Obedere as he led Marlowe down the hall, “I feel I should apologize again for the misunderstanding of your last visit. A most unfortunate turn of events. We’re still looking for the individual responsible for framing you.”
Yeah, thought Marlowe. I’m still looking, too. I’m looking right at him. “I understand. You had no choice, given the circumstances.”
“Yes, but I want you to know,” and at this point Obedere stopped, spun around with a groan, and gripped Marlowe by the shoulders, “when I learned the truth, I felt absolutely terrible.” He tried to look sincere, but the mirth in his eyes ruined the effect.
“Yeah, well the whole experience left me feeling awful too.”
“Everything has grown back?”
“Mostly.”
“Thank goodness for modern medical science. There were times when the loss of a digit or limb was permanent.”
“Yeah, lucky me.” Marlowe had spent a month in black market surgery shops removing all the bugs and implants embedded into the bits and pieces the Ministry of Policing had ‘generously’ reattached after their little misunderstanding.
“Come, come, old friend, we’re going to a very special elevator. It’s one of the few I’m sure you haven’t been in. It’s for our VIP guests.”
A door slid open in the wall next to them, revealing a cargo elevator with polished steel walls. A hover chair was floating inside.
“Ah!” cried Obedere gleefully. “That’s where it got to!” He plopped into the chair, which crashed into the floor before the mag field compensated. “I swear, the thing has a mind of its own. Always wandering off, which can be particularly dangerous around here, as you know. If I didn’t know better, I might think it was hiding from me.” The chair rose back up, a chair-shaped groove in the floor of the elevator.
Marlowe and the Spacewoman Page 6
