Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

  Without looking at anyone in particular, Annah announced, "Well-bred ladies do not pry into another lady's affairs." Her voice had a stern edge I'd never heard before; I hadn't suspected her capable of it. Full of surprises, our Annah — I mentally kicked myself and resolved to stop underestimating her. She was, after all, an experienced teacher… and a teacher needs many different ways to speak to students.

  This particular way was effective. All along the corridor, doors closed immediately.

  Rosalind didn't answer our first knock. Annah knocked again, more sharply. "Rosalind dear, it's Professor Khan. Sorry to wake you, but could we see you a moment?"

  Not a sound from inside. No light through the peephole.

  "Of course," Annah murmured, "the poor girl might be afraid to open the door. It's the middle of the night; how does she know we aren't enemies trying to kidnap her?"

  "In that case," I said, "she may try to shoot us through the door."

  Annah met my gaze. Firearms were technically forbidden in the dorms, but parents often went to great lengths to make sure their children had an ample supply of concealed weapons. Especially parents like Elizabeth Tzekich.

  Quietly, Annah and I moved to either side of the doorway, out of the line of fire.

  Seconds passed. Annah knocked a third time. "Rosalind, please, we're worried about you. If you don't answer, we'll have to come in."

  Still no response. Annah clutched her pass key and gave me a look; I nodded. Staying off to one side, Annah slipped the key into the lock. The dead-bolt slid back with a solid thunk. Annah took a deep breath, then gave the door a light shove.

  Neither she nor I tried to peek around the door frame — just in case Rosalind really did have a shotgun or some other violent reception for unwelcome visitors. Three seconds later, I knew we didn't have to look… because a terrible smell of meat and excrement oozed into my nostrils.

  I hadn't seen death all that often — I wasn't a surgeon, soldier, or in any other profession that regularly produced cadavers — but I came from a family where generations lived and died together in the same house.

  When I was very young, I clutched my mother's leg as she and my great-grandfather washed the wrinkled skin of his just-dead wife, carefully preparing the old woman for burial. Several years later, that same great-grandfather died right in front of me; he was withering away from a cancerous mass in his belly, and toward the end, everyone in the house took turns reading him the Koran, around the clock, twenty-four hours a day. (For some, it was the first time we'd read the Book: Great-Granddad was the only genuine Believer in our family. The generation after his had all become adamant atheists for reasons they never discussed, and those of us born later were brought up in bland secularity… idly curious about the old ways, but never to the point where we considered prostrating ourselves when the muezzin called.) I was waiting my turn to take over the reading from Aunt Rahel when the breath slipped out of the old man and the smell of his loosened bowels filled the room. (My aunt immediately turned to the Opening, Al-Fatiha, and read, "In the name of Most Merciful Compassionate God: Praise be to God, the Lord of all Being; All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, the Master of the day of judgment. Thee only do we worship and of thee do we beg assistance. Guide us in the straight path, the way of the blessed — not of those who have earned Your wrath or those who have wandered astray." Only then did she look up and say, "He's gone.") And there were other deaths through the years, great-uncles and elderly cousins, a maid who drank poison (no one knew why), a gateman stabbed by a thief, the thief himself brought down by guard dogs and shot in cold blood by my grandma Khadija, a peasant boy who'd climbed our wall and was found floating in the fish pond (probably chased there by the dogs)… perhaps two or three dozen dead in all. Not a lot of corpses by many people's standards, but enough that I recognized the smell of a room where life had vanished.

  Rosalind's room had that smell.

  I glanced across at Annah. Her expression showed that she too recognized the odor of death. Even the oil lamp in her hands seemed aware of the smell — the lamp's flame burned brighter, fed by the gases of putrefaction. Or perhaps I just imagined that.

  It's hard to describe how I felt at that moment — not calm, certainly, but neither was I falling apart. I'd already had my breakdown. And the smell from Rosalind's room wasn't a surprise… just the confirmation of something I'd suspected ever since I heard that harp.

  If I was worried about anything, it was Annah. Her hand had begun to tremble; the lamp rattled in her grip, enough to send our shadows veering across the wall. I reached out and took the light from her. "Do you need to sit down?"

  She didn't answer. Her other hand clutched the pass key so tightly, the metal must have dug into her palm. I took a step forward, opened my arms — intending to hold her the way she held me. But she shrank away. "No," Annah said. "No. Just… could you… you look. I'll be along. In a second."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. I'll be all right. Please go."

  I stared at her a moment longer — stupidly affronted she wouldn't let me wrap her in my arms. But her body was clenched so tightly she looked like she might scream if I moved any closer. "All right," I said, "I'll go see what's happened. Call if you need me."

  She gave the slightest hint of a nod. Not even looking in my direction.

  With lamp in hand, I moved into the room. My first impression was how clean it looked — nothing strewn on the floor, no piles of books in the corner, not a single paper out on the desk. In my own section of the dorm, students kept their rooms more cluttered… even the boys who were taunted for being fastidious. Perhaps the difference was that my boys lived in their rooms; Rosalind Tzekich had simply been passing through. Beneath the window stood two modest carrying cases, as if the girl was packed and ready to go the instant her mother commanded. I could almost believe Rosalind locked her meager belongings in those cases every night, so there'd be no delay if she had to flee.

  But now she was going nowhere.

  Rosalind lay on her back in the bed: her plump body naked and spreadeagled, the sheets and blankets thrown open. I caught myself thinking, She looks so cold — splayed pale and exposed, as if she should be shivering in the dark chill. But she wasn't.

  I crossed the room quickly, intending to cover the girl's corpse. Not just because she looked cold — it felt indecent for me to be seeing her breasts and bare pelvis, her lifeless legs spread obscenely wide. An unforgivable desecration. My hand was reaching for the blankets, my eyes locked on the girl's face to avoid looking at any other part of her…

  …when I saw a gooey white nodule ooze from her left nostril.

  My hand froze. I clenched my fingers. Drew the hand back without touching anything. Held the lamp closer to Rosalind's face.

  The nodule reminded me of cottage cheese: a soft curdy nugget sodden with creamy white fluid. The same sort of fluid had run from her other nostril too — it glistened wetly on her upper lip. As I watched, another soft curd forced its way from her nose, like an insect egg being laid. The nugget balanced stickily for a moment, then slid off down her cheek. It left a damp trail on the girl's skin.

  I retreated a step. Forced myself to be clinical as I ran my gaze over the naked corpse. No obvious cause of death: no bleeding, no bruises, no marks on the throat. There might be some wound I couldn't see, a stab or bullethole in her back, but I wasn't going to turn her over to check. I had the sudden suspicion it would be suicide to touch anything in this room. Certainly not poor Rosalind's body.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out one of the pencils I always carried with me. Back to the girl's face, holding the light close. I teased the point of the pencil between the girl's lips and levered it between her teeth. The jaw was slack — no rigor mortis yet. When this was over, I'd have to check my reference books to see how soon after death the rigor sets in; that could tell me how recently Rosalind had died. In the meantime, I worked the pencil until I'd pried open her jaw.

  The
dead girl's mouth was half full of curds. Cottage cheese goo. A mass of it clogged her throat, and the mass was growing. I could see it expand, inching up the girl's tongue. (The tongue was swollen a dark ugly red.) In a few minutes, the white infestation would spill out and slop down her chin.

  I didn't want to be here when that happened. The sight would make me sick.

  But there was one other thing to check before I got out of the room: the girl's eyes. Their surface had begun to flatten — internal fluids seeping away, unable to keep enough pressure for normal roundness — but it was easy to see tiny red dots in the whites. Pinpricks of blood I knew were called ocular petechiae. Typically seen in cases of smothering and strangulation. As the dying body struggles for air, as the eyes bulge wide, small blood vessels pop under the strain. The results were those scarlet specks.

  Whatever the white substance was in her mouth and nose, Rosalind Tzekich had choked to death on it. Silently. Unable to scream.

  The end of my pencil was damp with the stuff. I threw the pencil down and kicked it under the bed.

  "Some sort of disease?"

  Annah had come in quietly. Her face was composed into careful blankness — no tears, no expression. She leaned over Rosalind and pulled lightly on my hand to bring the lamp closer. Annah's fingers felt cold where they touched me. "I've heard diphtheria produces a growth in your throat. Something that suffocates you."

  "This isn't diphtheria," I said. "Not a natural strain anyway. Diphtheria doesn't grow so rampantly it oozes out your nose. Besides, a normal disease takes time to develop. Fever. Pain. Days of being sick. Rosalind was in my math class this afternoon and she looked fine."

  "Yes." Annah stared down at the dead girl. "I sat with her at dinner. We talked about music — a few simple pieces by Bach she might be ready to play. She had a healthy appetite; a little distracted but in quite a good mood."

  Annah reached out as if she were going to touch the girl: pat her cheek, straighten her hair. I grabbed Annah's hand and pulled it back… maybe too roughly, but this was no time for delicacy. "Don't touch," I said. "We should get out of here fast. Before we catch something."

  "You said it wasn't a disease."

  "I said it wasn't a natural disease. Let's go."

  I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to nudge her toward the door. Annah's body had gone rigid, eyes still on Rosalind. "You think it's sorcery?"

  "Sorcery is extraterrestrial science; I think this stuff is homegrown. A plague made by OldTech bioengineers: very human, very deadly. Annah, please, let's leave."

  I took her hand in mine. This time, she let herself be led away. I closed the door behind us and made sure she locked it.

  Back to Annah's room. It wasn't until we got there that I realized I was still holding her hand; when I tried to let go, she kept a solid grip. "What is it?" she asked, refusing to release me.

  "What is what?"

  "Inside Rosalind. What was coming out of her nose?" When I didn't answer right away, she squeezed my fingers impatiently. "You think you know, don't you? Something OldTech. Tell me."

  I sighed. "When OldTech civilization began its breakdown, certain governments thought there'd be war. A big war. They couldn't believe everything would just fall apart quietly — if their world was ending, there had to be an apocalypse. Nothing else would give closure. Never mind that there was no reason for anyone to fight: nothing to fight over, no enemy you could shoot to fix the world's problems. People thought there'd be war. So military scientists worked day and night to develop weapons worthy of Armageddon. Including bioweapons: ultra-lethal diseases; virulent molds and fungi; deadly internal parasites."

  Annah looked as if she didn't believe me. "It's true," I said. "They created plagues. Some designed to stay latent a long time until they'd infected huge chunks of the populace; others intended to be deadly fast. The slow ones were for terrorism, the fast for actual war: spread quick-kill microbes on your enemy's army and within hours there'd be no one to fight you. Ideally, they wanted the effects of the disease to be horrifyingly repugnant… demoralizing for those who didn't actually catch the bug."

  "And you think Rosalind died from a quick-kill germ?"

  "You said she was perfectly healthy a few hours ago. Natural throat infections don't develop that fast."

  Silence. For the first time, Annah seemed to realize she was holding my hand; she looked down, saw her fingers clasping mine, and let go. Flustered, she turned away. Her voice sounded muffled as she said, "Who did it? Enemies of the girl's mother?"

  "Most likely. Some of the Ring's rivals go back centuries: the Omerta… the Sons of the Black Czar… the Third Hand of Allah… they all originated in OldTech times. Any of those groups could have pilfered bacteria from a germ warfare lab while OldTech civilization was crumbling. Toward the end, military security was practically nonexistent. You must have heard about that group who stole an H-bomb and tried to blow up London."

  "But they were stopped by the Spark Lords," Annah said. "That was the first time the Lords ever made an appearance. Then Spark Royal began the big purge — getting rid of the bombs, poison gas, everything. They eradicated mass weapons; that's one reason the Sparks claim they have a right to rule."

  I shrugged. "There's a difference between finding huge nuclear missiles stuck in stationary silos and finding a single Petri dish containing a super-diphtheria. It's possible someone kept a germ culture alive all these years without Spark Royal knowing. Only using the germs for very special executions."

  Annah shuddered. "I wish I didn't believe you — I wish I thought people couldn't be vicious enough to kill an innocent girl just to hurt her mother. But I know all too well…" She stopped herself, lowered her eyes, then crossed the floor and dropped into her chair. "It wouldn't have been hard to plant something in Rosalind's room. Probably tonight while we were at dinner; by then, most of the house staff had left for the weekend, so someone could sneak in without being seen."

  "Right," I said. "An assassin would just have to rub some germs on the girl's toothbrush. The rim of her water glass. Any food she kept in the room. No difficulty at all; Feliss has never been a high-security institution."

  "I used to think that was one of its charms." Annah let her head fall back against the chair. "Are we infected too?"

  "Neither of us touched anything, and we didn't stay long in the room. We should be safe."

  "We didn't inhale it from the air?"

  I shook my head. "OldTech scientists weren't totally deranged! — they didn't want to release something so impossible to contain that it might destroy the human race. An airborne germ would just be too risky; better to have a short-lived aerosol, or something thick and creamy that could be poured down on enemies like rain."

  "The white stuff in Rosalind's nose."

  I nodded. Now was not the time to mention that even a curds-and-cream disease was insanely dangerous. Fluids had a way of sinking into the water table… and water flowed into the sea. Furthermore, once you'd visited a disease on your enemies, those enemies could grow cultures of the same germ from infected cadavers. Next thing you knew, saboteurs would be dumping the stuff on you. OldTech scientists devoted a lot of ingenuity toward getting around that basic dilemma — making germs that couldn't live outside the human body, and germs that stopped reproducing within a few hours so they couldn't spread or be cultivated — but nothing was ever foolproof. Which is why (God is merciful) no OldTech nation ever attempted a large-scale deployment of bioweapons.

  "There's another reason," I said, "why I doubt the disease is too virulent. If rivals of the Ring of Knives started an epidemic, the Sparks would declare total war. One hundred percent annihilation of those responsible for the plague — the killers, whoever hired them, all known associates, all associates of the associates, the seamstress who hemmed their trousers, and the boy who delivered their coal. The Spark Lords are ruthless, and when they call themselves Protectors of Humanity they mean it. Whatever criminal clan killed poor Rosalind, I can
't imagine they're crazy enough to antagonize the Sparks over a sixteen-year-old girl."

  Annah lifted her head, large brown eyes looking up at me. "You underestimate the craziness of criminals." She spoke in a low voice. "There are people who think they're so clever they can get away with anything, even if it's outwitting the Sparks… and others who don't care if they get caught, as long as they first have the pleasure of causing pain… and even a few who believe revenge is more important than life itself — an absolute necessity, a religious imperative, taking vengeance no matter the consequences to friends and family."

  I wanted to ask how she knew such things — quiet intense Annah — but I couldn't think how to phrase the question. She even waited for me to speak… but when I didn't, she just got out of her chair. "I'm going to wash my hands. I didn't touch anything, but I'm going to wash."

  She held out her hand to me. In retrospect, it was an odd thing to do if she thought she might have deadly microbes on her fingers; but at the time, her gesture seemed perfectly natural. I took the offered hand and we went into her small bathroom together.

  We washed for a long time. Without saying a word. Perhaps we weren't soaping off germs, but death itself. The smell of it. The cruelty. The sight of a dead sixteen-year-old lying bare, cold, and cooling because she happened to have the wrong mother.

  We washed and washed and washed. The more lye, the better.

  4: TOBACCO SKYROAD

  Annah checked her other girls. While she went from room to room making sleepy teenagers open their mouths and say, "Ahh!", I stuffed towels into the crack under Rosalind's door. However much I believed no microbes would ooze out, it was foolish to take chances. Eventually we'd have to incinerate Rosalind's entire room, preferably with the Caryatid supervising the flames… but that had to wait. If this was an OldTech bioweapon, we couldn't destroy the evidence until the Spark Lords had examined it.