Miranda's Demons

by Ian Miller

  Holy mother of Christ! A gun. Fatso's holding back. Reiner still hasn't a clue. Move, fatso! His legs, Gotta get them! Dive! Classy cloth! Didn't know what hit him! Shit!

  "Keep down, sir!" Gun! Where's my gun. Shit! There's one coming straight at us! Got it! Safety off! Barrel up. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Holy shit, he's still coming!

  A shape blurred towards him, and he felt the heavy load fall on him. A warm liquid trickled down his cheek. A bit sticky! Blood! Oh God!

  * * *

  Commissioner Garrett waited for almost twenty minutes, then almost as she had expected, Halas and Reiner emerged. She watched with approval as Murphy followed slowly behind them. Suddenly Murphy dived forward and grabbed Reiner around the legs. Someone with a pistol appeared from nowhere and ran towards them, then fell to Murphy's fire. Bullets tore into the masonry of the building, and then the street erupted in a hail of gunfire. Gas bombs from small bazooka-like weapons exploded from within the three cars, and men emerged, to drop their weapons on the street and fall to the ground, fully anaesthetized. When the firing began, Halas had stepped back from Reiner, as if he knew he was not the target. In that he was wrong. As he stepped back, he was flung back against the wall, his chest virtually torn apart. His face showed an expression not of fear, but merely of surprise.

  As Reiner regained his feet, armed guards poured from the MinCorp building to see the carnage on the streets. Members of the special weapons team had reached the first car, and suddenly realized who their targets were. Two turned their weapons towards Reiner, a move immediately countered by a squad of MinCorp men.

  "Hold it!" came a shrill cry. Elizabeth Garrett was standing in the open street, with a large recording device in front of her. "Let all here be clear on this. My name is Garrett, and I am the Federation Justice Commissioner. All actions on this street are now being recorded by automatic evidential surveillance equipment. Failure to carry out my direct commands will lead to automatic arrest. Any attempt to fire, or resist arrest, will lead to an automatic torment bounty. That means torment without trial, and whoever brings you in gets one third of the torment price, or one hundred thousand fecus if you happen to be dead. All weapons will be sheathed now!"

  There was a stunned silence, a period of almost ten seconds of inactivity, then the weapons were put on safety and returned to their cases.

  "Good!" Elizabeth called. "Now, the MinCorp guards will return to their building. The special weapons forces will disarm the prisoners, evidentially tab them, and take them to the central station. They are now under automatic surveillance; every word spoken to them or by them will be recorded, and may be used in evidence against any person. Any officer attempting to disrupt that surveillance, whether intentionally or accidentally, will be automatically arrested, so I would suggest you all take that extra care to ensure your job is carried out with one hundred and ten per cent efficiency. Accidents, equipment malfunctions, nothing like that will be tolerated. If you need doubled up equipment, get it now!"

  The Commissioner smiled slightly as she watched the police begin to carefully arrest their erstwhile comrades. She was aware the police force was corrupt, and that the loyalty to the job was at best questionable, but the automatic guilt by surveillance computer would ensure this job was done satisfactorily. Once condemned by computer, every time the guilty party stepped into the surveillance area of any other on-line computer, which meant at any store, bank, transport centre, or anywhere where ID was required, or even in areas protected by private security systems, alarms would sound, the amount of the bounty would be announced loudly, the screens would light up with the updated image, and any surveillance lights would automatically pinpoint the target. Of course it was possible to escape and evade the surveillance equipment, but not if you wished to use the facilities of the Federation. In effect, the escaper was condemned to self-imposed imprisonment, under conditions far more stringent than any of the twenty-first or most of the twentieth century prisons. That in itself was sufficient for the Federation.

  "I'm not sure whether I should thank you or not," Reiner said, as he walked towards Elizabeth.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?"

  "No," Elizabeth shook her head. "When I came here, all I wanted to do was to see you. When I first saw Halas, I got curious. Then when I saw the way he was behaving, I got suspicious, and once we identified these policemen in the cars, I decided to set this up. I know there was a risk to you, but if it was going to happen, stalling it would solve nothing."

  "Who ordered it?" Reiner grated.

  "Officially, we don't know," Elizabeth replied, "but we'll find out. The prisoners will all go through chemical deconditioning, and at the end of that, there won't be much we don't know about them. In fact, we'll know far more about them than they do themselves. However, I'm sure you could make an informed guess."

  "Munro?"

  "A number of the prisoners have files with reference to suspicious association with GenCorp," Elizabeth admitted.

  "I want that bastard."

  "We'll get him," Elizabeth replied, "but don't set off on your own. It'll only mess up our plans, and I may even have to come after you."

  "And you'd do that?"

  "I wouldn't have any choice. The stability of the Federation must be protected at all costs, and intercorporate war would wreck that stability."

  "Then when you go for him, I want you to let me come along."

  "Why should I do that?"

  "First, I can bring some men. Without wanting to be disparaging, I think your own moves out there show you can't trust your own forces."

  "Second?"

  "Your attempt must not be half-hearted. It's clear to me that unless Munro's stopped, I'm a dead man. I'm not going to lie down and die, and I'm not going to hope you can protect me."

  "Then perhaps you can come," Elizabeth said, "but you'll have to follow orders, especially if Defence is involved."

  "If I were you," Reiner said mysteriously, "I wouldn't count too heavily on Defence."

  "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  "You'll find that the Defence forces consist of soldiers who, on the whole, have most of their close relations in the corporations," Reiner shrugged. "They're transients, training for a future in the corporations."

  "Not all the soldiers are corporates."

  "All the American ones are, and it wouldn't do any good to send in Russians."

  "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "That a simple frontal attack with soldiers, or police, on Munro inside GenCorp will fail," Reiner shrugged. "That's why I want to go with you. If it's soldiers against the corporates, you've got no show. But if it reduces to us against Munro, now the story's different. It's not an attack upon the corporations themselves, but it's the weeding out of a particular malefactor. You'll have hell's own trouble finding people to take out GenCorp, but there'll be millions, including half of GenCorp itself, who might even queue up and pay for the right to have a go at Munro."

  "That's perverse!"

  "It's not what you do, but how you do it," Reiner said. "You can attack the person, but not the system. If you try to attack a corporation, it will be seen as an attack on the Balance, and against every person's lifestyle."

  "And you don't think that's perverse?"

  "In what way?"

  "Munro was prepared to sell the entire planet to an alien force, and everybody could become enslaved. Now I can't begin to imagine a bigger disruption of the Balance. And what happens? The Balance protects him."

  "Don't blame the system for your own deficiencies."

  "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  "If you stick to your own stated objective, you'll see that moving Munro is not hampered at all by the system. If you've got evidence that he's a traitor and you want to arrest him, nearly everybody will be behind you. It's only when, deliberately or otherwise, you try to sneak in a further agenda you run into trouble. And frankly, I say th
at's fine. If you're afraid to state what you're really trying to do, then the system should stop your doing it."

  "You might be right," Elizabeth said. "I'll let you know."

  Chapter 9

  "So this is New York," Marisa mused. She was looking out from her hotel window across the East River. To her right was the historic bridge, carefully preserved, but not used in the last hundred years. Across the river was the scenic skyline of old Manhattan, a scene that still brought millions of tourists to the row upon row of hotels, but which was insufficiently attractive to persuade the very same tourists to take the physical risk of actually crossing a bridge. "I've got to admit, I've never seen anything quite like it."

  "Did you go sightseeing?" Harry asked.

  "Wouldn't you like to know," Marisa giggled slightly.

  "From that I assume you went out with someone," Harry said with an air of indifference.

  "Almost right," Marisa teased. "Guess who?"

  "A football star?"

  "Troy Munro."

  "Well, as they used to say, stone the crows!" Harry said, his face showing almost no expression.

  "You're a bit jealous, aren't you?" Marisa said with a flirting gesture.

  "Nah! Not me," came the broad reply. "You're not silly enough to take up with him."

  "He invited me to his place," Marisa persisted.

  "For quiet conversation, I suppose."

  "I'd guess he had a bit more in mind than that. He thinks I'm very sexy!"

  "He's not wrong," Harry replied. "What happened?"

  "Wouldn't you like to know?"

  "Well, if you don't want to tell me, don't."

  "You would like to know, though, wouldn't you?" Marisa said as she edged towards him. "Admit it!"

  "I suppose so," Harry shrugged, "otherwise I wouldn't have asked."

  "Of course," Marisa replied. "Well, I'll tell you. We talked a little, then I left. Does that make you feel happier?"

  "I knew," Harry shrugged.

  "You knew?" Marisa snorted. "How? You didn't have me followed?"

  "Actually, I was keeping an eye on Troy," Harry admitted.

  "What for?"

  "Because the man's a known spy," Harry replied with a grin. "I just thought someone ought to do something about him."

  "I thought that was supposed to be Elizabeth Garrett's domain," Marisa noted. "I thought she had given fairly strong instructions that nobody else was supposed to get involved."

  "True, but Natasha –"

  "So we're on first names again with –"

  "Cut it out!" Harry snorted. "Commissioner Kotchetkova's such a mouthful. Anyway, I was asked to do this little investigation."

  "And what did you find?"

  "Not much," Harry admitted.

  "I supposed you expected our super spy to leave a diary full of his misdeeds lying about on the coffee table."

  "Not exactly. I was interested in his house, though. I snuck in the front door after you two, and while you were fencing in the front lounge, with, I might add, the two guards watching every move on the monitors and having bets on what was going to happen next, I got deeper into the house. You wouldn't believe this, but underneath he has this tunnel system going quite deeply into the rock, and they lead down to a couple of small rooms with really massive doors. They could almost be designed as prisons."

  "Strange man," Marisa shrugged. "Still, he isn't all bad."

  "Meaning?"

  "He sent me this box of chocolates," Marisa said. "I haven't actually opened them yet. Why don't we have one?" She took a box off the coffee table, and quickly began peeling off the wrapping.

  "Hold it!" Harry said sharply.

  "What's wrong?"

  "He's got no reason to send you chocolates."

  "He might think so," Marisa smiled.

  "He might also send a bomb," Harry said. "Look what happened to the Commissioner?"

  "You think this is a bomb? I just don't believe it!"

  "Won't hurt to open it carefully, though," Harry said. He took out a sharp knife, and carefully cut away one end of the box, He ruffled through the paper, and found chocolate.

  "There!" Marisa said in exasperation. "Satisfied!" She took the lid from the box, and reached for one at the far end. Harry watched her intensely.

  "Wait!"

  "What now?"

  "That your favourite?"

  "Yes. Why? Do you want it?"

  "No, but I notice there's only one of them."

  "I know," Marisa said sadly. "This looks like a bad box."

  "Maybe," Harry replied. "but perhaps it's a tampered box."

  "A what?"

  "There's two of everything else," Harry remarked, "and this time there's one of your favourite, and look at this. There's only one of these in the corresponding place at the other end, and it doesn't look as if it even belongs."

  "What on earth are you getting at?"

  "Suppose that one was poisoned? One of your favourites means you'd be bound to eat it. If it was the only one poisoned, nobody would ever suspect the box."

  "Harry, that's ridiculous! Who'd want to do that?"

  "The guy who sent you the box!"

  "Harry, this jealousy's getting just a little over the edge. You just want me to throw away this chocolate, just because Troy gave it to me?"

  "No, but I'd like to check it out."

  "You're not going to eat it?" came the incredulous reply.

  "No, and if it's all right, you can eat it, and I'll buy you more."

  "And how, pray tell, are you going to work this out?"

  "I'll ask Marcellus," Harry grinned. "He'll know."

  "I grant he'd be able to tell, but knowing him, I'd guess he'd say that was interfering with human affairs."

  "We'll get around that," Harry assured her. "Come on."

  "I think this is stupid," Marisa shrugged, "but it'll be amusing to see you try to put one over Marcellus."

  The result was not quite what either expected. Marcellus was reclining in a chair in a room with a similar view, and he listened carefully to Harry's story about how he and Marisa had been arguing over whether Marcellus had the skill to be able to analyse the human physiology sufficiently well to detect poisons to a human.

  "I can't answer your question," Marcellus replied impishly. "It would be wrong, and against the Ulsian code, to disclose my abilities on such a frivolous exercise. Of course, had there been any chance that the poison could be real, and a threat, then the matter might be different."

  Marisa glanced at the stunned expression on Harry's face, then burst into a fit of giggling.

  "Excuse me," Marcellus said, turning towards Marisa, "I do not understand. I was not trying to be funny. Would you mind explaining what you see as funny?"

  "Why?" Marisa asked as she continued to giggle.

  "I am a Companion," Marcellus replied simply. "I have to amuse Gaius. I would appreciate a better understanding."

  "Test this chocolate, and I'll explain," Harry interposed.

  "Oh, very well," Marcellus said, almost tetchilly. "Since you insist, you can have a full analysis. The outside," he said, as he placed his hands around it, to allow the chocolate to glow a strange pink, "is what you call chocolate. Apart from sugar and fat, both of which you seem to like, there are one or two benefits, like traces of copper which you humans don't seem to get enough of these days, and which, in Gaius' days, they got too much of, along with lead. Anyway, the centre, the bit you think I can't tell you about, is . . ." He paused, and looked at Harry. "You were serious?"

  "Yes, I was," Harry said simply.

  "Well, what's in it?" Marisa asked. "Hurry up! I want . . . Hold it. You mean I don't . . ?"

  "You don't," Marcellus replied. "In this there is a small piece of nut. Inside this piece of nut there is something I think you call botulism. Whoever ate this would die, relatively quickly, and rather painfully."

  "And the box would never be suspected," Harry said, "because that type of food poisoning never comes
in chocolates. Marisa! Where are you off to?"

  Marisa had begun to walk towards the door. She paused, then turned, her eyes narrow, her face cold. "Marcellus, thank you, but please excuse me. There's something I have to do."

  "Wait!" Harry called, and reached out to touch her hand.

  "Please do not try to stop me," came the ice-cold voice.

  "Then at least let me come with you."

  "This is not your fight."

  "The hell it isn't," Harry flared, and grasped her arm. "Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't mean a thing of what you've been saying to me these last few weeks!"

  "Of course I meant it, but –"

  "Then try and stop me coming with you!"

  "I suppose this is the wrong time to ask you to honour your side of the deal?" Marcellus interposed

  "Later," Harry said. "Suddenly, nothing much is funny any longer."

  "I suppose I understand," Marcellus replied. "Be careful."

  Chapter 10

  Gaius groaned inwardly as the electric car pulled up in front of the large white-walled mansion. Protocol, this wretched driver had said. Before the great ceremony at the Federation Centre, it was necessary to visit the private retreat of the city mayor. So private, the address was not even listed. What nonsense! It might not be listed, but a house like this was hardly likely to be unnoticed. As he stepped from the car, his worst fears were realized. Someone was hiding in the bushes over to the left. From what he understood of this civilization, it would be someone from the independent news media, trying to get some morsels to embarrass NewsCorp. Well, why not! If his presence constituted news, the least he could do was to give them that morsel. He threw back the cowl of his trefune as he stepped forward.

  This predilection for ceremony seemed to be getting worse. Before . . . a few years ago, or two thousand years . . . how could you tell? Then, for the rich, ceremony was important. It was a way of filling the day, and it was a way of uniting the people. Now, it was simply ego. Or was it always? This was a case in point. Why visit the mayor here before the major ceremony? Because there, the mayor would be well down the line of importance, so to satisfy all the little whims and egos, he had to come out here, dressed like this. Something special was wanted. He had offered the toga, but this had been declined. They wanted him dressed in authentic Ulsian attire. Of course the trefune was not without disadvantage; he could, if he wished, keep his face completely hidden. There remained the question as to whether they wished that, or whether he wished it. As for authentic, they had no idea how Ulsians behaved. All they knew was that they had seen the message to Earth, and they had seen an image of Gelemt. As for authenticity, no Ulsian would wear this colour. His had been made in the purple as a tribute to his great victory; the purple was intended as the greatest possible tribute in his own culture.