by Dan Abnett
Try making a complete taxonomy, and tell me that matters, Drusher thought. Try doing that for seven years, and tell me it wasn’t hard work.
‘Perhaps you can tell me more about this investigation?’ said Drusher.
‘Isn’t that why you’re here? To tell me more about it?’
‘Well, I’ll need something to go on,’ said Drusher.
‘I think Deputy Garofar told you plenty.’
‘I just asked him, casually. He wasn’t really sharing classified information or anything–’
Eisenhorn paused and glanced at him.
‘In this situation, I decide what is classified, magos.’
Holy Throne, you’re an arsehole, thought Drusher. I get it. You’re tough as anything, and years of privileged authority have gone to your head. You’re not impressing me at all with this ‘get a load of me’ act. Given the shape you’re in – mental, I’m guessing, as much as physical – you should have retired years ago.
‘Maybe, now you’re here, you can share some details?’ said Drusher curtly. ‘You want a magos biologis with specific expertise in the fauna of this planet.’
‘And you want passage off this world,’ replied Eisenhorn, ‘so that seems a reasonable basis for cooperation.’
‘So… I just do what you tell me to do?’ asked Drusher.
‘That would be adequate,’ Eisenhorn replied. He continued down the stairs.
Drusher pulled a face then hurried to catch up.
‘A reasonable basis for cooperation would be an exchange of data,’ he said. ‘I have questions.’
‘Proceed.’
‘Why have you taken this case away from local enforcement?’
‘That’s classified. Ordo business.’
‘Great. Have you always operated in such an unorthodox manner?’
‘Also essentially classified, but for the sake of this discussion, yes.’
‘Would it kill you to tell me more about this?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t mean literally,’ said Drusher.
‘I did,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Do you find that people who meet you end up regarding you as an arrogant son of a bitch?’ snapped Drusher.
Eisenhorn stopped. He did not look around.
‘I mean, come now, sir,’ said Drusher. ‘I’m trying to assist. Could you ease off with this hard-nosed act?’
‘It’s not an act, magos.’
‘Terra’s sake,’ Drusher sneered. ‘Did someone once hurt you really, really badly?’
Eisenhorn slowly turned around to look at Drusher.
Drusher took a step back.
‘The list of people in this galaxy who have not hurt me is very, very short, magos,’ he said.
Drusher adjusted his spectacles, pursed his lips and nodded.
‘You’ve asked some questions,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘My turn. What is the average bite radius of Ursa minora gershomi?’
‘Twelve centimetres.’
‘Majora?’
‘A range up to seventeen,’ said Drusher. ‘Nineteen for the arctic form. The cave ursid–’
‘Is an ultra-rare, prehistoric form,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘It has probably been extinct for some centuries. If it exists at all, it is restricted to the northernmost area of Outer Udar.’
‘Oh, it exists,’ said Drusher. ‘Or, at least, it did thirty years ago. I have examples and evidence in my taxonomy. And you’re wrong about its locale. There were still some in the Tartred Mountains.’
‘Are there any other apex predators on this planet whose kills would resemble those of the banded or grey ursids?’
‘Not to an expert. You can’t rule out introduced exotics, of course.’
‘You’ve seen that here?’
‘More than once. Marshal Macks will corroborate that.’
‘Why do you want to leave Gershom?’ asked Eisenhorn.
The question took Drusher aback slightly.
‘My… my work is complete,’ he replied. ‘It has been for years. A complete taxonomy. It’s simply a case that there is nothing left to be done. But, unfortunately, economic circumstances prevent–’
‘You could have retired,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘I hear that’s nice.’
‘I… sort of had, sir. Forced to by circumstances. I had a property down on the Bone Coast and – ahmm – worked with maritime ornithological efforts.’
‘You kept birds in a cage in a shack on the beach, magos,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Your retirement was enforced, by your own admission. If you had been able to leave Gershom, at any point in the last three decades, you would have done so.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because, somewhere, there were still things to be done, things to be found, secrets to be learned?’
‘Yes.’
‘So it’s fair to say that you would not have retired, given the choice, because there is still so much work to be done?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Drusher.
‘Work that you really want to do, and which you would prefer not to leave in the hands of others to finish?’
‘Yes,’ said Drusher. Rain beat against the walls.
‘I think we are beginning to find an accommodation, magos,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘You have let your light go out. I’m sorry for that. I have not let mine die yet. There is work still to be done on Gershom. Work I do not wish to leave to others. You can assist me, for it intersects with your area of specialty. And perhaps, in assisting, you may discover that there is still, and always will be, work of your type for you to commit your life to. As, I think, you always intended.’
‘Show me the bodies, sir,’ said Drusher.
‘You have a copy of your taxonomy?’
‘I do,’ said Drusher.
‘I ask that you show it to my savant, Audla Jaff. She will only need it for half an hour.’
He resumed walking. Drusher stood and watched him plod away painfully down the steps. A thought clarified.
‘Hey! Sir!’ Drusher called after him. ‘How did you know I was even thinking about issues of retirement?’
Eisenhorn did not look back or reply.
Drusher hurried down the stairs after him.
‘How did you know that?’ he called. ‘And how did you know I wanted to call you an idiot?’
In the cold main hall of Helter Fortress, the gathered team looked up as they heard raised voices.
Eisenhorn appeared, striding from the stair arch towards the basement doors.
‘Sir–’ Voriet began.
Eisenhorn held up a hand stiffly, not breaking stride.
‘I’m going to the cold store,’ he announced. ‘Harlon, Audla, Marshal Macks, with me, please.’
Drusher appeared, out of breath, red-faced, annoyed. He trotted after the inquisitor.
‘You’ve met him, then?’ asked Macks, grinning.
‘Shut up, Germaine,’ he replied.
SIX
The Cold Store
Nayl drew back the bolts on the door and opened the cold store. It had been a root cellar, Drusher decided, serving the fortress kitchens through the winter when there had still been a garrison to feed.
The walls were whitewashed. There were eighteen steel gurneys arranged in rows, green plastek sheeting bagging the bodies. More gurneys were folded and stacked along the wall as if other visitors were presently expected.
Monitoring equipment was set up between the gurneys, radiating fields of prickly blue light.
‘It’s not cold enough,’ Drusher said immediately. ‘It’s not cold enough, and it’s too damp. This is no place for the preservation of organic remains.’
‘Correct,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Hence the stasis field generators.’
‘And if generator power fails?’ asked Drusher.
‘Then the fortress is going to start to stink,’ said Nayl.
‘And your evidence will be lost,’ said Drusher.
‘Evaluation, please, magos,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘I understand it will be preliminary.’
‘Preliminary. Very well,’ Drusher said, nodding. He took off his spectacles, wiped the lenses and put them back on, but did not move.
‘These people were not the victims of ursid attacks,’ he said.
There was a pause.
Nayl looked at him.
‘You haven’t even opened a bag yet, magos,’ he said, gesturing towards the rows of gurneys.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Drusher.
‘Let him continue,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Magos? Not ursid attacks?’
‘No, sir.’
‘But there was evidence of feeding, Valentin,’ said Macks, bewildered. ‘I mean gross evidence. You always told me to look for–’
‘I think ursids may have fed on them, but they didn’t kill them.’
‘Expand,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Ursids kill people,’ said Drusher, ‘especially the smaller, more aggressive Ursa minora. But they don’t hunt them for food. An ursid kills a man because they meet by accident. The ursid reacts in surprise, or in defence of young. It kills, swiftly.’
‘Yeah, then it feeds,’ said Macks.
‘Sometimes,’ Drusher replied. ‘Ursids are omnivorous. They will eat flesh, meat of any sort, actually, even human. One might encounter a man, kill him, then feed. Or it might feed on a body if it finds one. But human flesh is not a regular part of its diet. It does not seek it out.’
‘But a rogue animal,’ said Macks. ‘One that’s got a taste for it. I mean, a taste for human flesh. That happens, doesn’t it? You once told me that.’
‘It does,’ said Drusher. ‘It’s very rare. The man-eater syndrome. Often a diseased or wounded animal. One whose aggression is compounded. Multiplied.’
‘So a rogue animal did this?’ asked Nayl.
‘Again, no,’ said Drusher.
‘You can tell that without even looking?’ asked Nayl.
‘You can compare bite prints or something,’ suggested Macks.
‘I can tell it by counting,’ said Drusher. ‘Eighteen bodies. Fifteen male, three female. Perhaps more to come. In a period of a year or two. How many ursids are there in the Karanines?’
Nayl and Macks looked at each other.
‘I’ll tell you–’ Drusher began.
‘Population sparse,’ said Audla Jaff suddenly. ‘As with all major carnivores or apex predators. An ursid’s average feeding ground is three hundred square kilometres. Slightly more for minora. When young are present, the range increases. Thus we might calculate the distributed population of the region, by taking the overall size of the area and dividing by an averaged figure of three hundred. Thus, about one hundred and thirty.’
‘Very good,’ said Drusher.
‘One hundred and thirty ursids in these woods?’ said Nayl.
‘In this province,’ corrected Drusher.
‘Actually, I was allowing for the entire run of the Karanine belt,’ said Jaff.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Macks. ‘One hundred and thirty. That’s a lot of ursids.’
Drusher looked at Jaff.
‘How much does an adult ursid consume in a year, mam?’
‘As much as it can,’ she replied. ‘But conservatively, three times its body weight.’
‘You see?’ said Drusher. ‘One ursid would not have killed and eaten eighteen plus human beings.’
‘Hang on,’ said Nayl, ‘you just said one hundred and thirty of them.’
‘As a total, distributed population,’ said Drusher. ‘We might attribute one or perhaps two deaths in a five-year period to accidental encounter and misadventure. Or we might explain multiple deaths to the action of a rogue animal, a man-eater, which, as I mentioned, is an extremely rare phenomenon. So a man-eater might have – and I stress it’s unlikely – killed eighteen poor souls… but it would not have eaten them all. That’s simply too much food, even for a large and aggressive ursid.’
Eisenhorn looked at him, steadily.
‘Interesting,’ he said.
‘Preliminary,’ said Drusher.
‘Then go beyond preliminary. What do you think killed them?’
‘Something else,’ said Drusher. ‘If examination reveals ursid feeding patterns, and I confidently expect it will be indicative of a non-frenzied pattern, then we might surmise that the local ursid population devoured found corpses. But they did not make the kills.’
‘Well surely,’ said Macks, ‘other ursids could have found and fed upon kills made by the rogue animal? You said it couldn’t eat them all itself?’
‘That’s possible, but again unlikely,’ said Drusher. ‘It’s a matter of territory. Minora are fiercely territorial. But let’s take a look.’
He walked over to the nearest gurney.
‘Do you have any–’
‘Oil of osscil?’ asked Macks, holding out a small pot.
‘I was going to say True Heart,’ he replied.
‘Don’t be smart,’ she said, but grinned. ‘Osscil or nothing.’
He took the pot, smeared some under his nose and unzipped the bag.
He stared for a moment.
‘Gonna throw up?’ Macks asked.
‘No,’ he said. He took off his spectacles and began to fiddle with them. ‘I just want to be able to see straight.’
Audla Jaff casually took the spectacles out of his hands and performed three quick, deft twists.
She reached up and put them back on his nose gently. They sat perfectly straight.
Drusher blinked.
‘Goodness me,’ he said.
‘Keep going, magos,’ Jaff whispered as she stepped back. ‘You’re impressing him.’
Drusher plucked a pair of surgical gloves from a carton, put them on and picked up a stainless steel probe from a tray. He hunched down and began to examine the exposed corpse. It was little more than a skeleton, blackened with old blood and tatters of congealed tissue.
‘There is some indication of an ursid feeding pattern. Tooth marks on the ribs here. If I can get a cast, I can confirm. Do you have an electro-macroscope?’
‘Yes,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Then I can provide a comparative for you in a couple of hours. A side by side of bite marks and dental impressions. I think it will confirm the feeding patterns of several individual ursids. It’s not frenzied, just as I expected. They were scavenging.’
He looked up.
‘Was there feeding residue at the sites?’ he asked.
‘Feeding what?’ asked Macks.
‘Residue. Ursids are not clean eaters. They will tear chunks off. Scatter bones. Ribs, the bones of extremities.’
‘Some of the bodies were washed down by meltwater,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘So we have no idea where they were killed.’
‘But the ones that were found in situ? Where you presume they were slain?’
‘No,’ said Macks. ‘No residue.’
‘That’s odd,’ said Drusher.
‘Expand,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘It suggests those locations were not the scenes of the crimes, so to speak. It suggests the killing and perhaps even the feeding happened elsewhere.’
‘They were dump sites?’ asked Macks.
‘They were dump sites,’ Drusher nodded.
‘That’s criminal pathology,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘It is,’ agreed Drusher. ‘Ursids may have grazed the kills and destroyed evidence. That might have been intentional. But the victims were killed elsewhere, then dumped. Add to that, the extremely unlikely coincidence that all the victims cannot be identified on any local or planetary database. Even rogue ursid man-eaters do not select their prey on the basis of identity profiling. Which means, you’re looking for human actors, inquisitor. Men did this. This is serial execution or serial murder.’
He looked at Eisenhorn.
‘But you knew that already, didn’t you?’ Drusher asked.
Eisenhorn didn’t reply.
‘Then tell me, if you want me to work at optimum efficiency,’ said Drusher, ‘what brought the Inq
uisition into this?’
‘Eighteen deaths,’ said Nayl flatly.
‘No,’ said Drusher, still looking straight at Eisenhorn. ‘That’s a dreadful tally, but serial murder is still within the purview of the Marshal Division. There’s something else. You have positively identified at least one of these bodies, haven’t you? Long before you even got here.’
SEVEN
Spirits of Place
Drusher put on his coat, slung his satchel over his shoulder and went for a walk. The rain had eased back, and the sky over the valley was a hazy blue.
There was a woman at the fortress gate, a glum woman in Magistratum gear. Her name badge read ‘Edde’, and she carried a riotgun.
‘Where are you going, sir?’ she asked.
‘I need to examine a few things,’ Drusher replied. It seemed to him a better answer than ‘I have to get away from these people for a while’.
‘Have you been given permission to exit?’ she asked.
‘Of course I have,’ he lied. No one had said anything to him about anything. After his assessment of the bodies in the cold store, Drusher felt as though he might have crossed a line. Eisenhorn had said nothing, except to send them all out of the room. Drusher wasn’t sure if he’d revealed truths that had given the inquisitor new things to ponder, or if he’d exposed some secrets Eisenhorn had been keeping to himself. Had he impressed Eisenhorn into silence, or aggravated him? Eisenhorn was impossible to read. He didn’t appear to express any nuance of reaction except a grim glare.
Deputy Edde looked at Drusher for a moment, then sighed and unlocked the gates.
From the fortress gates, the forest track ran down the valley through a thick break of trees. Drusher followed it for a while, then left the path and followed the slope of the valley deeper into the forest.
He began to relax. The air was clear and cool, and the scent of pine resin gave it a menthol tang. Sunlight shone through the tall, close-packed evergreens. The rolling forest bed was flax weed, deep green halibor, thistle, eye-wort and banks of antopies that brushed around his shins. Climbing tracedy hung in gauze mantles around lower branches. He saw the meaty combs of blaxiform fungi sprouting from rotting bark, the white cushions of bellecap toadstools in the weeds, processions of senate ants marching vertically up tree trunks, leaves and fat white grubs carried aloft in their jaws like trophies and banners. The air smelled of wet loam, camphor and flower scent. Fat pollinator insects buzzed past. Invisible beetles clicked and chirred in the undergrowth. He heard the cooing warble of the wood dove, Astra verdus, and watched tiny brown seed finches dart and snap through the lower branches.
