by John Meaney
“I'm glad you approve, Lieutenant. Now, once you've finished your tea, I've one more thing to show you. Don't worry, there's no more walking involved.”
I wasn't worried, Donal was tempted to say. Instead, he took another sip of tea.
Wonderful.
“Let's do it now,” he said. “Whatever it is.”
“Since you insist . . . Bear with me a moment.” Cortindo went to the bookcase that covered the rear wall. He stared at the books' spines for a moment, then tapped the shelves with his cane in a pattern of strikes that Donal could not follow.
Malfax Cortindo turned around, just as a circular section of the carpeted floor rotated and a yard-wide cylinder of metal rose up to chest height and stopped.
“Here we are.” Cortindo laid his cane against the desk and inserted his fingertips into brass-colored depressions in the metal cylinder. After a moment, a steel door popped open on the cylinder's side. “All right, this is what you need to see.”
It was a platinum case sealed with a golden catch. Perhaps the size of a gun case for an antique pistol, it looked heavy, and Donal wondered what it could contain.
There was a kind of reverence in the way Malfax Cortindo held the case, snapped back the catch, and pulled open the lid. Then he turned the case around so that Donal could see inside.
On scarlet velvet lay a desiccated bone.
“You can touch it,” said Malfax Cortindo, “but—”
Too late.
Something had already drawn Donal's fingertips forward, as though he had relinquished control of his own neuromuscular system, and then he touched the bone and he was lost.
It was a form of drowning.
There was a silver sea, its gentle breakers spreading on a pink beach, while transparent birds flew overhead, singing arias of such magnificence that Donal began to weep. There were flowers inland, on fantastical green-glass structures that might have been plants or might have been art, and the minutest detail of their texture was fascinating. Here a drop of water glistening like a—
Something snatched at him.
No!
—crystalline world in its own right, and all around, the fabric of existence was threaded deep with color, strange nude figures moving in the distance, and landscape filled with—
Another tug, which he tried to fight.
—bands of heavy yellow and red and indigo, and the trees, which—
Were gone.
Everything was gone.
“No!” Donal hurled himself at Malfax Cortindo, who backed away in a deceptive circular motion, bypassing Donal's momentum. “Give it—”
“Sorry.” Cortindo's footwork became a spiral, then a twisting reversal, avoiding Donal's charge once more.
“Give . . .”
Donal bent over from the waist, wheezing, more out of breath than after a ten-mile run. He squinted, salt sweat half-blinding him, and he wiped his face with his hand.
What the Death was going on?
“You were lost,” said Malfax Cortindo, “in an artist's dreams.”
“But you—”
Heavy gauntlets on Cortindo's hands must be shielding him from the bone's influence. Moving with apparent slowness—he was deceptive in his fluid motion—Cortindo replaced the bone inside the platinum case and pushed the lid shut. Immediately, the air inside the office seemed to clear.
Donal staggered back to the visitor's chair and sat.
“Ah, Hades.” He picked up the cup and took a slug of tea. “Ugh!”
It was cold.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. But you had to see.” Malfax Cortindo was inserting the case back inside the cylinder's opening. “If you didn't experience it for yourself, everything I told you would have been fragile words, immediately forgotten.”
“I've got a good memory.” Donal made a sour face as he put the teacup down. “How did that grow so—”
“Do you remember how much time passed in your dream?”
“Excuse me?” Donal twisted his wrist and checked his watch. “No. That's . . .”
The time was 22:63.
“. . . impossible.”
As soon as Malfax Cortindo pushed the metal door shut, the cylinder began to sink back down into the floor. He still wore the heavy protective gauntlets that Donal had not seen him put on.
“Is it, Lieutenant? Surely not.”
Malfax Cortindo was right, because there was no reason for Donal to think that his watch had been ensorcelled or that some eldritch process had been used to suck the heat from his teacup. Instead, there was only one conclusion to be drawn.
Donal had been lost in the bone's dreams for nearly three hours.
Sitting down behind his desk once more, Malfax Cortindo stripped off the gauntlets.
“I could have snatched the bone back,” said Donal. “What would have happened to me then?”
“My dear Lieutenant, I have trained since childhood in pa-kua, a soft art that enabled me to avoid your somewhat, uh, unsteady lunges.”
“I'd just been ripped out of . . .” Donal let his voice trail off.
Out of paradise.
“I know, and that was in my favor. If there'd been more risk, I'd have had Security in here with me, you understand.”
It sounded as if Cortindo expected Donal to thank him. Instead, Donal opened his suit jacket and let it fall open as he sat back, allowing the shoulder-holstered Magnus to show.
“You want to explain what just happened?”
“Ah. Perhaps I should apologize for the graphic demonstration—”
“Perhaps you should.”
“—but it was in the common good, I assure you. That bone you just touched was part of a common intake, ordinary bones destined for the reactor piles.”
Donal shook his head. He knew he shouldn't have come here.
“But our staff is dedicated,” Malfax Cortindo continued, “and highly trained. All bone shipments pass through necroscopic examination procedures. If a gifted artist has died a pauper's death, this is the final chance of our discovering their existence.”
The cylinder had sunk into the floor, become integral with it, and was hardly noticeable now.
“Who was that?” said Donal. “Whose bone did I touch?”
“It was an ulna”—Malfax Cortindo gave a precise smile—“from Jamix Holandson, whose works now command exceptional prices. Several of his pieces are on show in the Federal Center for Modern Art, in Fortinium.”
“Oh. Him.”
“Our procedures are rigorous and our staff is highly trained,” Cortindo repeated.
“Too bad this Sorenson—”
“Holandson.”
“—Holandson didn't get famous before he died.”
“As I said”—Malfax Cortindo rubbed his gray goatee with one finger—“it is the artist's final chance.”
“More like the postultimate chance,” said Donal, “if there is such a word.”
“I don't believe there is, my good fellow.”
Donal looked at him. There was more to be discovered here, but how much of it related to his job, Donal could not tell. He had a strong desire to get the Hades out of here, but he forced himself to slow down.
“What has this got to do with murders?” he asked.
“Isn't that obvious?”
“I don't know. Explain it to me, Mr. Cortindo.”
The plaques on the wall indicated that he was Director Cortindo or Doctor Cortindo—or in the case of Donnerheim University, Herr Doktor Direktor Cortindo.
“If you were a certain kind of collector—a rich and influential collector, you understand—would you not pay a considerable amount of money to take possession of such bones?”
Donal stared at him. “Perhaps.”
“Well, perhaps if you were a certain kind of dedicated collector, you might not be able to wait for the natural course of events, let's say, before your favorite artist's bones became . . . available.”
“Oh, shit.”
“After all, there's no guarantee that you'l
l outlive the object of your desire, is there, Lieutenant? Does any of us know when he's going to die?”
Donal stood up.
“Thank you for the tea. And the . . . enlightenment.”
“Why, Lieutenant.” Malfax Cortindo also stood. “It's been my absolute pleasure.”
They shook hands.
“I hope to see you down here again soon,” added Malfax Cortindo. “Oh . . . I mean socially, of course. Not—”
“I understand.”
Donal picked up his overcoat from the secretary's outer office. The black liquid-metal gloves were still in the coat's pockets. For a moment Donal considered putting them on, going back into Cortindo's office, and stuffing the dead artist's ulna down Cortindo's throat.
But Donal had a job to do, and beating the crap out of a civilian adviser was not the way to go about it.
“Thank you very much, Lieutenant. I hope you had a wonderful visit.”
“The tea was great. Thank you, ma'am.”
Donal left through the door to the spiral stairs and descended the black iron steps to the cavern floor. The same three men in gray coveralls were there to escort him back to the surface.
“Nice seeing you guys again.”
“This way, Officer. You got no car?”
“I don't need one.”
“The elevator for people, like, is this way.”
The trio led Donal to a curved black door set in a stone pillar. The door rattled and slid open. Donal stepped in, finding himself on a scratched steel floor. Lanterns were set on short, stubby metal stands, forming a circle around him. Craning his head back, he could see only thickening shadows and total darkness overhead.
“Is this—”
But the door was already sliding shut.
“Oh, well.”
The floor scraped a little as it rose, then moved faster, and in seconds it was accelerating hard, pressing his feet against the steel. The stone shaft wall went past in a blur; reaching out to touch it would be a bad idea.
Then the rising floor decelerated, and Donal's body weight felt normal as the floor clanged to a halt, jolting him. He was in a black hollow hemisphere.
“How do I—”
At that moment the metallic hemisphere split into flanges that folded themselves back, leaving him standing inside a small courtyard.
He stepped quickly off the disk, in case it was set to return below. Uniformed guards nodded to him—Donal recognized one as a former patrol officer who'd been kicked off the force for getting freebies in the Scarlet Quarter—and he gave them a light salute as he headed for a small exit door.
The door's height and width were for a single person, but when the door swung inward, Donal saw that it was foot-thick metal and could not imagine the weight of it. A small wisp of steam escaped from the powered hinges.
Donal gave a half wave to no one behind him, then stepped through the doorway and onto the sidewalk. Behind him, valves hissed and pistons swung the heavy door shut.
“Wonderful.”
He was stuck in a dilapidated area, outside the fortress that served as the aboveground manifestation of the Downtown Core Complex. Few people ventured here except for work, traveling on the Energy Authority's own buses.
What Donal should have done was call a taxi or a squad car from the secretary's office, but he wanted to get out of the complex right away.
Several furlongs down the street, a dark finned automobile sat silently. Donal considered asking the driver for a lift, but as he turned his attention to it, the car started up. It pulled away from the curb.
“Damn it.”
But the driver was a woman: Donal had glimpsed glossy pale-blond hair. There would have been no reason for her to offer a lift to a lone man walking these particular streets.
Beside him lay a derelict site, a scree formed of rubble from which skeletal ribs of rusted girders poked. Three pale lizards, scuttling across the ruins, froze when they realized Donal was staring at them.
He shook his head and looked up at the solid purple-black sky.
Then he pulled his coat around himself and began to walk. As he did so, a light quicksilver rain began to fall. Tiny mercury droplets spattered from the long coat.
I hate this place.
On the sidewalk, liquid-metal puddles were already forming, shining and glutinous. If it hadn't been for the regular injections Donal received as an active police officer, he would have been less blasé about walking down the street without a hat.
There was a scratching sound as the lizards scrabbled for cover.
Donal wondered where the diva, Maria daLivnova, was right now. Rehearsing in some swanky theater, or dining in a fantastically appointed hotel restaurant. Not walking alone down streets where lizards hid from the weather.
But as Donal walked, he remembered something more, against his will: the deep richness of the world seen through Jamix Holandson's eyes.
Through his lifeless bone.
Back in his own office, Donal beckoned Levison to come and join him. Levison was tall and gangly, bald save for patches of carrot-red hair over his protruding ears. As usual, his shirt's top button was open, his tie loosened.
Picking up a folder from his desk, Levison entered Donal's office, then pushed the door shut with his elbow. He adjusted the gun slanted forward on his left hip as he sat. Levison's weapon had seen little action on the street, despite the well-worn look of the leather holster. Levison had never confused marksmanship with being a good cop.
“You know,” said Levison, “there are only twenty-five hours in the day. Perhaps you should have a word with the commissioner and let him know.”
“On account of how,” said Donal, “me and him are such great pals, right?”
“Yeah.” Levison placed his folder flat on the desktop. “This came down from above while you were out swanning around with the high and mighty. How was the Energy Authority, anyway?”
“Filled with piles of bone, like you'd expect.”
“Pleasant place.” Levison shook his head. “Better you than me, boss. Did you learn anything?”
“Only that certain sickos”—Donal remembered the wonderful dreams: there was nothing sick in them—“would have a great reason for offing the diva and stealing her bones.”
“Wonderful.”
“Or professionals working on behalf of rich sickos. That scenario works.”
“It sounds like a lot more effort, Donal, than guarding against one nutcase. This diva's landing in a week's time at Tempelgard. It's all in there.” Levison pointed at the folder.
“Justice never sleeps.”
“Naw, it just gets schizophrenic hallucinations caused by dream deprivation and then blows out its brains with a silver-loaded Magnus.” The humor seemed to sink inside Levison's long face, leaving a serious mask. “You heard about Peters, out at the Hundred and First?”
“Peters?”
“He did himself in last night.”
“Shit, I was at his wedding.” Donal stared out the window at the rearing blackstone corporate building across the street, seeing nothing. “His widow . . .”
“The guys are making a collection.”
“Put me in for fifty florins, will you? I'll pay you tomorrow.”
Levison nodded. “You're going back out?”
“Yeah.” Donal pulled the folder to him and flipped it open. “Need to check out the environment, the route from the airport. Like that.”
“She's staying at the Exemplar.” Levison reached over and turned back two pages. “There, see? Got her own suite. No expense spared.”
“Shit.”
“Right. You want reasonable coverage, you'll need guys in the room across the hall. You need full cover, that'll be the rooms on either side, on the floor below—that's three separate rooms, actually—and the one above. That's another suite.”
“Thanatos.”
“When I talked to the lovely Eyes on the phone”—Levison grimaced—“she passed on Commissioner Vilnar's fav
orite phrase.”
“ ‘Tell them not to go crazy on the overtime’?”
“The very one.”
“Accounts is going to go ballistic. I'd better go see the hotel first, see if I can charm them into giving us a better discount than usual.”
“How about them paying us, considering we'd be saving them embarrassment?” said Levison. “Not to mention lost business.”
“If you say so.” Donal put his feet up on the desk. “Or maybe the public would come flocking in to stay at the place where the diva was murdered.”
“Hades, Donal. Don't let anyone hear you say that.”
“Yeah . . . I might give someone a bright idea. Or dark idea. Whatever.”
Donal avoided Gertie's elevator and walked along the dark corridor to a colder shaft, where frost formed on the steel casing and the shaft's enslaved wraith carried out its duties in perpetual silence.
There was little time, but Donal hadn't practiced today, and if you let it slip once, then it would be easier to avoid practice the next time. Before you knew it, you'd end up a soft bureaucrat like Commissioner Vilnar, whose knowledge of street policing was based on ancient memories plus the reading of endless memos and precinct reports.
Inside the shadowed shaft, Donal plunged fast, feetfirst. The icy slipstream whipped his coat upward, but he paid no attention. After thirty floors his descent slowed. By the time he reached the minus-13th floor, his downward motion was infinitesimal.
Donal stepped into a cold, half-lit chamber.
He pulled his Magnus from his shoulder holster, slipped out the magazine to check it was full—chitin-piercing load with silver-crossed bullets—then slapped it back in and reholstered. Donal took in a deep chestful of cold air and expelled a long calming breath.
In front of him was an ironbound door. Donal pushed it open. An empty counter stood to one side.
“It's Riordan. You there, Brian?”
“Sure, Lieutenant.” A bald man with bluish skin and a pot belly levered himself up from behind the counter. “What can I do you for today?”
“I need”—Donal glanced at his watch: he would have to make this fast—“a box of fifty rounds, that's all. The usual.”
“Okay.” Brian reached underneath the counter and came up with a three-inch cardboard box filled with shells. “You wanna sign?”
