She had traded a life as a rich madam in the Overcity for this job. Lyell had met her once before, in her old job. She placed Chikako Peat at twice her apparent age and extraordinarily well-connected in the upper governing levels of SC-Philadelphia.
“We know each other, don’t we?” the principal said.
“I once went seeking someone you’d employed.”
Peat exhaled a stream of smoke that plummeted almost at once to the ground. “Yes. As I recall, you found her.”
“You’d moved her to another establishment with which you were connected. But, yes, I found her.”
Peat nodded in recollection. “Did her family ever take her back?”
“Why would they? She’d made it into the Overcity. They’re just lowly shopkeepers in a laborers’ quarter outside the walls. They can’t even come inside without a permit. They only wanted to know that she was all right.”
Chikako Peat laid down the cigarette holder on a tray near her feet. “What’s your assessment? Was she all right?”
Lyell leaned on one of the screens. “I’m looking for someone again,” she said.
“Why don’t you sit? Will I have to hide this person from you, too?”
“You didn’t have to the last time.” Lyell took a seat beside the desk.
“As it turned out. As it turned out, I’m the one should have gone into hiding. The corporation chose to shut me down shortly after your visit. I hope this isn’t going to be a deja vu experience.” Her eyes flicked again across the suspended monitors. Her irises were violet, almost lavender.
Lyell followed Peat’s glance to the screens, partly visible from her position. “You don’t seem to be very busy.”
“With paperwork, you mean. That’s what all the clerks are for. Reports. Transfers. Death certificates.” She pursed her lips. “There are over a dozen new twitchers going into classrooms today—right now, as we’re talking. Statistically, fewer than half of them will survive the course. I don’t care particularly to be sending people to their deaths, but that’s inevitably what I do every day. How busy must I be?”
Lyell answered, “When I found out you were here, I thought to myself how much power you must wield to get yourself such a cushy job.”
Peat’s smile curled with irony. “Nothing like it,” she said. “I was given a choice between this position with limited prominence but continued residence inside the Overcity, or else whoring in a lunar or martian colony. Until then I thought exactly what you do—that I knew enough about too many people’s predilections, and that would protect me. I suppose it did, after a fashion—they didn’t have me murdered. They rightly suspect that I have recordings cached away which could damage, perhaps end, a few careers. That tempered the verdict slightly; but you cannot bargain with the likes of ScumberCorp. If you don’t like the offer, then you don’t like the offer.”
“Another company?” Lyell suggested.
Peat laughed. “What a novel idea.”
Lyell nodded. It had been the same with her father. “My visit was unrelated to your change of fortune. I didn’t work for them.”
Peat leaned forward, touching the edge of the desk. A section of desktop slid back to reveal a small keyboard beneath the surface. At the same time a thin wedge angled up out of the desk behind it. “You are—” she leaned forward to read from the embedded screen “—a social placement officer, an interoffice interloper who decides who’s behaving and gets released, who isn’t and stays bound to this hell on Earth a little longer.”
“It says all that?” she asked amusedly. Nebergall had taken care of her long-standing ID. Inside the school system was the one place where the concept of truancy still meant something, however. She carried a court-appointed officer’s biocard in her belt bag as backup.
Peat smiled. “I know placement officers, Miss Lyell. I deal with them routinely. Little gods. They never bother with missing persons. On the whole, I would say they prefer to have people missing.”
“I had a different job back then. Same as you.”
Chikako Peat withdrew her feet from the desktop. “What is it you want that you had to come here in person instead of applying to the phonet?”
“There’s a new teacher—”
“Twitcher. The nons—that is, the students—call them twitchers. It’s a grim but accurate epithet, I think. The name has taken root, as with the term ‘bullgod’ that they attached to their guards. Clever children.”
“A new twitcher, then. Named Angel Rueda. His situation is not the normal—”
“I do not discuss these people with anyone,” Peat said. She splayed her hand and studied her polished fingernails. “Besides which, none of their situations could be described as normal. If they were normal they wouldn’t be here.”
“Nevertheless, there are some deeply troubling circumstances surrounding him ”
“For you or for me? I get a list of names and appointments. That’s all I know. And what does a truant officer want with a twitcher?”
The point had come that Lyell had to trust this woman. Was her low opinion of SC real or a blind? She was the principal, and it was quite conceivable she knew about the weapons Mingo had delivered. She could have requested them. She could be working for Mingo, by choice or coercion. There was the risk, unavoidable.
“Like you say, maybe that’s all you know,” Lyell began. “What you might find odd about Rueda is that, purportedly, a few days ago he caused an accident at ScumberCorp’s Procellarum facility and may be a member of a radical group within the corporation that’s been blamed for dozens of similar incidents.”
“Xau Dâu?” Peat said softly, her face betraying concern at last. “They would never—”
“You might conclude as I did that SC would keep someone that dangerous totally isolated. Their official report in fact says he’s been sent down to isolate him from others in his alleged group. Isolated. Yet you’ve got him on staff.”
Peat typed again on her keyboard. After a moment the report appeared on her wedge screen. She skimmed over it, lingering on the standard head-shots of Angel Rueda. “That is the same person? You’re sure?”
Lyell leaned forward. She nodded. “Yes.”
Peat scrolled some more, reading. “Nothing about the Moon at all. An ex-Orbiter.”
“What?” Lyell stood and leaned over her to read the file.
Peat continued aloud, “Suffered minor tissue loss in the phalanges of the feet and some sort of necrosis in the parietal lobe of the brain which is why he wears the cranial bypass unit. Here’s his work permit number. An employment history clearly reflects drug use, but, then, most of our twitchers are still orbiting despite swearing otherwise. We’re used to that. Nope, no job higher than temporary docker, like a million others hanging on outside the walls—not very probable lunar material here.” She gazed up at Lyell. “Why do I have this report in my system if what you say is true?”
She didn’t have an answer for that. Why put one story in place for the likes of Nebergall and then plant this one for the school system? Obviously, because these two elements of society weren’t supposed to cross paths. Parallel lines. She would have loved to tie into Nebergall’s phonet and let Chikako Peat see ScumberCorp’s news release, but that would have established a traceable link between Neeb and ICS-IV, incriminating everybody at both ends.
While she was thinking, Peat called up something else on the main monitor hanging overhead. Laid atop the shifting images of various classrooms and hallways was a list in red of numbers and names. “He’s teaching in the third cellblock, in classroom F.” The list disappeared, replaced by a different classroom image.
They viewed the room as if standing at the back on a chair or desk. The figure at the front had ash-blond hair and the indefatigable smile of the LifeMask. From this distance its luminance gave the impression there was a soft spotlight focused on his face.
From the dimness around them, Lyell heard a strangely metallic voice: “Nucleosynthesis is the making of new elements
out of nuclear reactions—the kinds of reactions that occur within stars. We think the Universe might not always have been made of the same things as we see today, precisely because nucleosynthesis has added new matter to the world.”
Peat turned down the lecture. “He seems to be handling the program well enough.”
“Are all of your twitchers ex-Orbiters? Is there a reason for it?”
“It helps us. He remains asleep for all intents while he talks. The mask program disconnects higher brain functions from the speech centers. It’s been described as forced meditation. That’s why junkies and drunks—anybody who’s already wiped a good portion of their brain—are perfect candidates for this. Less resistance. It doesn’t have to be Orbitol necessarily. In fact, dipsomaniacs are preferred over Orbiters. When the lecture program takes hold, it acts as a temporary personality. You heard him talking. He sounds alert, doesn’t he? But your real Angel Rueda, whoever he is, won’t be back again until the program releases him—at the end, or in an emergency situation, where it would wake him.”
Lyell turned that information over. “What would constitute an emergency situation?”
Peat opened her mouth to reply, and an alarm klaxon blared so loud it seemed to have blasted right out of her. The principal stared up at the center screen. The scene had changed automatically, the system targeting the source of the alarm.
They beheld another classroom, almost identical to the one where Angel Rueda taught. Except that this one showed a twitcher hanging by one hand off the podium and a girl standing up in the center aisle. She had a black pistol in her hand, still pointed at the dying twitcher. Her classmates had spilled back from her on either side like the parted Red Sea. Peat typed again. The wedge flashed a warning sign that did not deter her. She pressed a code key at the side of the beveled board, and within moments a grayish mist was spewing into the classroom. The klaxon shut off. The danger had been contained.
“Tear gas?” Lyell asked.
“Absolutely. Where did she get a pistol?”
The alarm shrieked again. Peat found herself confronted with multiple images. Classrooms and hallways and one black screen flicked into view on the main monitor only to be bumped aside by the next and the next. “My God, it’s a riot. Somebody’s armed them. Look at all of them!”
“What about Rueda?”
“You think it’s him? He’s armed, too. Twitchers all are. Print-fixed weapons of course, precisely to avoid this kind of situation—”
“No, I mean call up his room.”
A hidden intercom began to buzz insistently.
Somewhere within the fortress, something exploded. The floor shuddered. A distorted roar blasted out of the overhead speakers.
The main monitor pinpointed a fisheye scene of total chaos—students stampeding into a cellblock corridor while, behind them, black smoke billowed out of a room. Two bullgods fell beneath the crush. So did most of the front line of students. The back line pushed, and the middle churned. More fell on top of the first group, jumped, trying to get over them, more often stepping onto them, tripping, falling, adding to the melee. Their screams clashed with the snap of gunshots.
Peat typed more instructions, sealing off sections of hallways as fast as she could. Gates swung shut. “I’m not going to be able to contain this until I know how many there are. There could be a hundred guns in there. Who would have done this?”
“Look, Chikako,” Lyell said, “this is going to sound like a colossal leap, but if I don’t get to Rueda right now, we might not ever find out the answer to that.”
The images of hallway chaos shifted to a secondary monitor and another classroom scene erupted in the middle.
Another twitcher lay dead, her blood sprayed on the wall behind the podium. Students were doing their best to trash the rest of the room. One of them was trying to tear the bloody LifeMask from the woman’s head. The principal’s eyes narrowed coldly. “There’s an entrance in the lounge you came through, takes you to the private galleries. Use that. Remember—Three-F.” She added, “First, though, you tell me why.” In the monitored classroom, gas spewed out of the walls.
The desk phone began to ring.
“He’s the real target. All of this is a blind. They want him.”
Peat paused only a moment, her strange eyes reading Lyell’s expression. She typed quickly, eyes on the main monitor.
No image came up. The screen went black and a message flashed along the bottom. The camera unit in Rueda’s classroom had been disengaged from the system. Without hesitation, Peat gassed the room.
“It’s too late then, isn’t it?” said Lyell. “They’ve killed him.”
“You know who armed them,” Peat accused her. “You knew all about this!”
“I thought it was bullgods they’d armed. I thought there was more time, a lot more, maybe days. I thought it was going to fall out differently. And I couldn’t be sure where you stood.” She headed around the desk. “Will you still be here when I get back?”
“I’ll be here until you’ve told me everything. Now go, I’m busy.”
The ringing of the phone never stopped. The sound chased her as she ran. The overhead flourescents flashed like lightning. The clerks had vanished, every one.
The exit opened automatically. No one remained in the lounge. Half-eaten muffins and a tipped over cup of coffee suggested the speed of their departure.
The third door off the room was locked when she tried it, but a second later some mechanism within it thunked loudly and the door slipped ajar.
On the other side was an elevator cage that might have been as old as the prison. She rode it up to a platform—a railed circular walkway off which branched seven gloomy corridors. Tiles inscribed in Roman numerals designated each one. She circled until she came to the one marked ‘III’, then ran on into the unknown.
The gallery stretched ahead with no apparent end. It smelled of millennial mildew. As she ran, Lyell noted the occasional camera snout overhead, tracking her. She hoped it was Chikako Peat.
To her right, along a wall of crumbling plaster laid over stone, lay the classroom doors. To the left, the other wall alternated sections of plaster with translucent panels of thick glass embedded with chicken wire. The glass had been smeared over with paint and dirt. An oily blue light leaked in around the edges. She thought sourly that it had the kind of ambience Nebergall would love.
She passed doors A, B, and C. She crinkled her nose at a new smell, initially slight but even so acrid. Tear gas, leaking into the gallery. How was she going to get through Rueda’s classroom if it was full of gas? By the time she took twenty steps, she would be in blind agony.
Rooms D and E passed. Her nostrils stung now. The door ahead was bathed in a dull blue splash of light. She called up the picture of the room as she’d seen on the monitor, figuring that she might make the podium, even with her eyes closed and her head down. In any case she had to risk it.
The door clicked open even as Lyell reached for it. She was thanking the invisible principal when it swung straight into her face and clobbered her off her feet.
Chapter Thirteen: License to Teach
He knew exactly how his class felt about their new teacher. They had murdered the last two. The bullgod who escorted him to his room told him about it just before abandoning him outside his door in the shadowy gallery. The bull slapped his shoulder. “Hope you can shoot, Tex,” he said, “the last two before you couldn’t make the grade!” Braying, he walked off into the shadows.
Angel turned to the door. It unlatched automatically for him.
Inside, all conversation ceased. The instant he stepped through, twenty-three steely gazes fastened in him like hooks. No one spoke or moved as he approached the graffiti-covered podium.
The entire room—if not the entire building—reflected the Overcity’s disregard toward the incarcerated nons. The wall tiles were broken and crumbling. Mildew grew where leaks had been patched or ignored. In the back lay a pile of broken furniture—
desktops and shattered terminal screens, chairs that had been twisted into abstract shapes resembling a tubular sculpture. In one corner sat an engine block that must have been twenty years old. Rust in a brown puddle had spread out slowly from under it. The only thing, in fact, in obvious good condition was the door he’d entered through, but that was steel plate, difficult to damage beyond the odd dent.
He unlocked the podium by typing in a code on its number pad. The podium’s processor connected to the thirty desks in the room. Each one had a small flip-up screen—provided it hadn’t been broken—and likewise a keyboard.
Angel’s introduction had been etched into small program cubes he carried—three of them, two as backups. The lecture was interactive.
The program could field any relevant questions and ignore nonsensical ones. Should the mask perceive an emergency, the podium relinquished control instantly—at least, that was what it was supposed to do. In any case, he should have enough awareness of events unfolding around him to override the program if need be. So he’d been told. A lot of what happened rested on untested promises.
The final safety net consisted of a hidden camera focused on him. He’d been warned by his instructor that some twitchers, embarking upon their first lecture, experienced cold sweats and an unshakeable terror of certain death as they went under. Angel looked for these elements in himself and found only a blank wall, a strange detachment from the events unfolding. Fear as an option had been occluded by the cranial bypass unit, the crab. He wondered how the podium’s program would recognize an emergency when it gauged such things from his emotions, and he had none.
The Pure Cold Light Page 13
