Memento Mori

by W. R. Gingell

  “Well,” said Kez, “it’s common sense, innit? Either Marcus done it ’cos he wants you to escape, or he hasn’t done it and the orderlies’ll be comin’ for you. I try not to do what Marcus wants me to do. People end up dead that way.”

  “Why will the orderlies come for me? Wouldn’t they go after the more dangerous patients first?”

  “Doubt it,” Kez said. “Go on. ’Ave a look. Bet they’re already in the hall.”

  Below her, the boy put his hand out to the door frame, his shoulders stiff. His left foot took one small, shuffling step forward; then, as Kez watched, he fell. He dropped like a felled tree, backward, away from the door. His head cracked against the floor hard enough to make her think he had really passed out, but his eyes opened almost immediately, a flash of white against his darker skin. They fluttered shut again the next moment, and Kez, who had quite forgotten to listen for the orderlies in her interest, was surprised to see no less than four men tumble into the room. If there had been anything wanting to make her sure that Marcus was being very careful of this patient, four orderlies for one skinny boy would have put that suspicion to rest.

  The orderlies were panting; they must’ve really hustled, thought Kez in grim amusement. Good for them. She made herself comfortable, and waited to see what would happen.

  Delivery Schedule #3

  “Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

  It was a sharp question, and sharply said. Marx huffed an irritable breath and considered that life was more than usually unfair today. He was in a perfectly cylindrical room bounded by a raised area of maxi-plex display screens and moving three dimensional security feeds. Across the room, he could even see a running feed on one of the maxi-plex screens that was instantly archiving recognition data such as stride and weight dispersal of visitors to the Institute.

  He was in the security centre of the Institute. More importantly, there were two security officers present. Marx’s questioner was a slim man immaculately dressed in a suit that was obviously made to custom, his eyes as sharp as the creases of his trousers. Across the room was another equally well dressed but significantly larger man, closer to Marx’s age and far broader in the shoulders. Neither of them had anything like the utility belt that the boy in the previous hall had had, but Marx, who was reasonably familiar with unobtrusive security measures, could already see the slender man’s right hand edging toward his watch. Alarm, or weapon? Marx didn’t want to find out, but he was too far away to do anything about it.

  “Now that’s annoying,” he said, putting his parcel carefully on the floor beside him. “They told me someone would sign for this if I bought it in here.”

  “Why would we sign for it?” demanded the broad-shouldered man, striding across the room. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  Marx shrugged and took two leisurely steps forward. The slim man was still too far away from him; his hand still too close to that watch. “I know, I know, but that’s what they said.”

  The slender man stepped away from his display and down onto the main floor. “Who said? How did you even get in?”

  “You weren’t supposed to ask that,” said Marx, and hit him. The man fell, clipping his head against the raised section of flooring, and didn’t move again. The other swung at Marx, so concerned with the immediate fight that it didn’t occur to him to call for assistance. Marx ducked and spun, helping the other on past himself with a timely elbow to the ribs in passing, and danced back lightly on his toes. His stiff leg was loosening up. That was good; the broad-shouldered man wasn’t particularly fast, but he had a lot of weight behind him. If one or two of his punches connected, that would be it for Marx.

  “How did you get in here?” A swing, too fast to be entirely avoided. Marx moved with it but it still snapped his head dizzyingly to the left. He caught himself against the raised flooring, shaking his head to clear it, and found something useful. A simple, cylindrical item that was forbidden in every security room but somehow found its way in despite that. The broad-shouldered man lunged for him and Marx crouched low, punching short and fast.

  “Should have asked that earlier,” he said, to the top of the groaning man’s head. Then he caught up the coffee mug and slammed it into the other man’s temple.

  Marx dropped the cracked mug by that now-prone body, panting. He was getting too old for this sort of thing. He didn’t trust the bigger man to stay unconscious for long, so he relieved both men of their watches and tied their ankles with their fashionably old-fashioned ties. Their wrists, he tied with the equally fashionable shoelaces in their shiny black, old-fashioned shoes.

  “That’ll teach you,” he said, pulling at the knots to test them. “Don’t bring coffee into your security room. And don’t wear anything that can be used to tie you up.”

  He left them bundled together where he could see if they began to move again, and went back to his parcel. Now that he was at the point where he could satisfy his gnawing curiosity, he found himself oddly reluctant to begin. Part of that, he was pretty well aware, was because he was convinced there was nothing good in the parcel. He should have run for it when his contact exited the building at a good trot—run for it and not looked back until he was several worlds away.

  It was too late for that now.

  The parcel, although not delivered in anything so up-to-date as a gravity-adjusting holder, was still secured as reasonably as anyone could expect a parcel to be secured. Reasonably well was not well enough. Marx grinned a nasty little grin down at it and slipped his Multi Lock tool out of the pocket it always inhabited. It was called a Multi Lock tool, but it was more of a Multi UnLock tool. He had picked it up in the aftermath of the war on Fourth World, when every world and its satellites seemed—both figuratively and literally—locked against refugees from Fourth World, and it was almost as battered as Marx himself was. It wasn’t the latest tech, but it was surprisingly versatile, and it was certainly good enough for unlocking a parcel capsule.

  Marx slapped it on the parcel and left it to do its work while he examined the door behind him. As much as he wanted the parcel unlocked, did he prefer for the door to remain shut—at least until he finished his examination and made the requisite decision of whether to deliver and run, or take the parcel and run.

  The door was more of a serious proposition than the parcel. Its tech was the latest, and Marx had the uncomfortable feeling that if he attempted to use his Multi Lock tool on the door to the security room, it would simply lock on itself and set off an alarm until someone important and highly armed arrived to fix it.

  The Multi Lock tool chittered at him, and Marx left the door as it was, trusting to dumb luck that no one would enter the security room until change of shift. The parcel was the most important thing right now, anyway. The top had popped on the capsule, the Multi Lock tool sticking to it and weighing it down, and he could see straight into the barrel of the capsule. Marx stared at the arrangement of tubes and white paste for some time until the thought worked its way through his frozen mind that there shouldn’t be an arrangement of wires and tubes like that in a parcel carried by a delivery man. That thought was swiftly followed by another one that that, right there on the top, was a small timer. A small timer that offered up thirty scant minutes in an unreasonably cheerful green light.

  Marx, as if hypnotised by that green glow, picked up the capsule. There was no doubt about it: timer, tubes, paste; it all boiled down to one possibility.

  It was a bomb. He was delivering a bomb.

  Patient #76

  He was on the floor. When had that happened? He’d stepped forward, hearing the sound of running footsteps from the hall, and then…nothing. In his mind, it made a patch of blankness that stopped as soon as he was on the floor. The nameless boy knew he had regained consciousness almost as soon as he hit the floor, because he still heard the running footsteps when he opened his eyes. He let them shut again thankfully; his head was aching in a solid kind of way that made him think he’d hit it quite hard. />
  While firm, impersonal hands picked him up and put him back in bed, the nameless boy was very careful to be just lax enough, his eyelids softly closed and his mind making connections that were more and more sharp-edged the more awake he became. He let one of his hands flop over the edge of the cover as someone tucked him in, and wondered if he really was mad. He didn’t know enough of himself to be sure. He was certainly a calculating sort of person, because when he heard the door swish shut again, he didn’t open his eyes or sit up. Instead, he stayed where he was, his eyelids shut just enough to be believable, with the white light of the walls sneaking through his lashes. There was silence while the nameless boy counted in his head and breathed in and out, deep and quiet. He had counted to three hundred before he heard the other person move; a brief disturbance in the air that was more feeling than sound.

  The nameless boy kept counting. When he had counted to a thousand, the watcher gave up. There was the shuffle of feet against soft floor, then the automated sweep of the door, and the nameless boy knew he was alone again.

  “All right, pretty good,” said Kez’s voice grudgingly. “But wot you gonna do now?”

  “Now, I’m going to get out of here,” the nameless boy said, sitting up again. He touched his fingers to the sore patch on the back of his head and took them away almost immediately, wincing.

  “That’ll be some trick when you can’t even get to the door wivout faintin’.”

  “Yes,” said the nameless boy. He wasn’t sure that fainting was the correct word. It had felt more…abrupt than that; as if his consciousness had been suddenly and absolutely cut off by something outside himself. His long fingers went to the collar around his neck. “Does this place have a facility for biotech?”

  “Wot’s biotech?”

  The nameless boy found he was smiling, and that was odd. “Never mind.”

  “There’s labs. Got a new part where they ain’t lettin’ anyone go.”

  “What’s in the new part?”

  “Gorn a bit off in the ’ead, ’ave we? Said they ain’t lettin’ anyone go there.”

  “You’re in the ceiling.”

  There was a low, almost feral chuckle from above him. “Orright. Maybe I been and saw wot they got there. Wot’s it to you?”

  “I don’t know,” said the nameless boy. “But I think this collar is biotech. Do they do experiments here?”

  “Not officially,” said Kez. “But it’s Marcus. ’Course he does experiments. They just ain’t usually the sort you notice ’appenin’.”

  She’d said that name before. Moreover, the nameless boy heard fear in Kez’s voice. “Who’s Marcus?”

  “You’ll know ’im when you see ’im.”

  “Can I get into the ceiling, too?”

  “Not from there, you can’t. Told you. You ’ave to go through the door.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” said the nameless boy. He pushed back the hair from his forehead and found that he was tugging at the collar again. “If I go near the door I may faint again.”

  “Reckon? Must be that collar, eh?”

  “Probably,” said the nameless boy, feeling cold. “I might be able to modify it a bit, though. Do you think you could get me something small and magnetic?”

  Overhead, Kez snorted. “’Course I can! Wot you want it for?”

  “I think they’ve used magnetic-type locks to keep the access plates shut. I can’t adjust it without opening those.”

  There was a momentary silence that suggested Kez was thinking about her own business as much as his request. Confirming the nameless boy’s suspicion, she said, “Orright, got summink wot might work. You gotta give it back, though.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Yeah, well, you better. Mind yer ’ead—whoops! Sorry ’bout that.”

  The nameless boy, clutching the bit of his head that was now sharp and painful instead of dull and painful, found that he was groaning and tried to muffle the sound in his bedclothes.

  “’S a screwdriver,” said Kez’s voice, unrepentantly cheerful. “Magnetic one. I need it for the doors, so don’t go gettin’ no ideas about keepin’ it, yeah?”

  The nameless boy scowled and snatched up the battered tool. “This? Why would I steal this? I have ones that are much nicer.”

  “Where are they, then?”

  He opened his mouth and shut it again. If she meant to mock him by pointing out that he was imprisoned and his tools were now, presumably, someone else’s, Kez was correct. If she simply meant that his memories weren’t to be trusted, she was just as correct. It didn’t make sense to take offense at something that was true, so he flipped the magnetic screwdriver and applied it unhesitatingly to the lock plates. It didn’t occur to him until he’d done it that he had done it with the ease of long practise and the certainty of established knowledge.

  “Yeah,” said that voice from above. “Gettin’ int’restin’, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” the nameless boy agreed, the tips of his fingers running lightly over the components in his collar. Either they knew, or his mind knew, exactly what piece to pull out. He pulled it out, and found himself holding something small and oblong that looked like metal but probably wasn’t. “Very, very interesting.”

  Guest Passes #34 & #35

  “And this is the garden, sir.”

  “Is it really? I would never have guessed. I suppose those are trees?”

  “I forgot you’re used to being on shipboard all the time,” said Arabella. She added helpfully, “Those are daffodils.”

  “Thank you, Ensign, I know what daffodils are! For your information, I’m also very familiar with trees.”

  “Oh, were you being sarcastic, sir? Perhaps you should give some warning before you do that.”

  “It’s no good,” said Mikkel. “I can see you smiling. All right; what are we doing here?”

  “Not exactly here,” Arabella corrected. “This way, sir. That’s right, behind the hedge. There should be a—ah! There it is.”

  “We’re sitting down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Shh, sir.”

  In a softer voice, Mikkel again enquired, “Why?”

  “We need to stay just here for precisely another two minutes,” said Arabella, sotto voce. “Being very, very quiet.”

  “What then?”

  “Then we need to be strategically loud for roughly thirty seconds. Longer, if we’re not convincing enough.”

  “Loud about what, exactly?”

  “You can express your concerns about the doll-decapitating child, for example.”

  “I’m pretty sure they already know about him.”

  “We’ll want to emphasise that all the doors were opened. I think I can manage to sound reasonably frightened—what about you, sir?”

  “I’d prefer to be comforting again,” Mikkel murmured.

  “That’s not a bad way of doing it,” Arabella said, so thoughtfully that Mikkel was certain they weren’t thinking along the same lines. He was about to tell her exactly what he’d meant when she added: “Shh! Here they are! When it’s time, I’ll start.”

  Business as usual, then, thought Mikkel, with something of a sigh. He preferred it when Arabella wasn’t quite so businesslike. He found that she was looking at him enquiringly, and grinned at her. Much to his surprise, this made her blush faintly. Never one to waste opportunity, Mikkel winked at her.

  This time, Arabella frowned remonstratingly at him and jerked her head in the direction of the decorative hedge they were sitting behind. Mikkel would have grinned at her again despite that if he hadn’t heard, faintly through the hedges, the sound of voices and the crunch of footsteps against decorative pebbles.

  Before the voices had a chance to become distinct, Arabella said in a carrying voice, “I’m shaking! Absolutely shaking! I never thought it would be so dangerous to visit a place like the Holstrom Institute! Your friend should have told you that security wasn’t very good.”


  Had the footsteps stopped? Yes, they had. Mikkel said, “Do you think they’ve got the crazies under control now?”

  “I was never so scared in all my life!” continued Arabella, her voice high and breathless. “All the doors opening like that! And all the patients in the hall! I thought we were going to die, I really did! How do you think it happened?”

  There was the briefest of silences before Mikkel, engaged in making various soothing noises at Arabella’s mimed encouragement, heard a voice say thoughtfully, “It seems that there’s something I need to check on. One of the staff will show you back to my office; there’s something there you might be interested in seeing if you don’t mind waiting for me.”

  Footsteps, the soft hiss of the door opening and closing, and then Arabella said in a congratulatory fashion, “Oh, well done, sir!”

  “Are we following, then?” asked Mikkel, leaping to his feet with alacrity. He couldn’t be feeling so pleased because of that small praise; it must be because they were about to leave this place and this job.

  “Not too quickly, sir,” warned Arabella, preventing him from rounding the edge of the foliage by curling her fingers around the crook of his arm.

  It was a light touch, but it stopped Mikkel in his tracks. “Why, do we have to do something else?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “But I was warned against being seen by that particular person. Although, my employers also mentioned that if we get to the entrance too late we could potentially be seen by someone else we shouldn’t be seen by. They suggested hiding behind the bushes at the front door, but I don’t think we really need to go to that extent, do you, sir?”

  “This is why I don’t like dealing with Fixed Point incursions,” grumbled Mikkel, declining to comment on whether or not hiding in the bushes was advisable.

  “I set both of our timepieces to mark the time.”

  “Very kind of you.”