Sorrow Space

by James Axler

  Striding with the grace of a swan in flight, Kane’s paraplegic liaison led the three Cerberus teammates across the vast room, past the groups of packers and checkers who huddled at various points around the conveyor belts like trained rats in a maze awaiting their food reward.

  “Looks like a broad variety of items being constructed here,” Brigid observed, raising her voice over the discordance of the factory floor.

  Buchs nodded. “Guns, ammo, rigs—you name it,” he trilled with pride. “We’re looking to start up a line of Sandcats.”

  “How can you produce such variety?” Grant asked. “Stuff like this involves a lot of technical know-how.”

  “We acquired one of the databases out in Cobalt,” Buchs explained. “Computer full of designs, just needed to get things up and running here so we could start making them wholesale. Took eighteen months to get this far—and we’re only just getting started.”

  “But all of this takes money,” the paraplegic continued as they passed a production line of minicannons, portable antitank devices that required two men to move them. “And that’s where you boys come in, Mr. Kane.”

  Kane nodded. “Well, let me assure you, I like what I see here. Reckon we can make a solid return on our investment.”

  The mustached negotiator slapped Kane on the back. “We ain’t in the Deathlands now—people expect to get paid for working. But you’ll get back double, mebbe even triple what you put in in the first year alone. I can guarantee you that.

  “Let’s go meet the chief.”

  With that, Buchs led Kane and his companions up a flight of wrought-iron stairs that ran alongside the wall of the factory. The staircase led up two flights to a high L-shaped platform that abutted two adjoining walls of the factory, running the full length of both, high above the workstations. Buchs’s fiberglass legs clanged against the iron stairs.

  As they ascended, Brigid called out to Buchs from behind Kane. “I’m wondering how you manage the distribution once your product is complete, Mr. Buchs.”

  Buchs peered back over his shoulder as he reached the midlevel flight of the staircase. “There are tracks through the ravines,” he explained. “Hard to spot from the air, but they’re there. The smaller stuff we can cart out of here on people or mules. The larger items—well, they make their own way mostly.”

  “Sounds like a tidy arrangement,” Grant muttered as he trudged up the clanging stairs behind his companions, the five sec men following.

  While Kane, like his companions, took pains to conform to the illusion that he was a businessman looking for an investment opportunity, he also used the walk up the stairs to surreptitiously secure a better idea of the factory layout. A conveyor belt of newly completed guns ran beneath the edge of the staircase, their smooth bodies each made of a single vacuum-molded piece. Given the rate of the conveyor belt, Kane estimated that this factory was pumping out upward of two thousand of the handblasters a day. He knew then that he and his team were right to shut this place down; whatever came out of the factory, its ultimate result was more human misery.

  Buchs reached the top of the staircase and turned, directing Kane and his entourage toward a single office that was located here among the rafters overlooking the works.

  The metal catwalk ran along the walls of the factory, lit only by the sunlight that streamed through a series of horizontal slit windows that traced a line around the whole plant. Lights dangled from buzzing fixtures, running off some hidden generator. Up here among the shadows, the owner’s office ran fifteen feet of frosted glass and boards, the latter painted black. The posse walked beside it to reach its lone door. The door, like the walls, had a pane of glass in it, though this one was clear.

  Buchs grasped the office door handle, and Kane glanced through the panel of glass before the door swung back. A wide table ran the length of the room and a man sat dead center in a leather chair. He was shuffling papers but looked up at the sound of the opening door. The man had thinning brown hair drawn back in a ponytail. His face was so gaunt it looked like a skeleton’s, with thick ridges of acne scarring running down both cheeks. His eyes were a blue so pale they appeared almost white. Kane recognized him as soon as he looked up, and his heart began to race. Jerod Pellerito was one of the earliest lawbreakers that Kane had arrested in his career as a Cobaltville Magistrate. If Pellerito should recognize him, Kane knew, then they were probably in a lot of trouble. A whole lot of trouble.

  Without realizing it, Kane held his breath as Buchs pushed the door open for him and encouraged him inside. Kane entered the room at the man’s urging, with Brigid and Grant following close behind.

  The pockmarked man at the desk took a moment to scrutinize his guests, then Kane’s heart sank as the professional smile on Pellerito’s gaunt face drained away.

  “You’re shittin’ me!” Jerod Pellerito exclaimed in disbelief. “Magistrate Kane, you motherless bastard.”

  Chapter 3

  Kane had been younger back then, and much more impulsive. The crimes hadn’t mattered so much, just the hunt and its conclusion. Following in his father’s footsteps, Kane became a full-fledged Magistrate, and he already had that drive to be better, to do better.

  Smart drugs had been appearing in the upper levels of Cobaltville, distilled herbs and plant extracts that appealed to the intelligentsia. Kane and Grant, already partners, had been following the trail for a while, conscious that the problem was increasing. Someone was importing this stuff from beyond the ville walls, but they were moving it quickly, deftly able to sidestep the ville patrols.

  The case had taken on a more serious tone when one of the abusers died from taking a dose. Until then it had been a few privileged kids getting high, but a death made it all much more urgent, raising the stakes and drawing the baron’s attention. Kane had been the responding officer when the call came in. It had been raining when he arrived at the school, dark clouds leering heavily overhead. The school catered to the children of well-heeled parents, doctors and dentists and division supervisors, the professionals and administrators who kept Cobaltville running.

  Kane arrived alone at the principal’s office, the heels of his uniform boots sounding loud in the silent corridors. The whole school had an atmosphere, a weight to it that Kane could feel as he strode the corridors, a kind of misery that was every bit as real as the lime paint on the walls.

  The principal, an open-faced woman with graying hair cut in a long bob, had jumped with surprise when Kane entered her office. He hadn’t knocked; he was a Magistrate, so it was his prerogative to go where he pleased.

  The principal had been sitting at her desk, and Kane could see she had been crying. She dropped the paperwork from her hands as she looked at Kane, eyeing him with fear. Kane wore the standard Magistrate uniform beneath a long black raincoat; black leather polycarbonate armor with a red shield on the left breast to signify his office, a solid black helmet with a visor that came low over the bridge of his nose, hiding his eyes. The uniform had been designed to menace, to create a presence, to instil dread in those who saw it. Clearly the Magistrates were not in the business of making friends.

  “Magistrate—?” the principal began, flustered.

  “Kane,” Kane said helpfully. When she said nothing, he continued. “You’re Principal Neighley. You called the division about a death on the premises. A student.”

  After a moment, Principal Neighley nodded. The movement was confused, as if she had just been woken up. “Yes, Helena Vaughn. Dear Helena.” Then she sighed, shaking her head.

  Sensing that the woman was about to cry again, Kane turned and made his way to the door. “Where is the body?” he asked.

  Principal Neighley followed, sniffling quietly to herself. “Room 2-B, Helena’s homeroom.”

  Neighley walked with Kane, directing him even though it was unnecessary; he could read the signs on the wall t
hat had been written for kids to understand. The woman came up to Kane’s triceps, but he made no allowance for her shorter stride, just hurried on, yearning to see the crime scene and to get started.

  The corridors were quiet, the classroom doors closed. But Kane could sense the eyes watching him, the students talking in heavy whispers, peering through frosted glass at the leather-clad Magistrate among them. Death in a school changed things, changed the school. Five years from now these kids would have left and the student body would have regenerated, and no one here would remember what the girl Helena Vaughn was like. They would just tell the story, and tell ghost stories about her, how she haunted the classrooms, turning the air ice cold, killing students who got stuck here at night.

  “She’s in here, where we found her,” Neighley explained as they reached the door to room 2-B. She looked at Kane for a moment, as if waiting for him to dismiss her, to remove her from this nightmare come to life.

  Kane said nothing, and his helmet made his emotions impenetrable, as if he wasn’t really human.

  Reluctant but resigned, Principal Neighley opened the door into the classroom and she and Kane stepped inside.

  Kane saw her right away, sprawled in her seat, head lolling back so that her long blond hair draped behind her, brushing the floor with its tips.

  “She was an excellent student,” Neighley explained. “We never expected...”

  Kane ignored the woman, stepping closer to the body. A pencil case was open on the girl’s desk, its contents strewn across a personal jotter. A computer dominated the rest of the desk, a modern DDC, equipped for vocal and retinal commands. Kane peered at the screen for a moment but it was blank. Little surprise, it had shut off in the time it had taken for the Magistrate Division to be called in, for Kane to arrive. He looked then at the corpse, taking her in for the first time.

  She was fifteen and beautiful, thin but with the shape of a woman, a subtle touch of makeup on her pale face. Her ash-blue eyes were open, staring vacantly, while her lips were drawn into a moue that made her seem almost to be listening, awaiting her turn to speak in some dangling conversation.

  Removing one black glove, Kane reached down with his bare hand and felt the girl’s neck, confirming there was no pulse. She still felt warm, but Kane could tell she was cooling down, rigor mortis setting in. Without turning back to Neighley, he asked what had happened.

  “We don’t know,” the principal answered. “One minute she was fine, and then she started rocking back and forth and—this. We don’t know.”

  Kane turned, eyeing the room and the principal, his eyes masked by the visor he wore. “Who found her? Was it you?”

  “Instructor Levy,” the principal explained. “It was her form. I think one of the other girls first noticed that dear Helena was behaving strangely and then...” Neighley didn’t go on, instead she broke down in tears, the emotional floodgates finally giving out.

  “I’ll need to speak to them both,” Magistrate Kane said in his professional voice, emotionless.

  Principal Neighley was sobbing, a handkerchief clutched in her tiny, cold hand, the sounds coming around it like the squeak of a rodent. Between sobs, she promised Kane she would find them, and Kane waited while she left the room to locate them.

  Alone now, Kane stared at the girl’s corpse. Sprawled in the chair, Helena didn’t look serene or peaceful to Kane; she simply looked dead. He strode around the body and the desk as the rain lashed the windows, examining the scene through the medium of his visor. Swirling handwriting curled across the open page of the jotter, and tiny pictures had been drawn down the margin, hearts and flowers. Three pens lined up beside Helena’s open pencil case, her name inscribed along their shafts close to the apex.

  And then Kane saw it, peeking out from just under the open mouth of the pencil case itself—a little package of pills. He reached inside, drew the package out with the tip of his index finger, clawing it across the desk’s surface until it could be seen properly. It looked like an ordinary bag, transparent and waterproof with a resealable plastic zipper across the top. Kane peered through the plastic at the contents, three white pills like chalk bullets. They could have been painkillers, but she was dead, right here. Whatever these drugs were, they were sitting right here, too, right inside the lip of her pencil case.

  Kane was still studying the bag’s contents when Instructor Levy and the student who had first alerted her to Helena’s distress walked into the classroom.

  “Magistrate—?” Levy began. She was a young woman with an olive complexion and a jaw that made her face seem too long.

  Glancing up, Kane told them both to sit. Then he took the package of pills and, ignoring Levy, showed it to the kid, a brunette with tousled hair as if she had just gotten out of bed. The girl looked intimidated even before he began.

  “You recognize these?” Kane asked.

  The brunette visibly swallowed, her eyes flicking left and right before she broke down in tears. Ten minutes later, Kane knew everything, from what they were to where they came from and who was supplying them. Smart drugs, chemicals designed to make their users more intelligent. They were supposed to enhance a user’s concentration, ensure a greater level of recall, make the brain run quicker.

  Whether they did or not, Kane could certainly see the appeal. Cobaltville was a strictly regimented society where prestige was bound up with status. As a rule, its people were born into their class with very little room for movement—those who were close to the baron lived in the highest levels of the Residential Enclaves; those designated the dregs of society would have a tough time escaping the Tartarus Pits at the base of the structure. In between, the other tiers all had their checks and balances, ensuring a society that remained static and docile. As a Magistrate, Kane saw more of it than most ever would.

  To maintain social status, the pressure was on to succeed, to stay smart and beautiful so you would fit in, retain your family’s position. These schoolkids knew that better than most; they felt it every day, in every lesson, at every family meal.

  Kane had grown up the son of a Magistrate, and it was expected that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. His father had drummed that into him over and over when he was just a child. These kids would be getting that same speech every night from their parents, assuring that they, too, must become doctors and dentists and supervisors in the Historical Division. It didn’t take much for a kid under that kind of pressure to get sucked into drugs, especially the kind that promised a shortcut to their goals.

  “Ain’t no shortcuts,” Kane muttered as he exited the school premises, back out into the driving rain.

  * * *

  THE KID RAN IN THE SAME social circle, but he was smart already. Smart enough to know what his classmates wanted and how to package it for them in bite-size chunks that he could sell for a tidy profit. Where he was getting the ingredients from was still a mystery to Kane, but he would find that out in time.

  Magistrate Kane didn’t bother to knock when he reached the Pelleritos’ apartment; he just walked right in. The Program of Unification had decreed that no citizen of the villes could have a lock on his or her door; trust was expected of every person if society was to function.

  Jerod Pellerito wasn’t home, and his parents, well, they weren’t anywhere at all. Later, Kane would discover that Jerod had slipped through the net after his parents had been hurt in an engineering accident at the plant where they both worked. Now, the mother was dead and the father was in a coma in the medical facility, just as he had been the past seven months and would probably be for the next seven, at the very least. Their son, the fourteen-year-old Jerod, had been left with a lot of time to explore Cobaltville without supervision, and he had made some new friends in the undercity where things were a little closer to lawlessness than the Magistrates would care to admit.

  Kane stood at the open door, listening. A
short corridor stretched back from the front door, tunneling into the meager apartment in the residential complex, the same rabbit warren as everyone else. The apartment was all straight lines, dominated by a large living area with a single, flat window that looked out over west Cobaltville. The light from the far window was filtered through the heavy rainclouds, casting the interior in a miasma of shadows and gloom.

  Stepping over the threshold, Kane powered his Sin Eater handgun into his hand from its hiding place in the wrist holster beneath his right sleeve. The weapon seemed to take shape in Kane’s hand, extending to its full fourteen inches in length, a stubby muzzle jutting from its cruel, black body. The official side arm of the Magistrate Division, the Sin Eater was equipped with 9 mm rounds. The trigger had no guard, as the necessity had never been foreseen that any kind of safety features for the weapon would ever be required. A Magistrate’s judgment was, after all, above suspicion. Kane held his finger straight as the weapon slapped into the palm of his hand; if his index finger had been crooked the pistol would have begun firing automatically.

  Warily, Kane took a step into the apartment. He didn’t expect trouble, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t come. Kane nosed into the dark apartment, the Sin Eater stretched out before him in a two-handed grip. Kane listened with preternatural intensity, his fabled point-man sense reaching out to try to detect possible dangers. The apartment buzzed and clicked as the hot water churned in the tank and the refrigerator hummed to itself, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Magistrate business,” Kane called out, breaking the silence. “Anyone home?” His words echoed back to him from hard walls and empty rooms, but no one else made a sound.