by John Meaney
“All-time pads?”
“Correct.”
Vilnar took the pads from Lamis, and put them on the seat beside him. Then he took a fountain pen from his pocket—polished quartz, a present from the mayor's office—unscrewed the cap, and pressed down on one pad, marking it. On its twin, an identical mark appeared.
“Good.” Vilnar looked at Lamis's reflection in the rear-view mirror. “I'll leave one with the Brodowskis. Excellent thinking, my friend.”
“It's what the city pays me for.”
“Actually, they pay you to drive me around.”
“Ha. So what do they know?”
Commissioner Vilnar stared out through the side window at the dark, massive penitentiary.
“Very, very little, as it turns out.”
Eventually, Finross died.
Magnesium-white flashbulbs popped as photographers recorded the aftermath: a dummylike corpse, its nerves and arteries spilling out like lace. Tomorrow's Tristopolitan Gazette would doubtless feature a large blue-and-white photograph of Finross on page one. Other newspapers, from other cities, would run photos and reports of diminishing size, the farther away their readership was based. Across the northern border in Illurium, there might be a small paragraph, no picture. To the south, in Trilaxia and Shudderland, it was unlikely to make the news at all.
And the day after, Finross would be forgotten by nearly everybody.
So long as you're suffering somehow, you bastard. That'll be justice.
But there was no joy for Donal as he watched attendants remove the body, ready for transport to whichever Energy Authority complex had been designated to receive it. Usually that would be the Westside Complex, the closest; but sometimes technical circumstances meant that workers at a more distant complex could process the body more quickly. Donal knew the theory: the less delay between death and processing, the more the bones would howl with suffering inside the necrofusion pile.
It wasn't a theory widely discussed beyond legal circles. Ordinary citizens preferred to believe that they would pay no particular price beyond death for the comforts they had received in life. But cops could no more ignore the reality of the reactor piles than they could turn away from a terminal traffic accident. And processing their first TTA was a rite of passage for virtually every rookie of the Tristopolis PD.
“Lieutenant?” Dr. Thalveen touched his arm.
“Huh? Sorry, I was dreaming.”
“It's self-awareness that's the danger.” Thalveen's eyes were stonily certain. “Dreaming is very … human.”
“You've lost me.”
“Thoughts becoming aware of thoughts. Most people would say that's what defines humanity, what makes us—them—different from animals. But thoughts can sense thoughts sensing thoughts … and infinite self-recursion is a mortal danger. If you can call us mortal.”
“I'll bear that in mind.” Donal looked away, then back at Thalveen. “Just how old are you, Doctor?”
“I was thirty-one when I died.”
“Yeah, but how long—?”
“All complex systems change.”
“I notice you didn't say living systems.”
“Very observant, Lieutenant. Were you always that sensitive to subtleties of language?”
Donal felt his expression tighten, consciously relaxed his facial muscles, then realized the fineness of his neuromuscular control, and felt a sick sense of wrongness.
“You'll get used to it,” added Thalveen. “Given time.”
“That's comforting.”
The attendants had left with Finross's body. In the empty chamber, the execution bier no longer seemed threatening. Now it was just an ordinary block of stone, and the chamber was an ordinary chamber. Finross's dying was over.
Laura. Can you somehow know that Finross is gone?
Thalveen hefted his indigo medical bag, and looked around at the departing journalists and bureaucrats.
“Looks like the show is over”—he cast his voice so it would carry—“until the next time.”
No one turned to look. But the tension in shoulders and torsos, the tiny but visible shuddering of several men and women, were obvious enough for Donal to read. Thalveen's lips pulled back in something like a smile.
“Who says zombies have no sense of humor?”
Donal checked the expressions on the living humans, then turned and strode along the row of seats, away from Thalveen, not looking back.
“You'll get used to it. Given time.”
Walking away was one thing. Trying to forget Thalveen's words was something else.
The ambulance—the second ambulance to depart from here today with a fresh corpse on board—had already taken off. Donal descended the steps on which runes continued to glow red, then stopped at the edge of the knucklebone gravel drive. The two gray-suited men stared up at the bat-winged shape gliding against the indigo sky.
“Hades speed you,” said one.
His colleague made the Sign of the Ax, murmuring a prayer.
“Good riddance,” said Donal.
He walked past, hoping they would react by attacking him, knowing they wouldn't. He carried on, conscious of the bones crunching beneath his shoes, until he saw the Brodowski brothers. They were standing still, hands at their sides, gazes unfocused.
Ensorcelled?
Donal's hand was inside his jacket, grasping the butt of his Magnus in its shoulder holster. He walked closer. He didn't draw, not yet.
“For … you.” Al raised his left hand, still in trance. “From the … Commissioner.”
“Thanatos,” muttered Donal.
It was a small notepad that Al held out. Donal remained an arm's length away.
“Why would the Old Man give you that for me?”
“ Can't be … seen. With … you … today.”
Certainly, Commissioner Vilnar had not looked in Donal's direction during the execution, not even once. It had been a very public cold-shouldering.
“Hold the thing out, Al.”
Al's hand slowly rose.
I need to get him, out of trance.
Donal had received trance-training at the Police Academy, but mostly defensive, to prevent falling under another's spell.
Didn't save the diva, did it?
That was an old guilty thought that Donal pushed aside now. The question was whether to try talking Al back to a conscious waking state, or to get help from someone inside the—
What the fuck?
Black cursive handwriting was growing across the notepad. I'm assured you're reading this right n
Donal blinked as he took a step back. He whipped out his Magnus, centering on Al first, then swiveling, taking in Bud—who remained immobile—then the surroundings. No one was coming for him.
He glanced back at the pad.
I'm assured you're reading this right now, Lieutenant. You've heard of an all-time pad? This is one. It's like a hex-entangled warrant, but smarter because
Laura had used hex-entangled cross-border arrest warrants. Donal had been able to carry warrants that showed the suspects’ details as blanks, waiting for a judge back in Tristopolis to later fill in the names—which would simultaneously appear on Donal's copies. I can blank it out like this.
There was a five-second delay, then the pad reinitialized to blank-ness. After another moment, new words appeared. This is your objective. I want you to
The writing stopped, then a line scored through the last four words, before the handwriting continued.
This is your objective. I want you to Go to the Westside Complex, where I've authorized you to observe the forensic Bone Listeners work Make some excuse to leave the chamber, and go alone to find the minus-30th floor. There, go to Director Braune's office. He's just resigned. His safe combination is 3-7-pentangle-5-talon-2-9-1. Retrieve contents. Bring to me.
Perhaps the pad worked both ways, but Donal had no intention of putting down his gun and taking his attention from the environment. In any case, what would he ask to veri
fy the writer's identity? It wasn't as if he had a long, friendly past with the commissioner. He knew nothing of Vilnar's private life, neither his wife's name nor his pet's, nor even if he had a pet.
The words blanked out once more, then:
You'll have a chance to give me the papers in person. Sometime in the next few days. Until then, guard them.
“Maybe,” muttered Donal.
He scanned in every direction again, remembering to glance up at the blank indigo sky then down at the gravel beneath his feet, for wraith-hands reaching up to snatch him. Then Bud Brodowski began to sway. Good luck
And the notepad page was blank in Al's grasp. Donal snatched it just as Al, too, began to blink rapidly.
“Are you two all right?” said Donal.
The brothers yawned and shrugged their massive shoulders.
“Huh? ’Course we are.”
“Why wouldn't we be?”
Donal tucked the notepad inside his jacket.
“Lieutenant? You got a gun in your hand.”
“Do I? Well, I won't need it.” He reholstered. “I'm safe with you two around, don't you think?”
“Too right.”
“Freakin’ A.”
Cars were filing from the parking area, with a magnified rustling from the knucklebone sea they rolled across. Few vehicles were left. The dark piles of Wailing Towers were returning to their normal desolate state.
Donal tried to let out a calming breath, then realized his lungs had been empty since he spoke. He sucked in some air.
“We've got a mission,” he said. “Before going back to HQ.”
“Doughnuts from Fat'n’Sugar?”
“Beers from Tentacle Sam's?”
“I was thinking we could see the place”—Donal decided not to smile—“where they put the bones to work.”
The brothers looked at each other, hunched their shoulders like gloomy gorillas, and climbed inside the car without a word.
Their route followed a black granite overpass that stood on barbed stone legs a hundred feet above the banking district of Obsidian Spires, where security gargoyles launched themselves from ledges to glide in watchful arcs, hoping for a chance to use their venom. The overpass descended to the Arachnia Twistabout, where Al followed a helical route through a nine-spiral intersection, exiting via the westside ramp, three levels belowground.
They continued to the main tunnel of the Hypotown Expressway, its blood-red porcelain walls shimmering with the traffic's reflected headlights, echoing with the magnified roar of engines. Alongside them, in the next lane, traveled a black tanker bearing a silver skull-and-Ouroboros logo. The vehicle belonged to the Energy Authority. Its cargo, whatever it was, caused a strange resonance in Donal: wet slugs sliding along his nerves.
“You sense that?”
“Huh?” said Bud.
“Never mind.” Donal glanced out at the glistening red walls. “You ever heard that the Expressway was a giant serpent, centuries ago? Turned inside out by mages?”
“Heard a lot of things when we were growing up. Like, how telling lies makes your dick shrink, which explains a lot about Al.”
“Hades, so that's the reason.” Al maintained watchful control, his attention mostly on the tunnel ahead, periodically checking the mirrors. “You coulda told me sooner.”
Donal laughed. Perhaps this visit to the Westside Complex was all right, in the Brodowskis’ company.
“You guys should be psych counselors, you know that?”
“Say what?”
“Call it Barbarian Therapy.”
“Hey, I like that,” said Al. “We could have a motto: ‘Get a grip, or we'll bust your teeth in.’ ”
“That's just stupid.” Bud clicked his fingers. “I got it. ‘We'll straighten your head out, or rip it right off.’ ”
“It's a winner.” Donal smiled, ignoring the cold, slick sensation that the tunnel was inducing. “You could open up a private practice. I'll invest, and make a fortune.”
“Yeah, if you had any money to—” Bud broke off. “Shit.”
“Sorry,” said Al. “I mean, Bud said it, but I'd forgotten too.”
“That's all right,” Donal told them. “Really. I'm a poor boy from the orphanage, you know? I can't get used to it either.”
Laura had named Donal her sole beneficiary, in a revised will drawn up some night while the still-living Donal had slept, as ordinary humans must. There had been only two restrictions. One was that he keep ownership of the apartment (occupying the entire 227th story of the prestigious Darksan Tower) for as long as possible. The other was that he look after the Vixen, the car that was also—somehow—Laura's half sister. How that could be possible was a mystery to Donal.
They drove on for a minute in silence. Then Al said: “Is it true your new apartment is as big as a whorehouse?”
“Oh, yeah,” answered Donal. “You'd feel right at home.”
Bud chuckled. “That told you, bro.”
“Guess so.” But as Al took a downward-sloping exit, he added a comment that was disconcerting, coming from someone with a neck like a tree stump. “Might be a wise thing to shift your money elsewhere, Lieutenant, way the city's going. I mean, right out of the country.”
Looking across at his brother, Bud nodded.
“One a them Unity Party pricks was recruiting members,” he said, “right there in the gym. Had to bounce him off the lockers a little, y'know? Just a bit of discouragement.”
“Inside the Department?” said Donal. “Shit. Thanks for putting him straight.”
What am I, a spokesman for zombiekind?
“Anytime.”
The tunnel was shading into darkness. First the red walls deepened to burgundy, then purple, and finally black. No other vehicles came this way. Al switched the headlights to main beam, slowing as he drove. Several minutes later, he stopped the car.
Ahead, the tunnel appeared to end in a solid, dark metal disk bearing a raised skull-and-Ouroboros. Then a jagged vertical split appeared, pistons hissed, and the heavy half doors ground their way into stonework, revealing an access tunnel to the Westside Complex proper. Blue flamewraiths drifted along the tunnel, on guard.
“Lovely place,” he said.
“A day trip to the necrofusion piles.” Al put the cruiser back into gear. “What could be nicer?”
“Can't think of anything,” muttered Bud. “Not a Death-damned thing.”
Donal left the Brodowskis drinking coffee in a waiting room, while he went through a succession of scanfields—including a billowing aurora that made his nerves whine as it passed through him—until finally two men in gray coveralls greeted him.
“Commissioner Vilnar arranged everything, Lieutenant,” said the larger man.
His colleague gestured toward a nine-sided door. “The Bone Listener may have begun already. You can go straight in.”
Floating flames, an inch before the door, read:
MORTISECTION—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Very kind of you,” said Donal.
A faint resonance inside his nerves indicated the presence of nearby life-wards, a sensation he had learned to recognize.
“The only thing is …”
“What's that?”
“Um, if you could be careful to stay in the chamber, it would be … safer.”
“Thank you.” Donal modulated his voice to sound pleasant. “I'll do just that.”
But he was reading the movement of facial muscles, and the intentions that both men were trying to hide. Expecting a police lieutenant was one thing; expecting an undead detective was something else. They weren't concerned about his safety, they were worried that he might penetrate inner defenses designed to keep out only living beings, on the assumption that the outer security layers would have already stopped any undead intruder. The same outer layers through which Donal, as an authorized visitor, had already passed.
Was this why Vilnar had wanted Donal to be here?
The door to the mortisection cha
mber rolled open, and he saw a Bone Listener standing inside. The man looked to be in his early twenties, with the high forehead and moist deep-brown eyes of his kind.
“Bone Listener Pinderwin,” said Donal, “may I come inside?”
“Lieutenant. Please do.”
An unpleasant resonance swept through Donal as he entered. Inside the chamber, he felt as if someone had just rinsed him through with dirty water.
“Please call me Lexar,” added the Bone Listener. “My sympathies regarding Commander Steele.”
“Thank you. I'm Donal. And I didn't get a chance to give you my condolences. Dr. d'Alkernay was an amazing person.”
“The finest forensic Bone Listener for generations.” Lexar gestured toward Finross's nerve-and artery-draped corpse lying on a ceramic table. “And this one had some kind of involvement in both their deaths.”
“Yes.”
“What a pity, for him. Even dead, he may experience regret.”
Donal did not want to ask what Lexar meant by that. Instead, he just watched as Lexar snapped open an instrument case, and drew out a short, dark-blue trident with an orange handle.
“I've never seen anything like that,” said Donal.
“You've only witnessed autopsies at the OCML, I take it.”
“Well, yes.”
The Office of the Chief Medical Listener was where forensic Bone Listeners carried out most of their work. That remained true, even though the establishment currently had no chief, no replacement for the murdered Wilhelmina d'Alkernay.
“You'll find things a little different here.” Lexar crossed to the wall, and pressed the heel of his palm against a raised green pentagonal button. “The processing is much faster, for one thing.”
The ceiling, of flat pale-gray stone, began to slide to one side. Revealed above it was a high, dark concave chamber. In that chamber hung a black tree, inverted as though growing toward the floor. Perched in the tree was a several-hundred-strong flock of silver birds, small and shining, with slender, hooked beaks.
A clanging sounded on the heavy metal door through which Donal had entered.
“That'll be the phone company knocking,” said Lexar. “Getting impatient.”
“Excuse me?” Donal must have misheard. “Did you say the phone company?”
