Sharp

by Alex Hughes

  The medic sat back in the chair, as if looking for more support for a tired body. “In plain language, then. He should be able to walk around normally, even climb stairs if he takes them slowly. He’ll be able to live normally if he’ll pay attention to his body and its limits. He may have to sit for part of the day to teach classes, for example. But he will have to build back up to such things, and there are costs involved. I can say the system is unlikely to clog again, at least for several years, decades if he takes care of himself. But it won’t be what it was.”

  I sat back, the import of all of this suddenly too much to bear.

  “What do we need to do going forward?” I asked. “I know I went through classes on this, but I can’t seem to remember how to push recovery. I’m not sure we ever learned about anything this big.”

  “No, it’s fine. In a telepathy focus, you wouldn’t.” Vega sighed. “As I told his wife, it’s important for him to eat protein, a lot of real animal protein, for a few weeks while his body replaces the protein I stole from the muscle tissue to repair the scarring. He’ll be weak for a while, and he’ll lose far more weight than looks natural, but that’s part of the process. In a few weeks he should be ready to start working on his endurance.”

  I swallowed. “What do you mean, endurance?”

  “It will take time to learn to walk any distance again, to stand and talk for long periods. It may always hurt him to get his heartbeat above a certain level. The scar tissue isn’t going away. It will not be the way it was, ever.”

  “This is the best the Guild can do? You’ve made him a cripple.”

  He sat up then. “Your friend nearly died. The best the normals could do was give him another year or two—and that if he survived the next week, which was highly unlikely. I’ve just given your friend his life back. At considerable cost to myself, I might add. I’ll be in pain for days—if not a week—after this, and I’ll be lucky if I can keep food down at all for that time. A little gratefulness wouldn’t be out of order here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. He was right. Every apology still felt like rehab, still felt like my nose in the dirt, swallowing dust and crud. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my friend. I will never forget this.”

  He sighed and stood up, and I noticed this time how controlled the movement was, like it hurt, like it hurt on a deep level.

  “Listen, about payment . . .”

  “I was under the impression that this trip would be covered by the Enforcement division.”

  “I’d like to pay you what I can. In money. The rest we can set up on an installment plan, or work out some other way.”

  He nodded. “Here’s how you reach the correct parties to work out details.” He held out a small circular chip, like a poker chip, with silver edges. Inside was written a phone number. “Sorry about the pretension, but they find they get lost less this way.”

  I put it in a pocket. “Thank you. Really. He’s important to me.”

  “He must be.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “You’re late.” Cherabino stood in the lobby of the Peachtree Building, arms crossed, foot tapping. Michael was next to her with one of his notebooks, jotting the occasional item as passersby crossed the lobby.

  “I got caught up.” I didn’t specify what in.

  We were standing in one of the largest skyscrapers on earth, with a huge bank of escalators going up three stories from the marbled lobby floor to the main elevators in a towering display of anti-grav technology. Stairs floated, apparently without support, in a long line going up, up, carrying people in a smooth glide on clear floating glass panels.

  Each floating stair fed up through a belt, settling into the anti-grav fields individually, like smoked-glass rectangles falling up a waterfall in neat rows. The power required to run the thing had to be as much as (or more than) a full transcontinental floating Mack truck—or three—and the materials were specialized and highly tuned, but the real technology of the place was in the rotating belt below, and the stabilizing panels on either side.

  “Is Swartz going to be okay?” Cherabino had read it off my thoughts without any sloppiness on my part.

  You’re getting better at this, I said. But I didn’t really care what she read off me, not right now. Swartz was going to be fine. That was all that mattered in the whole wide world.

  Cherabino nodded, responding to the thought thread, and Michael came up on the balls of his feet, his cop’s instincts reacting to body language that didn’t match the verbal conversation. On the streets, that meant there was another layer, a deeper layer—and frequently violence in the works.

  I smiled at him, which settled him slightly—and put the conversation back firmly on verbal ground. “They’re on the third floor, right? The most prestigious?”

  Cherabino nodded. “Where everyone is forced to come through the escalators here and see how rich they are. Let’s get moving.”

  I stepped onto the next plank carefully; it wobbled before taking my full weight, rising smoothly up the stairs. The handrail next to me was a shiny but conventional belt system—I held on to it firmly.

  “Doesn’t this bother you?”

  I shook my head. “Gravity works on another system, somehow. Doesn’t interact with Mindspace at all.” Which was good; if the anti-grav systems made the waves in Mindspace that strong electromagnetic and quantum fields did, I’d be in trouble just walking down the street with all the cars overhead. “Don’t ask me why it works like that.”

  “Why would it bother him?” Michael asked.

  “Strong electromagnetic fields and Mindspace interact. Pay attention next time we visit the morgue. The coolers give off a . . . Well, it’s faint, but it’s unpleasant. And in the grand scheme of things, they’re not even that strong. If you want to get away with fooling me about something, that’s the time.”

  I found my footing on the regular ground and turned left. There, in a single sheet of artificially grown ruby, the words FLAWLESS ARCHITECTURE appeared, raised and in black. And I’d thought the Guild was pretentious.

  “Why are we here again?” I asked Cherabino as we got closer to the smoked-glass wall. “I thought we already interviewed this guy over the phone.”

  “I’m out of leads and feeling thorough. The Dymani Systems interviews were a bust. Besides, sometimes people will tell you things a few days later they won’t tell you at the time. And maybe we have better questions.”

  Cherabino pushed through the ruby-handled door, Michael behind, and I hustled to keep up.

  “DeKalb County Police Department, Detective Cherabino and team,” she was saying as I finally entered, as she flashed her badge. “I need to speak with Dan Hamilton’s supervisor. I believe his name is Edelman.”

  The receptionist, a striking woman in her twenties with an expensive dress and hair dyed to mimic the hide of a zebra, looked closely at her badge before picking up the phone.

  * * *

  Edelman was a short man and very wide, bald with white eyebrows, looking like nothing so much as a shaved short Santa. He was even wearing a red shirt under a plain gray suit with white trim. But when I got closer, the impression changed—his nose was red, with the broken-blood-vessel look I associated with heavy drinkers, and the circles under his eyes were deep and dark. He slumped as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and even a few feet away, even with him practically mind-deaf, I felt his worry and anxiety hit me like an anvil dropped from a high building. Huh. It was late in the day for me to be picking up even strong emotions without trying. Either he had a nontrivial Ability level or I was better today. A lot better, for no good reason.

  Edelman’s office was a small space, three metal walls and a smoked-glass front, a large wooden desk sharing space with an architect’s table in the background. There was a great deal of dust on the architect’s table but none on the desk.

  Cherabin
o shook the man’s outstretched hand, settling into the chair he indicated while Michael and I took up standing positions near the door—now closed, at Edelman’s request. Introductions were accomplished quickly, and then Edelman spoke.

  “I told you over the phone, Detective, Hamilton hasn’t shown up for work. He’s still gone, and good riddance. After this long without calling, it’s mandatory termination anyway, and after that blueprint went missing . . .”

  Cherabino said, “There was a blueprint missing?”

  “Yeah. We found it a few days after he flew the coop, and I can’t prove anything, but I’m sure the bastard took it. He’s always doing something sneaky, and I’m—”

  “Why is this important enough to mention in your first sentence?” I asked.

  Edelman blinked. “I thought you knew about this.”

  “Obviously we don’t. Catch us up, please.”

  “I called the TCO and everything. You can’t possibly say that—”

  “We’re not here to bust your chops, Mr. Edelman,” Cherabino cut in. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Emily Hamilton.”

  The TCO? What in the hell were in those blueprints?

  Edelman sat back and took a breath. I could hear him cursing a blue streak, loudly, in his thoughts. “No, no, I guess I deserved this. Giving the whole team unrestricted access to the archives, you’d think I’d know better. But it seemed stupid to tie people’s hands from doing their jobs, and there’s some good old designs there you can sell like new with just a little modification. I’ve always said, recycle, reuse. It’s cheaper for everyone.”

  “The blueprints?” Cherabino prompted.

  “They’re perfectly legitimate business records. You can’t possibly think we’re in violation of the Tech Control laws. Like I said, I called the TCO. I’ll give you the case number. You can verify it.”

  This guy was scattered and worried. I took a step forward, putting a hand on Cherabino’s chair so she’d let me run with it.

  “Edelman, is it?”

  The man nodded hurriedly.

  “Edelman, no one’s here about the Tech,” I said. “Just tell us what the blueprints are for. An old data center?”

  He shook his head. “One of the big computer-driven hotels. There’s a whole series on the proper installation of the resident supercomputer Tech system in a decorative bank along the spine of the building, you know, where you could see it from the elevators. It’s a gorgeous piece of architectural history. It’s worth studying, just for the design! But the blueprints—only the Tech pages were stolen. You have to understand, only the employees ever get access, and we have the strongest security available by law. I never thought—”

  “Why do you think Dan Hamilton was the one to take the blueprints?” Cherabino asked. “You said everyone had access.”

  Edelman, if even possible, looked more upset. “One of the receptionists was cleaning out his desk this morning. She came across—she saw . . . ”

  “What did she see, Mr. Edelman?”

  “A corner, torn off, from where the wood in the desk drawer had pinched it. It has the correct serial number. The only serial number. We don’t repeat them, you see. We can’t. In three hundred years of business, we’ve never repeated the number. That son of a bitch stole from us, and worse, he stole something that could cause us regulatory trouble. If someone hadn’t gone to look for that exact file, I shudder to think how long we might not have noticed it missing.”

  Cherabino sat forward in her chair. “So, when did you notice it exactly? How long had it been gone?”

  “Like I told you, a few days after he stopped coming to work. It could have been missing for weeks, I suppose, but the bastard disappeared. Obviously he took it and ran.”

  I backed up and let her do her thing, squeezing as much information from this round, earnest guy as could possibly be done.

  I was starting to think Cherabino’s case and the hijackings were related by more than my suspicion.

  * * *

  I called the hospital and got bumped around among four departments until somebody, somewhere bothered to look up the records.

  “Jonathon Swartz?” The file clerk made a “hmm” sound.

  “That’s right.” I gave him the birthday. “Where did they put him?” Maybe if I was lucky, they would transfer him to that office building across the street and I could actually visit.

  More “hmms” and the sound of rapidly shifting papers, then, reluctantly, a few keystrokes. Finally: “Ah. It says here he’s been released after medic therapy, whatever that means.”

  “Released?”

  “As in, on his way home. Probably a relative took him home—they usually make a note of it if someone had to call a cab.”

  “He’s okay?”

  “I’m giving you the information I have, sir. If there’s a follow-up scheduled or an ongoing issue not in the chart, I wouldn’t know about it.” He paused. “Who are you exactly again?”

  “A friend,” I said, and hung up the phone.

  I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair and looked at the clock. Bellury had already left, but it was close to quitting time—maybe I could get Cherabino to drive me over there.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, I was sitting outside her cubicle impatiently while she finished up her current project. Probably Swartz wouldn’t even see me. Probably he was sleeping, and Selah was awfully protective, or had been, the one time I’d actually seen her after . . .

  I took a breath, told myself there wasn’t time for a cigarette no matter how much I wanted one, and sure as hell I wasn’t going to Swartz’s with thoughts of my drug echoing in my brain.

  The patch in my head was bothering me, bothering me a lot. I poked at it, despite the sharp pain it radiated down my spine. I poked at it—

  “Stop that,” Cherabino said from the end of the cubicle. She was standing up, pissed. “Whatever that is, stop it. If you ever want us to actually leave, I have to finish this and I can’t do that with whatever that is going off like a buzzer. Now, are you going to let me do my job or what?”

  I slumped farther down in my chair. “Stopping now.”

  She glared at me for one final moment. “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  But she was still standing there.

  “What?”

  She blew out a breath. “It’s going to be another twenty minutes, probably. If you’re bored you can work on that PI paperwork that I got you.”

  I straightened in the chair. “When did you get me paperwork?”

  “This morning. Bellury keeps them on hand for the disability folks and retirees. If you’d told me you cared sooner . . .”

  “I didn’t know I cared sooner,” I protested.

  “Well, if you want them, they’re in the front file in the top cabinet drawer. Try not to make a lot of noise, okay?” She paused, and for once I actually saw real concern in her. “Swartz is going to be okay, you know that, right?”

  A hundred responses went through my head, some flippant, some real and full of despair and horror and hope.

  “He will be. Now do work and we’ll go see him so you can see for yourself.”

  In a voice that cracked, I choked out, “Cherabino?”

  “What?”

  I took a breath. “I found that Irish teleporter we talked about. He says he’ll meet Jacob next week. He doesn’t want me there that first time, says I’ll throw off his tactics. But you can go, he said.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I still need to work right now.”

  “I know.”

  She pulled out my old chair—now Michael’s—and held it out for me.

  I found the right papers and sat down.

  Two minutes later, Stone was in my head, the intrusion like a c
langing dissonant bell.

  I heard what you did with the payment, he told me. You realize that’s only a tenth of the value of the service.

  I swallowed, hard, and tried to raise shields—I wanted him out, not that that would happen—but I also wanted Cherabino not to overhear.

  Even less than that, Stone continued. And now you’ve opened a tab. Unless you have a little over two million ROCs in change sitting around, you need to talk to me about alternatives.

  You said you’d announce yourself, not start up a marching band in my skull, I responded. And two million is ridiculous. It was three hundred thousand ROCs when I left, tops.

  I’m sorry. He modulated his tone, getting a lot quieter. That was ten years ago, before the cardiac shortages, and the Guild rate increases across the board. That’s still the bill.

  I hope you’re proud of yourself for fleecing me. Now get the hell out of my brain.

  This isn’t over, I heard.

  Like an expert file clerk, he fanned through my surface thoughts quickly, pulling out details and emotions I hadn’t realized I had. Thirty seconds of unwanted, unnecessary scanning—

  You agreed to this.

  —and then it was over.

  I got my breath. Cherabino was already on her way over, sensing something wrong. You don’t have to be an asshole about it, I told Stone.

  And for a moment, I felt the comment register and his regret in return.

  I’m doing my job, he said. And I’m doing it fairly.

  And then he was gone.

  Cherabino sighed. “This had better be a genuine problem and not a return to the distract-Cherabino game.”

  I ran my hands through my hair and tried to figure out how to explain—without admitting I was working with either the Guild or anyone else in my head. I couldn’t figure out anything.

  “I’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.”

  She took longer than she’d said, of course. Cherabino was a workaholic, and stressed lately. So I called Swartz from the phone near the coffee closet, the hallway empty. It was past quitting time for first shift, and the next seemed oddly deserted. I was wondering if they’d been gutted in the layoffs. It was getting so the other cops wouldn’t even look at me.