by Jean Rabe
Ella grabbed her aching side, then felt herself flying forward, her feet tangled in her long dress. The ground rushed up, and she slammed hard into the bricks.
The stranger bent down and his muscled arm shot out, fingers closing on a slender ankle. Ella flailed, grabbing at the cracks between the bricks and trying to pull herself toward the end of the alley—closer to the park and to the people gathered there, who were always by the fountain late at night, drinking and laughing and wading in the water.
She felt her battered knees, her sore ribs, which were probably cracked because she’d never bothered with bone lacing, had never thought she’d need it. But she also felt like she was making progress. Clawing at the street with all her strength, Ella dragged the man with her, until at last she saw faint light filtering into the end of the alley. The streetlight from the park.
“Help!” she screamed as the stranger tightened his grip. So strong. Impossibly strong. Pain shot up her left leg as the bones in her ankle broke, then she felt the stranger’s hands on her other leg, squeezing until those bones splintered, too.
Tears spilled from Ella’s eyes, and her chest heaved as she was harshly rolled over. Pain stabbed up from her shattered legs, and she stared in mute terror as the stranger placed a heavy foot on her silk-covered stomach.
Ella whimpered, tears slid down her perfectly sculpted face. She felt the heated knife pierce her skin, heard her blood begin to sizzle, and in that instant, she caught a glimpse of an empty Brisbane stage, and knew she’d never see the real thing.
Two
Hangover Cure
“January.” The word rolled off Nininiru Tossinn’s tongue like a curse. Probably snowin’ in Chicago right now.
She pictured big, wet flakes lazily floating down to join the wind-carved drifts. The air cold enough to see her breath. Ice skimmers at the edge of Lake Michigan, and hot chocolate and after-Christmas sales that filled the sidewalks with bundled-up bargain-hunters.
Ruefully shaking off the image, Ninn headed down Roslyn Street toward a growing crowd illuminated by flashing nightclub signs and elevated police spotlights.
“I hate summer,” she muttered. This one had been brutal, with record temperatures. It was just past midnight, two days after New Year’s Eve, and still too annoyingly warm, despite the late hour. Ninn felt drops of sweat trickling down her face, and tugged up the edge of her shirt to wipe them off.
As she drew closer, she spotted an Aborigine at the edge of the crowd. Thin, old, out of place among the sea of white bodies; he futilely stood on his bare tiptoes to see over the shoulders of those in front of him. Out of place in the Cross, she thought. Hell, I’m outta place here, too. I should go back to Chicago.
Nearby were four men in soiled green coveralls, with satchels over their shoulders and dirt caked on their shoes. Likely opal miners who’d hopped off the late tram and stopped on their way home to get a look at what everybody else was gaping at. Impossible for them to see through the crowd that Ninn estimated at seven or eight bodies deep, a good-sized assembly for the middle of the week and time of day.
Teenagers—bangers, no doubt, judging by their ragged leather, plastic, and denim clothes, vivid purple and blue hair, and glowing tats—darted in and out of the fringes of the crowd, taunting people who snapped at them.
They’re up to somethin’, definitely, the bangers, Ninn decided. But none of my business. And she had no nuyen in her pockets for them to steal.
There were entertainers, too, scattered in the crowd. She noted a second-rate dwarf magician from the Bayswater Hole. Seen him once. Not good enough to go back for a repeat viewing. A pair of dancers, maybe from the magician’s act, tittered within arms’ reach of the man; the taps of their polished black shoes clicking on the bricks. A member of the RighteousRight stood a tad farther back, the ink tat on his bulging bicep announcing his affiliation and prejudice.
They should be in bed. All of them. Where I should be, she thought. Too fraggin’ hot out tonight. Too much to drink an hour ago. Fraggin’ voices in my head won’t shut up.
Ninn recalled how cool the drinks had been that slid down her throat and found that sweet, sweet place in her soul that only addicts possessed. Ruefully dismissing the fine sensation, she shouldered her way into the mass, noting a few more RighteousRight members as she went. The odor of going too long without a shower clung like a second skin to many of the gawkers. Bright clothes meant for dance clubs competed with gutter-crawlers’ mismatched shirts and ragged pants. High heels, sandals, yawns, wagging tongues, cyber attachments, less obvious augmentations. Ninn took it all in, recorded the faces and scattered conversations that added to her throbbing, alcohol-fueled headache. Might need the pictures later, she knew from experience. Often criminals hung around to watch the aftermath of their handiwork.
“Wotter ya doin’, keebler? I was ’ere first!” An ork opal miner objected to Ninn cutting through the crowd. “An ill-bred whacka you are.”
Locals, most of them, she decided, as they rudely jostled her back and made assorted crude comments. She winced while passing a particularly fetid old drunk, and squinted when she caught the flash of the glittery dresses of joygirls working the middle of the pack. One squeezed toward her, smiling. Very young. Expensive-looking. Probably new to the Cross—Ninn hadn’t seen her around before. Her vinyl dress made inviting crinkling sounds. Ninn tuned in on the noise, cut out the chatter of the crowd, and amplified the crinkling with her audio receptor. It reminded her of snow crunching underfoot, and made her pine for Chicago even more.
I should go back. Home, she thought. Someday. When I get enough money. Get out from under the fragging mana storm, back to where I belong. At least the cloud’s quiet at the moment.
“G’day, sweetie.” The joygirl’s feigned Aussie accent was poor, but her voice was pleasant enough. A human, she barely came up to Ninn’s shoulder. Fluttering her long lashes, wetting her lips, she smiled temptingly. Her heart-shaped face filled Ninn’s vision. “Lonely? Need some company, sweetie?” she purred. “I can be very good company.”
Need your company? That could be interesting, definitely.
“The best company.” She blew Ninn a kiss.
“No,” Ninn said with a sigh. If I’d needed company, I would have brought Mordred.
“Show you the city?” the joygirl persisted. “The Cross? Anything you like?”
Thinks I’m a tourist. Ninn’s skin was tanned from the many days she’d spent on Sydney’s nude beach. Work had been slow lately—her own fault; and she’d rationalized that this month-long hot spell was more endurable with her tush on the sand next to the ocean. Her blond hair hung in a braid from the nape of her neck to just below her shoulder blades.
The joygirl reached out a crimson-nailed hand and wrapped the end of the braid around her thumb as the crowd wedged them together. She looked up into Ninn’s bright green eyes and gave a sexy pout.
“I can show you all of Sydney, sweetie—and a lot more. Show you things you’ve only dreamed about…never thought to dream about. Show you things better than this.” She waved a thin hand; in a small gap between the bodies at the front of the crowd, Ninn spotted the tip of a police hat. Being a tall elf had its advantages. “Show you the real Cross, the pleasure of being with a human woman. I know a place we could go.”
Definitely thinks I’m a tourist.
“It’s a very nice place. Quiet.”
“Well, that’d take nuyen, wouldn’t it? And time. Neither of which I have at the moment.” Ninn grinned.
“I treat tourists very special,” she whispered.
I’m not a tourist.
But she had to admit she looked like one. Her khaki jeans were frayed at the bottom, showing off her sandaled feet. Her tank top was patterned with beige kangaroos hopping in unison in perfectly-spaced stripes all the way around. In a semi-circle above her left breast the words “I Visited Circular Quay” were embroidered in shiny ocher thread. Tourist attire. It had been the only relatively clean
shirt within reach when she’d rolled off the couch.
“Some other day,” Ninn said almost sadly. “Broke. Seriously, no nuyen for you. Not kiddin’, busted flat.” She turned out her pockets to prove her point.
The joygirl frowned and backed away, squirming between the bodies, her heart-shaped face receding into the crowd, the crinkling of her dress fading as she sought out another mark. Ninn worked her way to the front rank of gawkers, mystically held back by an AISE Investigation—Do Not Cross banner stretched between two buildings that blocked off the alley.
AISE, or “Ace,” as most Aussies called them, stood for Australian Investigation and Security Enforcement, for which she’d worked all too briefly. They were the “big guns,” here, so to speak, and Ninn had only seen them in this neighborhood once before, two years past, when a downtown politician got caught in some sting operation. AISE didn’t bother with Kings Cross’s usual rabble.
Ninn was curious why they’d show up now—this time of day, this rundown alley. She waved her palm, showing her private investigator ID chip to a muscular officer on the other side. He had a few cyber enhancements that weren’t easy to spot; maybe AISE covered the cost of those expensive, near-invisible attachments. During her short stint she’d not checked if that was on the benefit list. The AISE barely acknowledged her, just nodded as Ninn ducked under the banner.
Well behind the flimsy barricade, a trio of AISE’s finest hovered over the victim, all harshly illuminated by the spots that contributed to the heat. Ninn glided toward them, tuning in on their conversation using her attention coprocessor, a frontal cortex limbic system implant that allowed her to shift her focus and be aware of several things going on at the same time. It had cost her more than a little bit, though she was given a discount because she was a repeat customer of the Sydney BioNet Center, a cyber-junkie paying for her electronic fix. She’d told herself that the implant, like the others she’d purchased and happily went under the knife to have installed over the past few years, was helpful in her line of work. But the electronics hadn’t netted her any big contracts yet, and the only thing it was doing at the moment was amplifying her hangover.
This job wouldn’t pull in any significant nuyen either; Cadi Hamfyst was tight with his funds, she knew from experience. The jobs she’d done for him before—spying on competitors, trailing his second ex-wife—hadn’t yielded much. Maybe he’d try to pay her in booze like the last time. Wouldn’t work today. Cold, hard nuyen was what she’d demand. She had office rent to worry about. But in the back of her mind, she again felt the cool drinks slide down her throat to drown that sweet spot, and thought booze in partial payment might not be awful.
Ninn often scolded herself for not saving nuyen and using it for a ticket home—where she suspected she could find good-paying and more legitimate work. But the scolding always came after she’d added some new piece of cyberware or bioware or upgraded what she already had…and then went out drinking to celebrate.
The implants were her main addiction, and whenever she saw some new device advertised that she came to want, she actively sought just enough work to pull in the nuyen to buy it. The tech the States had wasn’t this good; they were years behind Australia. Ninn had vowed to get some contracts in the next month or so. A high-end nose filter had recently hit the Sydney market, and she was craving it. That, and she was looking to add a high frequency sound filter and spatial recognizer to her ear implant and get her eye upgraded. She desperately needed an improvement to her cyberear; it wasn’t allowing her to record all the voices she heard, just picked up on the conversations in the lower ranges and within a few yards.
Though Cadi was cheap, maybe she could wrangle enough out of the old troll for the down payment on the nose job, the improved ear implant, and get him to throw in a case or two of his good stuff.
“Bloke was a looker,” she heard one AISE investigator mutter, rousing Ninn from her musings. A detective-lieutenant, according to the AISE button on his shoulder. Kneeling, he stared into the bodybag. The man was familiar, a human with some age to him, judging by the lines at the edges of his eyes. Ninn tried to put a name to his face but came up short; must have run into him before she got the attention coprocessor that made remembering easy.
God, but her head pounded and her tongue felt dry and swollen. Why the hell hadn’t she stopped after the fourth Kamikaze?
“Didn’t know you liked that type, Lieutenant,” another AISE answered, a slight smirk on his elven face. “Thought you sided with the RighteousRight.”
“I just agree with the Right sometimes, that’s all. There’s no law against someone making a living, but to do it like this...a man singing like a woman, and to be a Koori, no less.”
Koori: derogatory slang for Aboriginal, Ninn learned when she called the word up from an early encephalon file.
Ninn saw the lieutenant shrug, watched the second speaker move closer. The elf—a handsome one, maybe in his late twenties, a few years younger than her, someone that under different circumstances might make good company—bent and opened the bag wider. The third cop, another human, kept his distance, almost as if whatever had killed the victim was contagious. Ninn noted his cyberarm with several tweezer-like attachments extended that helped gather evidence.
There were more AISE lumpers about, a human and a dwarf at the far end of the alley, taking statements from two people on the other side of the banner. One of the interviewees was a nattily-dressed businessman with a briefcase under his arm. The other a young woman in faded jeans, wet up to her thighs—probably from a dip in the fountain. It looked like she belonged to a 1960s clique.
Let’s see the body, get it over with. I need to get back to my couch and work this head-wanger off.
Ninn glanced around the officers to get a look at the bag. She knew it was AISE policy to bag a corpse right away, to not let any extra contaminants from the officers or gawkers foul the evidence. Cops in Chicago—depending on the neighborhood—sometimes waited for hours to bag victims and have them carted to the morgue.
A dark-skinned woman inside the bag. Man, Ninn corrected when she noted the Adam’s apple. Beautiful. Very beautiful. Maybe twenty, twenty-five tops, no older. Took good care of herself. Himself. Pity. Think I heard her sing once. A quick consult with her encephalon confirmed that: Miss Ella Gance. She’d heard the woman sing on two different visits to Cadigal’s.
Rough place to die, this rundown alley, she thought, a sad way to end the voyage. A John Milton quote from Paradise Lost slipped through her mind: “Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep…” How could someone have hated Ella Gance enough to pierce her so deep?
The AISE lieutenant studied a jagged slash that had practically decapitated the singer and snapped a thick gold neck chain. Oddly, the wound hadn’t released much blood, leaving the corpse’s silky dress unmarred. The AISE detective was using the latest equipment, a handheld evidence sniffer that the cops in Chicago wouldn’t see for another year or more—if they were lucky.
Ninn kept up on tech, knew the sniffer could gauge the time of death by lividity and blood pooling, register skin, saliva, and hair samples, blood types—help point a finger at the murderer. The larger units could do more and faster, especially with DNA samples, do all but tell you exactly what the perpetrator wore and what he ate for breakfast that morning. But the lumpers that came into the Cross didn’t tend to bring the big stuff.
The third officer stared at the singer’s face—lovely even in death, save for an ugly bite mark on the left cheek. It was human-sized, deep, and had torn away a chunk of flesh, showing the muscle and bone beneath. The officer’s eyes were shiny, the pupils enlarged, special implants. Not as good as Ninn’s sole cybereye, but his cyberarm was seriously impressive. She noted that as his pupils expanded they flashed red, a video vulture recording the entire scene for morbid posterity. Just like Ninn intended to do.
She concentrated, and felt a wave of dizziness as her cybereye enlarged th
e image, getting a closer look at the bite. Ninn had been blinded in that eye during riots in Chicago and had worn a patch until she found a cybereye in Sydney that suited her. Maybe she should have had both replaced, but one was cheaper, and her real eye still worked. The cybereye was packed: flare comp, thermographic, plus a recorder. She felt the dizziness pass—an effect of having one cybereye instead of a pair—then started recording and sending the data to her encephalon, a microprocessor hardwired to her cortex that boosted her ability to manage and store information. She had enough room on her current chip to catch three-dozen hours or more. The next gen of cybereyes had just been released, and promised to triple that time. It was on her shopping list, too.
“We’re just about finished ’ere, mates.”
Ninn listened to the lieutenant kneeling over the corpse, cocked her head to get a close-up of the man.
Enlarge it. Good. Familiar. I should know him. I SHOULD KNOW—
He was tall, a tad over six feet like herself. His bushy brown hair stuck out at odd angles beneath his cap; it was his nasal voice, and a slightly bulbous red-veined drinker’s nose that niggled her memory.
Definitely familiar. But memories—from her life before the encephalon and other technological aids—were fuzzy, often ephemeral. Too much alcohol, too many slips had eroded things, especially what she’d deemed less important, cast into an ocean of intangibilities and best forgotten. The lieutenant’s name was buried somewhere in there, lost. Recoverable? Maybe.
Like the other two, his uniform was crisp and pressed. They’d all managed to get through the inspection of the scene without getting a spot of blood on them.
“Coroner’s on ’er way to slab this one. Be ’ere in a few,” the lieutenant said. “Nothin’ left for us at the moment. We’ve swept the alley. Review the bloody interviews tomorrow, and follow up then if we need to.”
