by Liz Williams
“Captain. Good morning.”
“So. We have an identity for the victim, I believe? Just as well.”
“I’m sorry?” Zhu Irzh frowned. Of course it was “just as well.” What a strange thing to say.
Sung’s gaze grew colder and heavier. “You haven’t heard? Word hasn’t filtered back? I suppose that’s encouraging. Usually I’m the last one to hear the rumors.”
“Heard what?”
“It is just as well that the lab got a positive ID from the samples it took from the body, Seneschal Irzh, because now the body is gone.”
The demon gaped at him. “Gone?”
Sung nodded. “It disappeared from the morgue last night. No signs of forced entry, no locks tampered with, nothing out of order except that the body of the unfortunate Ms Sardai is simply no longer there.”
“Could it have walked by itself?” was the first thing that occurred to Zhu Irzh. “Let itself out?”
“You tell me.”
“It is sometimes possible to raise a corpse,” Zhu Irzh said, frowning. “But it’s not easy. You’d need a very powerful piece of necromancy to do that, and anyway, I wouldn’t have thought that the body was in any real shape to walk … Crawl, maybe. But it wouldn’t have been able to see. She didn’t have much face left.”
“Could someone have spirited it out by magic?”
“Possibly. But that would have entailed opening a gate between the worlds, and that’s not so easily done.”
“Think about the possibilities, would you? I’ve put Exorcist Ghi on this particular part of the case; he’ll be liaising with you in due course. Try and be co-operative, please.”
“I’m always co-operative,” Zhu Irzh protested. Sung gave him a long, level look. “I suppose you’d like me to alert the family?”
Sung sighed. “Actually, no. Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll have to put some of our top people on the Sardai case. It’s high profile. It was one thing to send you out on a murder investigation when we didn’t know it was such an important victim, but now—”
The demon bridled. “It’s an embarrassment to have me on the case, is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying you haven’t been useful, Zhu Irzh. The fact that not everyone can see you is often to our advantage, but you can see how it might be a bit of a handicap if I were to put you in charge of the investigation. Besides, your specialty is really vice, isn’t it?”
“I see.” Impossible to resent it, really. Sung’s reasons were good ones and now that Zhu Irzh thought about it, he couldn’t see a couple of socialites wanting a demon investigating their daughter’s death.
“Although how we’re going to tell this extremely rich and powerful clan that we’ve managed to mislay their daughter’s mutilated corpse, I have no idea. I suppose I’ll think of something. Leave it with me.” For which small mercy Zhu Irzh found himself extremely grateful.
Leaving the captain’s office, he returned to the more amiable company of Ma.
“Very helpful, that magazine,” Ma said. “Gave me several names, they did.” His face wore a small, smug smile, somewhat foreign to Ma’s usually anxious countenance.
“Well?” the demon asked. He’d break the news about the body in a minute; why spoil Ma’s moment of triumph.
“I think we might have a lead,” Ma said.
“What, already?” After the news that the main piece of evidence had gone astray, this was welcome.
Ma nodded. “Deveth Sardai was a close friend of Jhai Tserai.” He glanced expectantly at Zhu Irzh, as if anticipating explanation, but the demon was ahead of him.
“The Paugeng heiress. Even I’ve heard of Jhai Tserai.” He grinned. “Most of Hell has, as a matter of fact. She’s got a number of interesting contacts down there.”
“Do we go and see her?” Ma asked rather hopefully. Zhu Irzh caught his lip beneath one pointed tooth.
“Tserai’s one of the most powerful industrialists in this city, even if she is only in her twenties. She’s got a lot of clout. I know for a fact that some of that extends to the police department … I think I’ll pay Jhai Tserai a visit, Ma. Alone. Sort of off the record.” There was no need to tell Ma about his conversation with Sung just yet. It would show initiative if he were to go and see Tserai. He paused, still smiling. It didn’t hurt that Jhai Tserai was also remarkably beautiful, and—according to persistent rumor—unattached. But perhaps she wasn’t interested in the opposite sex. Fair enough, Zhu Irzh thought, but then again, he enjoyed a challenge.
7
High in the Paugeng tower, on the terrace of the penthouse, Jhai sat and gazed out over the twilight city. The penthouse was silent; her mother was visiting one of her innumerable charities and the servants had been dismissed for the evening. Jhai wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be disturbed. After the difficulties they’d had with Deveth Sardai, it seemed reasonable to downsize a bit, proceed on her own rather than using hired help. She’d been a fool to rely on Deveth, though. She should have realized that the woman was unstable. Deveth had not possessed limits, that had been the trouble. Jhai’s own limits might lie far beyond the edge of human morals, but nonetheless, they were carefully and precisely defined.
She looked down at the little, black capsule in her hand, weighing it in her palm. It was as light as air, yet for Jhai it was a burden as heavy as a world. If anyone ever found out … She and her mother, and her grandmothers as far back as the seventeenth century, had taken such care, such pains. They had bred selectively, never marrying, always choosing the most auspicious elements of the gene pool, revealed through reliable oracles; treading a fine line between power and discovery. Technology made things a lot easier. If Paugeng’s genetics division got its research right, then the next generation would be simply cloned and the knife-edge dangers of breeding would lie safely in the past. But that, Jhai thought with a thin smile, was the fallback position. If her plans worked out, then her heritage wouldn’t matter any longer anyway. It would not be necessary to merely pass.
Jhai weighed the capsule again and left the terrace, closing the door softly behind her. She headed for the penthouse’s lavish bathroom, ignoring, for once, the invitations of the gilded Jacuzzi or the sauna, and put her hands on the porcelain basin. She stared hard at her own reflection in the mirror, willing it not to move. It remained fixed, the perfect mimic, and Jhai breathed a sigh of relief. She did not like taking the drug. She played a game of cat and mouse, leaving it as late as possible before the next dose, but this time she had almost overstepped the line. She could feel the change starting within her, itching to be freed from the remains of its neurochemical shackles. She let the silk robe rustle to the floor and turned to examine herself in the mirror.
Naked, she thought without vanity, she was close to perfect, as long as the drug kept the changes at bay. But as she scrutinized her own reflection, she could see the faint tiger stripes along her ribcage, a golden light behind her eyes. Sliding a hand behind her, she felt the tug of growing bone at the base of her spine and for the thousandth time she was tempted to just let it happen, go all the way, see what the result would be … But she already knew. The collection of Keralan miniatures that her mother kept locked in the safe had shown her that. Warmth crept between her legs and Jhai crossed her hands over her aching breasts and arched her back. That was another reason to stop taking the drug: to exchange frigid humanity for unnatural desire. What an irony, Jhai reflected bitterly. The very source of her charisma and her legendary sexual appeal had to be kept in check, otherwise it would get her banished down to Hell. She was human enough not to want that, and if she kept taking the drug, she could have it both ways, even if she was unable to enjoy the results of the attraction she generated. She could retain enough of her ancestress’ glamorous powers to keep the corporation and her fortune together, and still pass as wholly human. You can have it both ways, Jhai told herself grimly, swallowing the black capsule at last and watching the stripes fade from her fla
nks and the fire from her eyes. But you can never have it all.
8
Normally, Robin would never have gone anywhere near Bharcharia Anh. Her little beat was confined to Shaopeng and Battery Road, with occasional trips out to the countryside along the delta to visit her grandparents, who were proud of their made-good granddaughter. Robin had never been this far up into the heights. The car avoided the congested town center, sweeping out beyond the city limits and then rumbling back onto the fast arterial road. It reached Bharcharia Anh close to three o’clock.
The white turret where the Sardai family lived looked wet, as though dew had gathered on the pallid surface, and the grounds were green and lush, dense with imported hibiscus and oleander. The hallmark of the homes of the rich, Robin understood, was not their opulence but their silence. From up here, the rest of the city, the whole squalid, roaring mass, may just as well not exist.
Inside the tower, it was utterly still. A doorman showed Robin to the elevator and left her there. The elevator glided upward and then opened out into the wide atrium of the Sardais’ apartment.
To Robin’s left, a water sculpture gushed into a pool filled with carp. Before the pool something was being created, molding and shaping itself on a plinth. Robin watched, fascinated, as it became a running horse, a rose, and at last settled into the figure of a shark-monkey, flat face astounded, thin little hands waving and the long tail beating and twisting against the surface of the plinth. Nanotech art, anything you wanted, moment by moment. The monkey melted down into a nebulous mass, and out of the writhing substance Robin’s own suspicious face emerged. Robin watched in fascinated revulsion.
“It’s a mischievous toy,” Sardai said, stepping into the atrium. He was very much like his daughter: the same harsh, aquiline face, but with an ascetic cast which Deveth, the puritanical hedonist, had never possessed. He was dressed in a white Mao jacket and loose dhoti, and leaned on a cane. “Come forward.”
Obediently, Robin walked through into the main lounge. Far away on the horizon, the gibbous moon was visible, floating about the hazy curve of the world. The tower blocks of Tevereya rose up to the left, the buildings glinting in the sunlight. Beneath the moon, a smudge of peaked land arose, tiny in the expanse of sunlit water: Lantern Island. Such were the lives of the wealthy, Robin thought again: silent and high.
“This is my wife, Malian.” Sardai made punctilious introductions. Deveth’s mother was a big woman, but her face was sunken and hollow-cheeked. She did not look well. Neither of them did, come to that. Without really thinking about it, Robin had assumed that when you were that rich you could afford all the health that money could buy, but evidently this was not so.
“Come and sit by me,” Deveth’s mother suggested. She patted the cushioned chair by the side of the couch. Robin sank into it and thought she might never rise again. Giris Sardai unobtrusively disappeared. Malian dabbed her broad face with a handkerchief. Robin wanted to say: I’m so sorry. I don’t know where Deveth is. She was still convinced that, somewhere down the line, they would have her arrested, or thrown out. Something bad, anyway. She did not belong here.
“Tell me about my daughter,” Malian said. “You probably know her better than I do.” She gave Robin a mock humorous look to take the bitterness out of her words.
“I’ve been wondering whether I know her at all.” Robin said. With a vague sense of dismay, she found herself telling Malian Sardai everything: about the embarrassing parties, the way Deveth always promised to phone and never did, how they used to go round the market together. She felt her nose start to itch and tingle with imminent tears, and thought furiously, I’m not, I’m not going to cry. She was saved by the arrival of a quiet drone, a slender young man dressed in a green dhoti, with perfect Dravidian features except for his lack of a mouth. Robin tried not to stare. He put a tray down before her: tea and fruit, cut into elegantly carved pieces.
“Thank you,” Robin said. Her nose was about to run. “May I visit your bathroom?” She followed the drone down a twisting corridor. Movement, almost imperceptible, kept catching the corner of her eye. The bathroom, containing a mercifully copious amount of tissues, was larger than her flat. If Deveth had given up all this to go and live in artistic squalor on Mherei Street, she was a fool, Robin thought, impatient with the indulgences of the rich. The poor couldn’t afford to experience ennui. Deveth had talked a lot about how important it was to follow your creative instincts, whatever the cost, and Robin had sat silently among her lover’s admiring friends and thought what it must be like to have such a choice. And she was one of the lucky ones: with her own place, no need to live with her four brothers and two sisters, and her good job at Paugeng.
Robin wiped her eyes and nose in front of the wall-sized mirror and repaired what remained of her minimal make-up. Her eyes looked frightened and vast in the small paleness of her face. She wanted to hide in the luxurious bathroom in this enclosed silent place and never go back to her cramped flat or that good job which involved feeding a supernatural captive experimental drugs every day. The wish was so strong that it was a moment before she realized its impossibility. This scared her: Starting to crack and go paranoid, Robin? In the mirror, her eyes were rimmed with crimson. On impulse, she rummaged in the tidy medicine cabinet and found a familiar blue phial with the red Jaruda bird on the label and a list of instructions. Paugeng should dole them out free to employees. Robin wasn’t going to spend good money on headache pills otherwise. She swallowed two of the flat, white painkillers (“suitable for headaches, toothache and muscular disorders”) with a handful of water scooped from the tap. Surely the water would be all right up here, she thought, surely there was no need for filtering and boiling in this part of town? Hastily, and somewhat guiltily, she slipped some of the pills into her bag in case the headache started up again, then put the phial back in the cabinet and slid the door shut. She should go back to Malian. She stepped out of the safety of the bathroom into a wide, bulb-shaped hallway. What had happened to the corridor? Robin, disoriented, stood quite still and watched the floor crawl slowly away. It moved like a slow wave, a thick liquid, ebbing toward the steps. Beside Robin’s ear, the wall bulged outward and rumpled back. Robin thought: Oh god, those weren’t headache tabs. I’ve taken something else. I’m tripping. Her head felt muzzy and her vision swam. She took a step forward. An opening appeared in the wall and, like a child, Robin went through. She was in an unfamiliar small room, yet there was again the statue on the plinth. The drone appeared in the melting doorway behind her and placed a tactful hand on her shoulder. She let him lead her out, and back to the lounge. Malian Sardai was all apologies.
“I’m terribly sorry. The nano-decorator’s set on a cycle; it just comes on and we’re so used to it …”
Once she knew that she wasn’t hallucinating, Robin felt better.
“The whole apartment’s like that?”
“So clever.” Malian gave her a smug too-much-for-little-me-to-understand look. Robin had not realized how wealthy they must be: the entire apartment was nanoed up. You wouldn’t ever have to move, you could do your own interior decoration just by reprogramming the setting. She also realized, without a word being said, that Malian Sardai had become bored with her. Malian didn’t really believe that anything could happen to her weird daughter: they were too rich, whatever lifestyle Deveth had chosen to adopt. Malian didn’t think anything could really befall people like herself, she truly could not countenance it, and so nothing did. They remained in their secure, fashionable lives up here in Meriden, quite safe, entertaining the most delightful lifestyle options, while the rest of the world battled and struggled below. Except that Deveth was still missing. Robin gave Malian an artificial smile.
“Thank you so much for seeing me. I feel better, somehow, getting it all off my chest.” She felt like an artless little liar, but Malian gave her a sad, brave smile in return and clasped her hands.
“Thank you, Robin. It makes me feel better, too, knowing Deveth’s go
t such loyal friends.”
She called the drone, who took Robin down in the elevator and showed her the very obvious way out through the garden. Making sure I leave the premises, Robin thought. She thanked the drone, who, mouthless, could not smile, and made her way to the waiting car. At least she got a lift back into town. But if Deveth’s parents didn’t care what had happened to their daughter, then Robin did.
Later that evening, the downtown tram dropped Robin at the foot of the ruined temple of Shai. She glanced up at its squat, forbidding walls, its huge dome, wondering whose temple it had once been. It rose up like a fortress, made of dark gray stone shot with odd black streaks. She knew little about Shai, only that it was old, much older than the surrounding city, and rumored to be haunted. This evening, with the temple looming above the buildings around, Robin had no problem in believing in those rumors. She could almost hear the place whispering to itself. Resolutely, Robin turned her back on its dark bulk and made her way along the litter-strewn downtown platform.
At the bottom of the platform steps, a snick of an alleyway led into Mherei Street. She hurried through, and found herself in the forbidding confines of the old town. They had been here how long, these houses, that temple?—the remnants of the little settlement that had made way for Singapore Three. The narrow streets rambled about the central spine of Mherei, black glass and dark wood, imported or grown in the southern plantations, angled, charmed roofs to fend away bad luck. Since these early glorious days, Mherei was rather low on luck, however, getting seedy despite the solid old houses. It was very much the bohemian quarter now, the haunt of artists, creatrixes, writers and the pharmo-technicians who bracketed themselves alongside, fellow creators of the mind’s visions. Deveth had loved it here, though she complained incessantly about the infighting and spite. It was a community, despite its closed, cold appearance now and the dark temple squatting at its heart.
