Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Taziri smiled and a warmth filled her cheeks. “Keeping machines running is what I do best. I think I’ll manage.”

  The walk back to the bed-and-breakfast was slow and ended with Taziri sitting on the edge of a bed across from a snoring Ghanima. She removed her jacket carefully, sliding it off over the rods and plates. Taziri sat in the pale moonlight and stared at her arm. It was awkward. It was going to be awkward for a long time. But it was okay. She had a long time to get used to it. And time made all the difference.

  Chapter 25

  The police station was unusually noisy for a weeknight. Gray-suited street officers dragged in angry teenagers, drunks, and prostitutes every few minutes. But the stream of foot traffic remained confined to the hall between the front door and the overnight holding cells, without a single message coming back to the detectives’ offices. Kella was straightening up her desk for the evening when she saw the desk sergeant coming her way with a young woman behind him. He walked quickly to reach her desk ahead of the woman and he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “It’s about that special address you mentioned earlier.” He stepped away with a wink and then hurried back to the front desk.

  Kella shook the young woman’s hand, noting the worry lines on her forehead and clamminess of her hands. “Miss? I’m Detective Kella Massi. Let’s just go over here to a private room and you can tell me what happened, all right?” She motioned toward a half-open door and the woman went inside, tightly clutching her shoulder bag with both hands.

  The electric bulb in the ceiling was burnt out, but a lamp was glowing on the table and the small room was bright and warm. The woman sat down at the table as the detective closed the door behind them. She said, “My name is Jedira Amadi. I’m a medical technician at the prosthetics shop just a few blocks over on Greenwood Road. That’s where I saw it. I mean, that’s what I came to tell you about. I need to report a…a medical crime.”

  “Greenwood Road.” Doctor Medina. Kella sat down across from the woman and slowly pulled out a small pad and pencil from her jacket pocket. So it’s started already. Or have they been coming in all along and I’m just now getting in on the madness? “All right. Start at the beginning. Take your time.”

  “Well, I was getting ready to close up and go home for the night, about two hours ago, when there was a knock at the door,” Jedira said. “We were closed, but I went to see who it was anyway. It was a pilot with a burn on her arm. It was pretty bad, but I cleaned it up as best I could, and then we got to talking for a little while. Eventually she left and I was getting ready to lock up when I heard a noise in the basement. I went down to see what it was and I found a room.” She stopped abruptly and swallowed, her eyes darting off to the side.

  “It was open?” Kella asked. Of course it wasn’t. “What was in the room?”

  “The door was locked, but I have the master key for the building so I was able to open it…”

  Kella’s pencil froze. Oh crap.

  “…and that’s when I saw the cages. Dozens of cages. There were dogs, birds, monkeys, a giant turtle thing, a snake, a cat.” Jedira gestured in a circular motion as though there were more to her list but she couldn’t quite remember what. “Anyway, I tried to open the cages, but they had a different type of lock on them. That’s when I saw the machines.”

  Kella rubbed her forehead. “Let’s just back up for a minute. You saw some animals in cages. How does that constitute a medical crime?”

  “I’m just getting to that part,” Jedira said. “The machines. They were in the animals. I mean, there were other machines in the room, on the floor, but these machines were different. They were in the animals, detective. They were inside the animals.”

  Kella looked in the woman’s wide, pleading eyes and nodded slowly. Okay, you can defuse this. She’s a medic. Break it down for her logically. Take the emotion out of the equation. “Miss, you said you’re a medical technician. I assume your office treats all sorts of patients with all sorts of medical tools.”

  “No, no! These weren’t tools. They were, were, I don’t know what they were, but they weren’t the tools or prosthetics we use on people. These were different. Sunken. Into the skin. Somehow.” The young woman swallowed rapidly and rubbed her forehead.

  “Okay, so you saw some medical tools or devices that you weren’t familiar with. Who do you work for exactly?”

  “No, you don’t underst—Doctor Elena Medina.”

  “Ah.” Kella smiled and nodded slightly. “The Espani who does all the free work for injured laborers. I’ve heard of her. All right. I think I’m beginning to get the picture. You were in the office after hours, unsupervised. You entered a room you had never entered before. You found animals being treated with foreign medical instruments, most likely by your foreign supervisor. And now you are concerned about the animals’ well-being. Is that correct?”

  “Well, I, I mean, yes, but, but it’s not that simple.” Jedira frowned, still looking slightly green and extremely exhausted. “These weren’t mechanical legs or skin shields. They weren’t on the outside, they were inside, sunken into the skin, with clockworks, moving parts, moving inside them. Hurting them.” Bright tears shone in the corners of her eyes but she knocked them away with a clenched fist. “It didn’t make any sense. That’s not what we do. There’s no good reason for that. Why would she do that to them?”

  Kella sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the medical technician. You should be telling me. But I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. I’ll be sure to follow up with Doctor Medina to make sure nothing unethical is going on. All right?” She offered Jedira her standard professional smile, serious but not unfriendly.

  Jedira shook her head. “No, I’m telling you, something was very wrong down there. You didn’t see the machines. I could hear them clicking inside the dog’s belly, and he was whining and scratching at it. The whole place smelled like an outhouse, and it was full of these machines I’ve never even seen before, and I’ve seen a lot of strange machines.” Jedira clawed her hands back through her hair. “Doesn’t that concern you? At all?”

  “Miss, you just described every hospital I’ve ever been in. It sounds to me like this Doctor Medina is developing some new medical devices or techniques for injured workers and she’s using some new machines that you are not familiar with. Which is not a crime. Tell me, Miss Amadi, are you a doctor?”

  Jedira blinked and the look in her eyes hardened. “No. I’m a technician. I make prosthetic arms and legs, and hands and feet, too.”

  Kella pretended to scribble on her pad. I’m sorry I have to do this to you. You don’t deserve it, but when does that mean anything anymore? “So you admit you’re not qualified to diagnose a patient, particularly one with unusual or exotic symptoms, and certainly not an animal. And your expertise does not extend beyond arms and legs, does it? But more importantly, you didn’t see any people being treated strangely, did you? Only these caged animals?”

  Jedira lips wavered for a moment before any words could come out. “No, I didn’t. But if you would just come with me back to the workshop, I could you show you. Right now. Please, it’s only a few blocks.”

  “Why? If you couldn’t assess these animals or identify these medical devices in their bodies, then I doubt I would be able to, and I’ve seen quite a bit.” Kella sighed. “Look, miss, I can tell that whatever you saw was very upsetting, but you need to realize that these things happen. Medical experimentation is often unsettling, but it is rarely inhumane and it is for the betterment of our people, in the long run. Believe me, I see it all the time. I investigate industrial accidents every day.”

  “But aren’t you a specialist in medical crimes? That’s what the desk sergeant said.”

  “Medical crimes?” Kella tried to smile politely. “I’m not sure there’s any such thing. I spend most of my time trying to determine whether accidents were really accidents, and whether a worker or a factory-owner is to blame. There is a fair amount of medical analysi
s involved, though.”

  “Fine, then come to my office and tell me what happened to the animals in the basement,” Jedira said. “Just come and look. It will take two minutes. Please. Just look at them.”

  Kella cleared her throat and stopped trying to look friendly. “Look, if I have some time tomorrow, maybe I’ll come by, but I can’t make any promises. We’re very busy with our current case load. I’m sure you’ve noticed all the fights, the vandalism, the injuries. It’s been a rough month for everyone.”

  Jedira closed her mouth and nodded, her eyes downcast and long thin fingers curling back around her shoulder bag. “There’s something else. Nitroh. I smelled nitroh down there. Sometimes I smell it on the miners I tend to, so I recognized it. Detective, nitroh is an explosive, not a medicine.”

  “I see. As I said, I’ll look into it. If I have time.” Kella led the woman back to the front desk and saw her out. The detective cleared her throat. “In the mean time, I suggest you refrain from exploring your employer’s private rooms, and from making serious allegations against one of the few pillars of our struggling community without any evidence. Good night, Miss Amadi.”

  The young woman looked up at her from the bottom of the steps, a horrible mask of defeat and loneliness etched around her eyes and mouth. She nodded once and left.

  Kella waited until Jedira turned the corner and passed out of view, and then the detective jogged down the steps and headed off in the opposite direction. Screw this. I’m never doing that again. Lady Sade can find someone else to cover up her shit.

  Detective Massi strode through the quiet city streets with her fists clenched in her jacket pockets. She wound her way around slower pedestrians, silently cursing them for existing. Their only purpose in life was clearly to not reach their destinations and thus take up space on the street, just to be in her way. She took alleys and little lanes where grass struggled to grow between the cobblestones, darting through the light of the gas lamps and the shadows. Her steps quickened.

  The neighborhoods changed radically, almost from one block to another. Houses alternated between one, two, and three stories, breaking occasionally for the open expanse of a park or square, and contracting into sheer canyons walled in by warehouses and factories. Voices echoed from every direction, along with the clinking of plates and the slamming of doors. People, everywhere. People going home, eating supper.

  As they should be. Not poking about in basements.

  Kella turned a corner and nodded to the guard at the front gate, who let her enter the courtyard of the private estate. She passed the gardens and fountain and climbed the marble steps in front of the stately manor house, its tall windows glowing with golden lamplight. She rapped as politely as her mood would allow, and when the doorman opened the door he took one glance at her and stepped aside, out of her way. “Supper has just concluded, detective. The lady of the house is in the study to your left.”

  Kella crossed the foyer and passed down a narrow hallway where oil portraits hung in near darkness to a small study furnished with padded leather chairs, bookcases bowing beneath weighty tomes, and glass cabinets displaying old Indian crockery, primitive Europan spears and knives, and other exotic antiques.

  The two people seated by the lamp in the center of the room looked up at her and set their teacups aside. Lady Sade motioned toward the couch. Kella sat down carefully, trying to look less like an angry police officer and more like an obedient citizen. It proved difficult.

  “Detective, good evening,” Lady Sade said. “Have you come to tell us some exceedingly good news about the recent rates of street crime?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “No, I didn’t think so.” Lady Sade glanced at her companion, an older gentleman with a thick black beard, and she picked up her tea. “Is it Chaou? Any news of our missing ambassador?”

  “No, I haven’t heard anything about her. This is another matter.” Kella folded her hands tightly in her lap to avoid curling them into fists. “A matter regarding the doctor you introduced me to this afternoon.”

  Sade nodded. “And?”

  Kella looked at the man, the stranger, but neither of them seemed at all concerned about discussing the doctor openly. “A young woman came to the police station tonight. I was on my way out, another few minutes and I wouldn’t have been there to catch her. She’s a medical technician working for your doctor. She says she saw the animals in the doctor’s basement being mistreated. She saw machines she couldn’t identify.”

  “Indeed. Did she now? And what was this young woman’s name?”

  The detective narrowed her gaze. “She described, in some detail, the various animals and machines that she saw. She wanted to show me, but I brushed her off and I tried to convince her that whatever she thinks she saw was nothing criminal.”

  “Good.” Lady Sade sipped her tea silently. “Do you think she will let the matter drop?”

  “No, I don’t,” Kella said. “She was terrified and disgusted. She came straight to the police as soon as she saw that room. I’m guessing she’ll probably tell her friends, or anyone who might be more supportive or sympathetic, and then go back to the police again, possibly with more evidence. She might even try to free the animals herself. She was very emotional.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “My lady, what is this doctor really doing?” Kella asked the question too quickly, before Sade had quite finished speaking. For a moment no one spoke, and the detective wondered if she would be chastised for speaking out of turn. She had heard rumors, only rumors but more than one, that Lady Sade frequently dispatched her private agents to punish those who were even slightly rude to her. Case files full of unsolved poisonings and stabbings washed through Kella’s mind.

  But the lady only sipped her tea as before. “What did I tell you the doctor was doing?”

  “Research, to help people.” Kella knew she was frowning, but she didn’t care anymore. “Is that what the doctor is really doing? Does she plan to help future patients by inserting these machines into their bodies? And by experimenting with explosive chemicals?”

  “You seem upset, detective.” The governor tilted her head. “Why is that?”

  Kella glanced down at her hands and forced them open to rest on the arms of the chair. “My lady, when you approached me about performing certain tasks for you, to help you with certain projects, I took that to mean I would be protecting the peace of this city and the security of the country. I was honored. And I understand that difficult times and circumstances require us to make certain sacrifices, to do what needs to be done, rather than what we would like to do.”

  “But you no longer feel that way?”

  The detective tried to put the words together in her mind as carefully as possible. “I am no longer certain that my actions are in the best interests of public security.”

  “And if I explain to you exactly what the Espani doctor is doing, then that will set your mind at ease?” Lady Sade passed her empty cup to her silent companion to be refilled. “Do you want to know everything that I know? Do you feel you deserve to be privy to all of my private enterprises? Or is it that you wish to debate with me how I should conduct my affairs? Perhaps you have studied our national politics, the currents of our markets, the tides of public opinion and morale, and you have some suggestions as to how I might better serve my people?”

  “No, my lady.” Kella glanced down, a quiet rage simmering in her chest.

  “No?” Lady Sade shrugged her slender shoulders as she received her steaming cup. “As you wish. Then you will simply have to trust my judgment in the matter of the doctor.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Kella studied the silent man, trying to place him. His face was familiar, probably from the rough portrait sketches in the newspapers that made everyone look vaguely alike. For a moment, the detective considered formally resigning her special appointment. But then what? A knife in a dark alley to silence me, and someone else takes my place as her errand girl? No,
I’ve got to stay inside on this one until I know what’s going on. “I’m sorry I disturbed you and your guest, Lady Sade. It won’t happen again.”

  Lady Sade nodded curtly and slid back in her seat, just a bit, and turned her body to face her companion, and Kella sensed that she had been dismissed. She stood, smoothed her jacket, and left.

  Detective Massi took the long way home, which was one of several long ways she had deliberately mapped out in her mind for various reasons. This particular long way required her to cross several wide open parks and squares that offered no convenient places to loiter in hiding, and carried her past many long shiny store windows that cast enormous reflections of the streets around anyone who happened to walk by. This was a popular neighborhood, one filled with cafés and teahouses and shops peddling both traditional and novelty items from clothing to mechanical toys. During the day, these parks and squares became stages for singers, storytellers, acrobats, and preachers, and in the evenings they plied their trade all the more fervently, but now, in the dark of night, these places stood empty, swept clean by street workers and guarded only by the silent gas lamps sputtering atop their posts.

  It took more than a half hour of meandering through open spaces and past reflective surfaces for Kella to spot the dark figure following her. He walked with a male stride, his posture too correct for the business of lurking and sneaking. He moved from shadow to doorway to corner, silently and swiftly. He clearly thought he knew his business. He didn’t.

  Kella felt through the pocket of her gray jacket to the only weapon issued to members of Security Section Five: the police club, a slender little bit of wood with a small iron ring screwed into the business end to lend it some extra weight. The detective wondered how threatening a professional killer would find such a weapon. Her hand slipped around to the small of her back and she pulled out a folded knife and she thrust it into her front pocket. At the next corner she paused, kicked her shoes loudly against the stoop as though to clean them, and then sauntered into an alleyway where she promptly flattened herself against the wall and waited.