Hammer and Bolter Year One

by Christian Dunn

  The bedroom was vacant. A single bed, crumpled with use, had been pushed against the wall, and yellow markings, made in chalk, had been scribed on the exposed floor space. The marks were arrows, circling and crossing, and numbers. 4, 3, 5 and then an 8, a 7, a 0. To the left, 87, the digits stacked as a column. 5, Endor thought, went into 435 87 times.

  He stepped over the marks, and took out his little chrome picter. He took four or five shots of the markings.

  He felt cold on his back, a shiver. In the little closet, packed tight, were dozens of dance costumes, all gauze and lace. They smelled, very faintly, of sweat and lho-smoke. He reached in and rifled through shoes and hats at the back of the closet space. His hand closed on something: a book.

  He drew it out.

  It was an unauthorised edition of Stratified Eating Customs In The Halo Star Sub-Races, by Soloman Tarsh. Tarsh was a pen name Maliko had used to publish his most scandalous theories. Endor smiled. Like the tumbling mechanism of a Blaum et Cie safety lock, things were falling into place. He bagged the book in a plastek evidence sheath, and put it in his pocket. Then, he rootled some more, and found a string of cultured pearls, a small jewellery box and a fetish made of bent wire and feathers.

  He bagged them all.

  The kitchen was a dank mess of grime and grease, stacked with culture-bearing crockery. He went to the bathroom.

  Violent death marked the small, tiled room. Blood had extravagantly stippled the walls and dried into black scabs, and it had pooled in the enamel tub, separating into dark sediment and glassy surface plasma. From the spray travel and the splash vectors, Endor approximated a frenzied attack, multiple stabs with a short, double-edged blade. There was no shower curtain, and the rings on the rail were broken and buckled. The perp wrapped the body in the curtain, he deduced.

  ‘Are you dead, Mira?’ he asked out loud. It was unlikely. The kill scene was a week old, and he’d danced with her just the night before.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ a voice called. Endor stiffened.

  ‘Come on out, unless it’s you, Mira.’

  The voice was sixty years old, and carrying twenty or thirty kilos too much weight. Endor unclipped his shoulder holster so his weapon was in grab range, and came out of the bathroom. A torch beam shone in his face.

  ‘This had better be good,’ said the sixty-year-old, overweight voice.

  ‘Get the light out of my eyes, please,’ said Endor.

  The beam swung away, revealing a fat old man aiming a combat shotgun. The barrels of the weapon were pointing directly at Endor. The old man was wearing pyjama bottoms and unlaced, scuffed army boots. His belly stretched his stained vest. Old Guard insignia, the stitching worn, decorated his fatigue jacket.

  ‘Who are you?’ Endor asked.

  ‘This says I get to ask the questions,’ the old man replied, settling his shotgun. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A friend of Mira’s.’

  The old man snorted. ‘That’s what they all say. They don’t all get in, though.’

  ‘She gave me a key.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ the old man asked.

  ‘We’re friends,’ said Endor.

  ‘Round and round we go,’ said the old man. ‘Give me a good reason not to blast your lungs out through your spine.’

  Endor nodded. ‘I’m going to reach into my jacket, all right? I’m going to show you my credentials.’

  ‘Slow as you like,’ the old man replied.

  Endor reached into his coat, forced himself to ignore the invitation of his gun, and flipped out his wallet.

  ‘Titus Endor, Ordo Malleus. I’m an inquisitor operating under Special Circumstances.’

  The old man’s eyes widened. He lifted the shotgun away from Endor.

  ‘I beg your forgiveness, sir!’ he stammered.

  Endor flipped the wallet away.

  ‘It’s no trouble. You are?’

  ‘Nute Jerimo, from 868, just down the hall. I…’ the old man cleared his throat, ‘… I’m kind of the unofficial super on this floor. The residents like me to keep an eye on things, keep the place safe, you understand?’

  ‘You’re ex-mil?’

  ‘Karoscura Seventh, and proud of it. Mustered out eighteen years ago.’

  ‘You got a licence for that riot gun, Jerimo?’ Endor asked.

  The old man shrugged. ‘It kind of followed me home from the wars, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘You keep the peace here, and watch over your neighbours. I’m not going to report you,’ said Endor.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Tell me about Mira.’

  Jerimo shook his head. ‘Lovely girl, she is. A dancer. Moved in nine months back, keeps herself to herself. Always polite. Last spring, on my wife’s birthday, she gave us tickets to a performance at the Theatricala. A present, you see? What a night! I’d never have been able to treat my wife so well, not on my pension.’

  ‘She’s a good girl.’

  ‘She is that. Is she in trouble, sir? Is Mira in some sort of trouble?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ Endor replied. ‘When did you last see her?’

  The old man thought about that. ‘A week ago, maybe nine days. It was early. She was just coming in when I was going out to tend the boiler. It won’t fire the heating for this block unless someone cranks it, and so me, being me, goes downstairs and–’

  ‘She was just coming in?’

  ‘She always comes in late, sometimes with gentleman callers. Dawn or after.’

  ‘That was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Jerimo replied.

  ‘Go home, go to bed,’ said Endor. ‘I’ll lock up here.’

  The old man shuffled off, taking his shotgun with him.

  Endor took a last look around the apartment and switched off the light.

  He could smell Maliko.

  BACK IN HIS room in the residentiary, in the small hours, Endor poured himself the last of the amasec. Sipping, he took the items he’d retrieved from Mira’s hab and laid them out on his desk. The book, the fetish, the jewellery box, the pearls.

  He unbagged the jewellery box and opened it with his anykey. The trays inside were dusty and empty. The only thing in it was a pendant, a gold chain fastened to a small, curved tooth. Titus Endor fingered the jagged tooth that hung around his neck.

  Then he printed out the picts he’d taken of the markings on the floor, and studied them.

  When he woke up, the prints were scattered across his chest.

  HE HAD SLEPT badly. A recurring dream of death had stalked him. A supple ballet dancer with worms coming out of her eyes. A lizard carnivore, snuffling through the dark.

  ‘Wake up,’ he told himself.

  He felt vile. He washed and dressed, and went to a dining house that was fifteen minutes away from the end of breakfast service. He ordered caffeine, poached eggs, black bread and a slice of the local sausage. He took the book out of his pocket and flipped through it as he waited for his order to arrive.

  Stratified Eating Customs In The Halo Star Sub-Races , by Soloman Tarsh. It had been vanity-printed on low-quality paper. Someone had annotated the well-thumbed pages. Passages were underlined, and notes dotted the margins. Why would a dancer like Mira Zaleed own a copy of a specialist tract like this?

  One section of the book had been especially heavily annotated. It was titled ‘The Eaters and the Eaten’ and it dealt with primitive customs relating to human communities and their local predators. Some hunter clans in the wilderness worlds of the Halo Stars ritually ate the flesh of apex predators in the belief that this would both proof them against predation and invest them with the traits of the killer creatures. On Salique, tribesmen drank the blood of local crocodilians so as to share their cunning. On Gudrun, in ages past, the powdered teeth and genitals of the giant carnodon were believed to imbue the ingester with feral potency. It was a recurring theme. Wherever man inhabited a world where he was in competition with a significant ape
x predator, rituals of devouring evolved. Eat what would otherwise eat you, and you would be magically protected. Hunt and consume what you fear will hunt and consume you, and you would be proofed against its fanged jaws.

  This was nothing new to Titus Endor. His painful experiences on Brontotaph as an interrogator had taught him much about these curious beliefs. After his clash with the saurapt, an encounter he’d never care to repeat, the local tribes had treated him with the utmost respect. He had been ‘in the jaws’ and he had survived. This made him special in their eyes, as if some curious supernatural relationship had been forged between man and predator. They were bound together, both eaters, both eaten. The tribesmen had urged Endor to hunt down the saurapt, kill it and ingest its flesh, so as to become master of the compact.

  Endor had laughed this off and refused. The old superstitions were ridiculous. ‘But the saurapt will now stalk you forever,’ the tribesmen had warned, ‘to the end of your days, when it will claim you at last and finish its bite.’

  Finish its bite . Quite a phrase. It had made Hapshant laugh. Endor had relished the notion of a predator’s bite that took years, decades perhaps, to close entirely.

  Many notes, most of them hard to decipher, appended the passages dealing with such traditions. Brontotaph was mentioned. Certain charms and prophylactic rituals were described, whereby sacrifices could be made to ward off the stalking killer. Fresh blood and surrogate victims could be offered up to stall the attentions of invisible beasts.

  Endor wondered about the tooth he’d found in Mira Zaleed’s jewellery box.

  ‘Are you Endor?’

  Titus looked up from his eggs. It took him a moment to recognise the barman from the zendov club.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘May I?’ the barman asked, indicating the other chair.

  ‘Please.’

  The barman sat down. He was in casual clothes, a white shirt under a striped coat. Endor imagined the man’s formal wear was being pressed somewhere in a backstreet laundry.

  ‘Master Endor,’ the barman began, ‘Mira wants you to know that–’

  Endor held up his fork. ‘I don’t talk to men unless I know their names. Especially over breakfast.’

  The barman cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. ‘My name is Jeg Stannis, sir,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m Titus Endor. See, that wasn’t so hard. You were saying?’

  ‘Mira wants you to know that you can’t follow her any more.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘You went to her hab last night.’

  ‘Maybe I did.’

  ‘She knows you were there.’

  ‘And where is she?’

  Stannis shrugged. ‘She wants to stay well away from you. She asked me to come and deliver this message, as a favour to her.’

  ‘I’ll go where I like, Master Stannis.’

  ‘The club has rules, sir,’ Stannis said. ‘The girls have to be protected from–’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Predators,’ said Stannis.

  Endor bit the corner off a slice of black bread. ‘I’m no predator, I assure you.’

  ‘You went to her home, uninvited, and let yourself in.’

  Endor sighed.

  ‘The club has rules,’ the barman repeated. ‘Fraternisation with guests is strictly–’

  ‘It happens all the time, Master Stannis,’ said Endor. ‘Please, we’re both adults. Most of the dancers at your club are already supplementing their income from day jobs and Theatricala work. Let’s not be naive. They add to their wages in other ways too. Women are a rare commodity on Karoscura.’

  The barman’s face darkened. ‘Leave her alone.’

  ‘Or what?’ Endor smiled.

  ‘Or things will go badly for you.’

  Endor nodded. ‘We’ll see. Tell me this, Master Stannis…’ He pulled a pict from his coat and set it on the white cloth. ‘What does this mean?’

  Stannis looked down at the print. It was a shot of the yellow chalk marks on the floor of Mira Zaleed’s bedroom.

  ‘They’re practice marks,’ he said. ‘Dance steps. The girls often draw out the turns and steps.’

  Endor picked up the print and looked at it. ‘Are they really? I’m not convinced. The numbers–’

  ‘Beat counts.’

  ‘Who did she kill in her bathroom, Master Stannis?’

  The barman got up. ‘Kill? I think there must be something wrong with your head, mister. You leave her alone, you hear me?’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Endor nodded.

  AFTER BREAKFAST, ENDOR stopped at a street bar on Kalyope and took an amasec against the cold. Sleet was coming down, brittle and wet. He read some more of the book. Maliko, Throne damn him, had a way with words.

  Endor looked up. Across the street, through the veil of sleet, he saw a man watching him, a tall, thin man, dressed in sober black, with a high black hat.

  Endor looked away to pay the bill. When he got up, the thin man in the tall black hat had vanished.

  ‘HOW MUCH?’ ENDOR asked.

  ‘Four crowns,’ the adept replied.

  ‘To turn it round by tonight?’

  ‘Twenty crowns,’ the adept replied.

  Endor showed him his rosette, but the adept didn’t seem all that impressed.

  ‘Twenty crowns,’ he repeated.

  Endor paid him the money, and handed him Mira’s tooth. ‘Typed, by tonight, no excuses.’

  The adept nodded.

  Endor left the backstreet alchemist’s, and trudged up into the cold. The sleet had stiffened into snow, and it was belting along the thoroughfare in waves. He pulled up the collar of his coat, and walked into it, head down.

  HIS ROUTE TOOK him back past the Theatricala, unlit and drab in the daylight. He went in. Cleaners were mopping the marble floors, and turning out the waste bins.

  ‘We’re closed,’ a man said, coming forwards to meet Endor. ‘The box office opens at six.’

  Endor looked the man up and down. ‘My name is Endor, and I’m an inquisitor of the holy ordos,’ he said. He didn’t bother with his badge this time. It seemed to have lost its impact.

  ‘My pardon, sir,’ the man said.

  ‘Do I know you?’ asked Endor.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  The man was tall and skinny. ‘Do you own a very tall black hat?’ Endor asked.

  ‘No, I don’t, sir.’

  ‘You have a dancer here, by the name of Mira Zaleed. I would like to inspect her dressing room.’

  ‘We don’t do that, sir,’ said the man.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ smiled Endor. ‘I thought I’d explained that I was an inquisitor.’

  ‘THIS IS WHERE they all change,’ the man said. Endor stepped into the room and turned on the light. The man waited by the door.

  The room was long and low, flanked with grubby mirrors. Piles of dirty laundry heaped the baskets behind the door. Floaty white dresses hung on a rail. On the work surfaces, pins and reels of thread and thimbles lay beside pots of greasepaint and waxy sticks of rouge and base white. The room stank of greasy makeup, sweat and smoke.

  ‘Her station?’ asked Endor.

  ‘I have no idea, inquisitor,’ the man said.

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘Maybe to the left there, third mirror along. It’s very busy in here at night.’

  Endor sat down in the seat indicated and looked at himself in the smeared mirror. He was overpowered by the smell of stale perfume. Spent lho-sticks choked a glass near his left hand. The words ‘Good luck Mira XXX Lilo’ were written in lip rouge in the lower right-hand corner of the mirror.

  Endor opened the small drawer under the mirror. It was full of blood. He shut it again, hastily, trying not to slosh anything out onto his lap.

  ‘Could I have a moment?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not really allowed–’ the man began.

  ‘Inquisitor, inquisitor,’ Endor snarled.
/>   ‘I’ll be outside,’ the man said, and closed the door behind him.

  Gently, Endor slid the drawer open again. It wasn’t full of blood at all. It was full of dark rose petals. He laughed at himself. The rose petals were as black and red as the halls of the Theatricala. He dipped his hand in and slid it around. The petals were as soft and cold as snow flakes or random clues.

  He took out the knife. It was double-sided and stained. He sniffed it. Blood. From the bathroom in 870 Arbogan, no doubt. He leant back into the seat, and took out the pict. Dance steps? Practice marks? Surely nothing so innocent.

  Endor decided he had to get Liebstrum working on the Number of Ruin. He needed proper information. The Number of Ruin wasn’t something one took lightly. There had been a case, years back, an old fool…

  Endor wondered where Liebstrum was. He hadn’t seen his interrogator in days.

  He put his hand back into the petals and found a card, a business card. On one side, it read ‘Cloten and Sons, Funerary Needs and Final Rituals’. There was a vox number and a street address.

  On the other side, handwritten, was ‘Master Titus, you need to conclude your business with these men. Order number 87.’ 435, Endor thought, was divisible by 87 5 times.

  ‘Hello?’ Endor called out.

  The man poked his head around the dressing room door. ‘Sir?’

  ‘What are the chances of a man getting a drink?’ Endor asked.

  CLOTEN AND SONS occupied a grim ouslite building at the end of Limnal Street. Polished long-bodied hearses sat in the snowy yard. A brass bell tinkled as Endor went in.

  ‘Can I be of assistance to you, sir?’ asked a young, pudgy man in mourning weeds.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ Endor replied, ‘but he can.’ He pointed at the tall, slender man at the back of the musty little shop, a place of dark velvet drapes and samphorwood.

  ‘Master Cloten?’ the young man called. ‘For you, sir.’

  Master Cloten walked over the Endor. He was no longer wearing the tall back hat, but he was unmistakeable. His face was hard and pale and sinewy, the face a man wore when he had spent his life dealing with grief.