Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  “Since when do you eat lunch?” Setona was selecting a leash for the display leopard from a rack on the wall. “Don’t think I don’t see you nibbling at lumps of potch opals in the storeroom or hiding slivers of Desert Rose under your tongue.”

  Marsh didn’t reply. He splayed and wiggled the fingers of his right hand, trying to recall what ‘pica’ in SignalPose was. Instead, he mimed hacking at an imaginary rock face with his left arm.

  “Don’t confuse Chatoyant Industrial SignalPose with Modrani SignalPose—we’re much more elaborate. It’s what we’re paid for.”

  She stepped out of the stock room and showed him the modrani gesture for ‘miner’, using two knuckles of both hands to graze her cheeks to represent smudges of dirt.

  In reply, Marsh made the gestures for ‘cravings’ [index finger and thumb held like a pincer and placing morsels of invisible food into mouth].

  A genetic predisposition towards pica was common among Cabuchoners from earlier Waves, but a widespread stigma still existed to the extent that March had learned to not say the word aloud when he was growing up. The innocuous combination of hard consonants and ending open vowel suggested the name of a close friend or a relative rather than a condition. Mineral deficiencies, the doctors had said, and prescribed iron and zinc supplements, but Marsh finished his doses quickly and resumed eating blades of grass and pinches of sand from the garden, much to the dismay of his parents.

  His parents were both senior members of the Corund and didn’t talk about his pica; they even found a measure of tolerance for it. For older Cabuchoners, pica was a genetic adaptation, a remnant of the less romantic side of the tentative Home System expeditions and the First Wave of migration before the Kuiper Belt opened up. Those first ships had been carrying sleepers while their skeleton crews faced the attendant risks of plunging into the void. Stories emerged of rationing, and malnutrition leading to starvation, and reports of mutiny and cannibalism. To acknowledge this unsavoury part of their history was to contradict the glorious narrative of the Archer’s Ring, ceaselessly expanded and foisted upon subsequent generations like Marsh’s.

  Still, Marsh liked augmenting narratives of his own. He took out a pendant from under the counter: a long shard of Europan sea jade, dangling from a platinum chain. The jade was irradiated in sub-zero waters exposed to Jupiter’s magnetic field and super-compressed by water pressure; the shard’s vivid sheen was an interplay of swirling kingfisher greens and yellows shot through with fine black threads of chromium. He loved staring into its depths. No matter where gemstones originate, they always transported him far away.

  “My great-grandmother spent five years operating a remote crawler on the ocean floor of Europa with thousands of other prospectors, trawling for slag that would yield treasures. Like this fragment of Europan sea jade. She made her fortune and repaid her passage to Jupiter. Perhaps this fragment once passed through her hands.”

  “Not very likely. It’s rumoured this piece is cursed. The provenance card states the shard has drawn Tier Dweller blood,” muttered Setona, reaching out to run a slender finger along the delicate sharp edge. Her fingertip came away with freshly drawn blood.

  “The pendant should be in a Constabulary evidence vault,” Marsh said and looked up the provenance card in the stockroom records. Unsurprising, the information provided was by turns specific and vague: the jade was certified to be of Europan marine origin, not a clever imitation grown from an artificial seabed simulated in an industry geolab.

  “Don’t you know? Evidence vaults have big leaks. And places like the Back-Bazaars soak up the leaks, at least most of the time.” Setona smiled at Marsh’s naivety. “No wonder you got arrested for art theft back home, poor innocent boy.”

  “Possession of stolen art.” Marsh scowled. “Someone I knew thought I had connections and when he found out I had none he wanted, he turned me in.” He didn’t get a chance to mention his pica to Setona during his brief interview. She had glanced through his employment history and was hardly ruffled about the type of trouble he had been involved in. Then again, Setona would never find a Chatoyant willing to work for 20,000 uta a month. “And what about the provenance of offworld gems mined by Chatoyance and its subsidies?”

  “I’d rather trust a Back-Bazaar merchant who lays everything out—wares and provenance, if you’re discreet—on one of their tarpaulin stalls than suppliers and dealers in compliance under the Ninclarsaen Procedure. Its integrity is supposed to be infallible, but it’s about as secure as the roof of the old ’Cinth station.”

  Marsh asked, “The scope is too wide to control?”

  “The Procedure lets anything in. Worse still, it lets the same things in all the time. Blood gems from conflict zones, and greasy gems bought with stolen funds.”

  Marsh looked at the counter. “I’ve been wondering why only secondhand pieces and curios are on display.”

  “Blood comes with grease. You can disguise either one, but not a mess of both. That never ever comes off. I relinquished all of my gifts of jewellery.” Setona added, “Unless I’ve left a few stuck on the display leopard.”

  “The pendant’s former ownership allegedly involved an undisclosed Pre-Downturn crime of passion…” Marsh started reading aloud from the provenance card and then stopped to ask, “Aren’t Chatoyant crimes involving Tier Dwellers mostly crimes of passion?”

  “You have no idea,” replied Setona with a finality intending to close off the subject.

  Marsh remained unfazed and set down the pendant on a tray. The waters of Europa receded and sublimated as he imagined the shard thrust into an eye socket or lodged between the spiked vertebrae of a Doyen’s articulated spine.

  “Prices keep fluctuating, so let’s see which story sells it faster: a personal connection to my family or a high society murder.”

  “The murder,” insisted Setona, sucking on her finger with theatrical relish. She daubed some more blood on her lips to save on reapplying gloss. “Chatoyants pay more attention to the glint of knives in dark alleyways than changing Shineshift lights…” She was suddenly distracted by something outside the windows.

  Setona hurried outside as Marsh went to the doorway and surveyed the piazza. The fountain jets still accompanied the sculpted horses on their gallop to nowhere, but a crowd now gathered around the fountain’s wide, deep basin.

  Marsh stepped outside, hit a switch set in the doorframe to power up the crowning-shield and walked in the direction of the fountain. The crowd’s attention was focused on the body of a young woman in the water. Both of her arms were carelessly thrown over the edge of the basin, as if the woman had passed out drunk. Encircling the wrist of one of the arms was a familiar-looking keloid scar.

  Marah shoved his way through the crowd, past Setona and over to the wide edge of the fountain’s basin. He lifted the woman out of the fountain, oblivious to the icy jets of water and the murmuring crowd and placed her on the paving. She coughed up some fluid and passed out again.

  Setona stood over Marsh and the shadows cast by the horse sculptures obscured the question she asked in frantic SignalPose:

  [Who is she?]

  [I don’t know] Marsh replied.

  It felt strange to tell her so because it was not exactly a lie.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SENIOR INVESTIGATOR DUMORTIER stood outside the doors of the Sunlight Corridor. Through the interlocking triangular panes of gold- and indigo-tinted glass, he made out the silhouette of his superior Lieutenant Soni Katyal.

  He touched his fingertip to the crowning-shield to test it. As he predicted, it barely yielded to the slight pressure. The glass was for the aesthetic, but the crowning-shield did the actual work. Constabulary versions did not hum or vibrate like the ones used by civilians. It was a misconception that a crowning-shield was a ‘forcefield’: it was a physical thing, a shield of nanoparticles that could be set to any spatial configuration: doorways, buildings or vehicles. The particles bumped up against surrounding air molecules and dus
t, creating the crowning-shield’s trademark shimmer, and Dumortier watched this interplay for a minute as a meditation. People persisted in believing that crowning-shields were completely invisible to the naked eye; but this being Chatoyance, where half the population sported optical implants, most people had no idea what the naked eye was capable of.

  “Ma’am, our queen is in the crowd,” he blurted as soon as the glass panes parted before him.

  Katyal kept her back to him and her attention on the Chatoyance skyline, as though she failed to hear him or recognise his quaint use of outdated code. Dumortier had long ceased feeling self-conscious about it. When working on Tier Dweller cases, it was prudent to plug all possible boltholes in case of moles within Constabulary departments. The code was obscure enough to be impenetrable to all but Dumortier and his superiors.

  “Ma’am, the queen—”

  Katyal beckoned him inside. Dumortier hesitated before entering the Sunlight Corridor, mesmerised by the illusion: every hexagonal arch along the corridor receded away from him until the farthest arch nearly disappeared. This was no drab, overcooled utilitarian conduit linking the twin blocks of Constabulary Headquarters and jutting out of the buildings like an exposed rib. The Sunlight Corridor connected both sprawling roofs in an elaborate undulating ribbon. The long, bright and almost sacred space, reserved for superiors and their investigators, facilitated discreet yet open communication. It announced to all personnel and reassured them that “We harbour no secrets here.”

  No official ones, anyway.

  “Slow down on the Gia Aront case,” Katyal told him.

  Dumortier glanced behind him in case she was talking to someone else standing outside the doors.

  No such luck.

  “Apply the brakes now? Tyro Pleo Tanza has been spotted in Temple Plaza. She may have been granted sanctuary.”

  “The Temple does not grant sanctuary under any circumstances—”

  This was either a very recent directive or he had fallen well behind on religious matters.

  “—and its committee wouldn’t want the Temple turning into a magnet for undesirables, harboured by nuns and priestesses. We wade through enough legal morass every second of every day.”

  “Do we apply normal surveillance or lockstep levels to Tyro Pleo Tanza in the interim?”

  “Watch her, but don’t impede or detain. She can swim the entire canal network or camp out in Khrysobe Spaceport as long as she doesn’t make it off Chatoyance. There’s nowhere she can hide. But if she’s spooked, she will start running here and there, exhausting her energy and ours. Don’t pick her up until I give that order.”

  Dumortier’s enthusiasm abated. He did not appreciate being summoned at such short notice and for apparently nothing more than to have his previous orders rescinded. The choice of venue was undoubtedly deliberate on Katyal’s part. Still, every Constabulary officer dreamed of their visit to the Sunlight Corridor. Not many were granted this honour.

  An instinct left over from his officer days told him to linger in the presence of superiors and not rush off when dismissed. Make the most of your moment, even if it turns out nothing is required of you. He suppressed it.

  “May I go? I need to get back to Canal Police.”

  “Drop the disappearance case for now as well, Dumortier. This concerns the biggest fish that ever landed in our laps.”

  Tier Dweller cases were Dumortier’s remit, hence nothing much was ever required of him. He relied on his aesthetic to shoulder most of his work, cutting an austere figure yet elegant and charming enough to blend in at functions and special events. If you moved with fluid ease within their circles, they opened up to you like clams at high tide. Even VIPs and officials from Cabuchon and Anium felt comfortable in his presence—until he switched off the charm, flash freezing his targets like liquid nitrogen.

  A sequence of low clicks punctured the air, followed by a whirring from the smooth white floor between him and Katyal. A sleek conference table and matching chairs rose between them. He took a seat at the end closest to him and Katyal sat at the other. A real-time satellite map image of Chatoyance appeared in the table’s surface.

  “This Pleo Tanza, does she have any priors?”

  “Nothing too serious. Caused a public disturbance a month or so ago. Officers were called to the community hall in Blue Taro and Boxthorn.”

  Katyal’s gaze flicked downwards and she read aloud from the report readout on the table. “Protesting a then-proposed training initiative…”

  “An initiative which was subsequently implemented,” Dumortier informed her. “Experimental lapidary implants.”

  “Says here, in the endnotes, that the experimental implants were ‘under review’ at the time of writing.” For Katyal no detail was too minor.

  “You and I both know ‘under review’ can mean anything when it comes to Chatoyant institutions.”

  Katyal regarded him with mild exasperation. She didn’t need the reminder.

  “Polyteknical carried out the initiative,” Dumortier added. “Forty students outfitted with implants and under observation.”

  Katyal closed the report. “Misguided heroics tend to attract attention.”

  “Too early to speculate if Gia Aront’s death is another one of Pleo Tanza’s heroics.”

  “Bring Pleo Tanza in now and I can’t guarantee the Aronts won’t try to bury her.”

  “Who asked you to bring me in on Gia Aront?”

  “Is it relevant?”

  Dumortier looked around at his suroundings. “Both of us are in the Sunlight Corridor, so yes.”

  “Patriarch Aront requested you. I agreed. But only after discussion with Sakamoto.”

  “Ahh,” breathed Dumortier in a way that meant, Say no more.

  “So, to an outsider it looks like a fantastic embarrassing accident. But that’s Polyteknical’s interpretation—we take a different view.”

  “The Tier Dwellers purloin so much from the good people of the Archer’s Ring that they’ve resorted to cannibalising each other?” Dumortier sucked on his teeth. “I never thought I’d live long enough to see that.”

  “Gia Aront was always the most attractive target.”

  “Much too obvious,” replied Dumortier. “Who’d dare try? Until now.”

  Things occasionally pierced the blanket of corruption: scandals, land swaps, allegations of blackmail. No one had expected to discover an actual corpse lying underneath; it was a fortuitous collision of factors. Tyro Pleo Tanza may as well have stabbed Gia Aront on board an Aront luxury barge and pushed her body dead smack into the path of a Canal Newt.

  “I’m aware. But by right she should be placed into protection.”

  Dumortier described a spiral in the air in front of him with his finger, to illustrate that he’d gone over the problem many times since he was assigned to the case yesterday. “Tyro Pleo Tanza is the daughter of Idilman Tanza, the sole survivor of the Forty. Might as well strap an advertisement beacon to her head.”

  “Also, there’s a high possibility of wetwork.”

  Dumortier wanted to laugh. “The Inner Council? Over one dead Aront scion?”

  “So the question now is: safe houses or flats?” Katyal asked.

  “I have to treat existing ones as all compromised.” His spiral in the air shrunk like the strategic options he had considered in the last day. “Besides, if we take the initiative to fake her disappearance, it’ll look like the Aronts paid us or extorted us into doing it for real.”

  Katyal drummed her fingers on the table, making the map flicker.

  “Don’t underestimate the Tier Dwellers’ talent at damage control,” said Dumortier. “The Aronts haven’t made any public statements or given interviews. Likely a delaying tactic; they can’t control damage if they don’t know the full extent of it.”

  “For now,” conceded Katyal. “This is where we flow into the gap created.”

  Dumortier nodded, although he agreed with her only in theory.

  This
could go either way. A high profile case solved to his—and Constabulary’s—credit, and Katyal finally makes a significant breakthrough against the Aronts. Both results achieved without any more wasted effort on the few minor Tier Dweller cases Dumortier was chasing. Cue ceremonies and speeches before the Lieutenant-Colonel pinned medals on both their chests.

  Or Gia Aront could cause him more than a little trouble, incurring the displeasure of those with vested interests in the Aronts and their fortune. Dumortier then foresaw different metal on his chest; shrapnel from an IED fixed to the underside of a parked Shirpen.

  “Once the Aronts have their justice, even you won’t be allowed to take another look, not even with my permission and clearance.”

  Dumortier inclined his head in agreement. It happened often enough in the past that Dumortier’s predecessors had acknowledged it as standard operating procedure, simply the cost of conducting an investigation: an extra-legality which could be enough to tie Constabulary’s hands.

  Gachala’s verdant disc peaked above the horizon, scattering violet, teal and orange hues across the sky. The calmest period in the day was during the reset of the Shineshift cycle. Transfixed, Dumortier had never watched the sunrise from the roof of Constabulary HQ before. He never had reason to come up here and was glad the view did not disappoint. Gachala lived up to its gemstone namesake.

  “When I started watching from up here I noticed the rays never hit the same places twice. It was like Gachala was showing me new details and secrets every day.”

  Dumortier was not in a mood to offer opinions on the scenery. “If you say so, ma’am.”

  “That’s when I realised we should stop fumbling around in our own jurisdiction. The Downturn left us a city-sized mess. We are vigilant, but that is never enough.”