Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  As the full-body harness creaked and swayed, his gaze focused on a section of ceiling above his face. It turned out he was not wrong about the floating. The minimalist high-ceilinged room was too quiet and spacious for a Constabulary ward. He was sure his basic insurance didn’t cover the harness suspended from the ceiling or the birdsong piped in through the pair of loudspeakers, styled to resemble dandelion clocks, floating above his head.

  A medical hexapod servitor scuttled into Dumortier’s hospital room with characteristic urgency. It held up a tray as soon as he craned in his head to see.

  He saw five malachite fragments along with his regular coffee vial, arranged on a slotted tray borne by the hexapod’s rotating sixth leg. Each fragment was suspended in a slice of clear synthamber as though snatched from freefall, and labelled with the same case number and date.

  The hexapod placed the tray on a floating tabletop and spun around on its rear legs and on to its next delivery destination in the hospital wards, leaving Dumortier with his recent memories on the same tray as his coffee and a dish of grey paste.

  There must be better-tasting ways to poison me.

  It occurred to him the hospital suite was a way of preparing him or softening him for an incoming blow.

  To serve as an Ocelot is to pray your services are never required.

  But Senior Investigator Dumortier’s services and experience as an Ocelot were required—twice in his career so far, and by the same people. The first time was three years ago.

  The second time, he anticipated with disappointment, was today.

  The malachite fragments were a message, and a reminder. They matched a specific cluster of perforations made in the malachite column outside the hall three years ago, the last time he’d done this duty.

  It had been a demonstration for military contracts, invariably behind closed doors and top secret. But Constabluary had requested special access from Cabuchon and the reply had been clear: admission restricted to officers with highest clearance.

  “A dirty trick.” Sakamoto had briefed him before authorising his Ocelot paiza and directing him to where he could collect a new dress uniform. “Cabuchon believes we’re so understaffed as to have none.”

  The uniform was stiff but he felt better for wearing it. On that day he was only meant to be an observer, leaving him in position to see who was entering the hall or who was hanging around outside. The voices of the guests were abstract yet intimate. Too preoccupied with exchanging gossip and messages before they suddenly noticed his presence.

  Saurebaras had stood across from him, basking in the afterglow of accomplishment with Ignazia and Patriarch Madrugal. He made his round of the hall and passed them.

  In that moment, Saurebaras coalesced: the hint of a curtsey to him, unnecessary given the importance of the people milling around and jockeying for her attention. Even he picked up the start of a flirtation. Dumortier was uncertain what to make of it, but he didn’t get to his current position by being like those three target practice dummies set up on the floor. He opted to nod back at her: Flattered, but I’m on duty.

  Before the demonstration began, all unauthorised personnel had to leave. The Tagmats backed off when he showed them his paiza. He remained at a safe distance from the floor.

  She had a set of fla-tessen fans, and was demonstrating the possible damage they could do to a human body on the dummies. Applause was followed by Ignazia presenting the caltrops, one of which had ended up in a Tagmat guard’s forehead.

  “My art is not for the highest bidder!” he had heard Saurebaras yell.

  Saurebaras had not been trying to distract him—she had thrown down a challenge. He’d chased her outside to the corridor. She’d turned around in mid-run and hurled the caltrop at him; he’d ducked behind the malachite pillar…

  Dumortier’s hands suddenly trembled, his palms slicked with perspiration when he remembered how easily it could have been five fragments of scalp and bone sheared off his skull, and how he wouldn’t be hanging from the ceiling, staring at a vial of coffee. His skull fragments and brain matter would be cocooned in slices of gel synthamber, used for biological and DNA evidence, and his body cremated because he had no known next of kin to claim it.

  “—you were right. That look in his eyes, the elevated heart rate. He still remembers.”

  “—you can lay to rest any fears of amnesia.”

  He felt helpless, like a child eavesdropping on adult conversation. The pair of figures stood directly below him, talking to each other, but their words were all out of context. When they came into gradual focus, he recognised them as Gachalan nuns in flowing emerald green robes. Maybe Saurebaras’s venom was more lethal than he thought. If he was going to die soon, he appreciated receiving a bit more ceremony than the average investigator.

  “Are you waiting to hear my prayers, reverend sisters? Don’t bother to take a seat, I have none.”

  Both figures flipped back their hoods, revealing the faces of Lieutenants Katyal and Sakamoto gazing up at him with concerned but serious expressions.

  “I’d prefer that you’re in a better condition to consider our proposal.” Katyal stepped closer to the spica. “But there’s no time, even with accelerated healing.”

  Dumortier suppressed a groan, expecting news of his imminent dismissal or a sudden unexplained transfer to some shot-to-hell backwater settlement outside the Corona. Yet neither woman was clad in their gold-and-indigoes—they were off-duty, officially.

  “No surveillance in here,” Sakamoto said, although she still double-swept the room with an ex-field operative’s experienced movements. “So the hospital staff think Katyal and I are reverend sisters administering your final rites.”

  “With all due respect, is this an interrogation or a debriefing?”

  “Think about what both of us have to say for a few moments. If you agree to it, it’s a promotion.” Dumortier did not trust Katyal’s neutral tone—it was both a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a kick in the face.

  Unable to shake his head or nod because of the spica, Dumortier raised his hand in the affirmative and then shifted his torso from side to side to signal the opposite. Sensing his struggle, the spica lowered itself to floor level with a soft hum.

  “I was sloppy and too preoccupied with getting something out of Saurebaras,” said Dumortier. “If you want my resignation, you have it now.”

  “The Tier Dwellers left us a mess that needs to be cleaned up as discreetly as possible.”

  “They always leave a mess.” However, Dumortier was grateful they didn’t say you’ve left us a mess.

  “Don’t blame yourself for what you couldn’t prevent.” Sakamoto pulled up his medical chart and winced when she read through it. “We’re glad you’re alive.”

  “Enough with the secrecy.” Dumortier tried to angle himself in the spica so that he could look both of his superiors in the eye. “Tell me: why does one Tier Dweller scion—dead by accident, apparently—warrant a pissing contest like this? Since when are we suddenly so involved? Polyteknical has its own investigation department—let them handle this.”

  “The problem is everyone wants to try being a hero to Tier Dwellers,” said Sakamoto. “‘Everyone’ including the three of us in this room, at some point.”

  “When one group has enough power all other authorities look the other way,” Katyal said with a shrug. “Even Constabulary, which has stopped examining itself.”

  “We do more reacting than acting,” Sakamoto added. “They mock us when they flout the law. We’re a packet of nerves, a twitching organism, not an organisation.”

  “And now,” concluded Katyal, smiling, “we finally get our chance.”

  Gachala’s bright green disk dipped behind a passing cloud bank, and the room dimmed for a split second. Everything about Katyal and Sakamoto told him We are relying on you. Constabulary needs this.

  “How many other investigators are also Ocelots?” he asked.

  “None,” said Katyal. “Howev
er, as for senior investigators, let’s just say you’re enough for now.”

  “You’re asking me to join your covert parallel force—”

  “We both are,” emphasised Sakamoto.

  “Look at my condition now. Get somebody else,” said Dumortier.

  “If there was somebody, we wouldn’t ask you.” Sakamoto checked the medical chart again. “And we could leave you alone to mend a fractured hip.”

  “I should have known.”

  Twice he’d been called to Ocelot duty, and both times had involved Polyteknical and Saurebaras. Last time, a couple of minor houses had been involved; now it was the Aronts themselves.

  This should, he determined, mean no dramatic change to how he conducted his job, but he could not convince himself of it. Too late. This was over his head, over the heads of Constabulary command and the rest of Chatoyance. It went all the way up in the clouds, and specifically on the lavish Aront Tier, where someone had already made a decision to involve Dumortier. From the conversation on the bridge to now, Katyal and Sakamoto were just expediting it.

  Dumortier had started out at the stations, docks and spaceport, handling pimps, pushers, black market traders and suppliers before moving up through the ranks. He lasted in Canal Police for 48 hours due to an undetected health issue (or so he was told to state for the record), but that was a different matter.

  They didn’t select Dumortier for Ocelot work because he was dirty: to the contrary, he was chosen for his scrupulous reputation. It made a perverse kind of sense: dirty officers were not discreet, and they became more careless the more they became involved. Ocelot investigators usually started out by going after small targets, and Dumortier preferred working alone during the early hours of the morning, when the Shineshifts were over and skeleton crews ran the T-Car network.

  He suspected a few possible individuals who had the wherewithal to break procedure and regulations at such short notice and order the retrieval of the fragments from the evidence vaults. If they were tampering with the logs, it was a new low.

  Was Gia Aront’s body still in the morgue? He’d checked: a media embargo was currently in effect. Only the highest Constabulary and SeForTec clearances could access case details and stats.

  Fish rots from the head, according to the old saying.

  Dumortier had always thought Chatoyance—the cat’s eye—was misnamed. Chatoyance was not a eye, not a single organ, but a whole organism. A once-prized fish, its gleaming scales, patterns and lateral lines were the canals and T-Car lines. The worst rot was to be found in the guts: although in his opinion the fish was rotten from the start, all that mattered was which stage of decomposition it was in. The Archer’s Ring and its rival systems had long passed through the incipient stages, regressing from a golden age of prosperity—which had attracted new arrivals to the mining and fracking settlements—to the turbulence of the Downturn.

  The bloat stage of Chatoyance’s prosperity and excess had long passed: womb-like arcades, floating biomes of flora and fauna, new stations and lines with fanciful names. Genuine coffee from orbital greenhouses, not this vile algae-derivative shit dyed a suspicious uniform black. Now Chatoyance had entered Stage 3—a gradual yet active decay, with the rot seeping out of various orifices. Arcades were shut down and sealed off and the biomes abandoned after their Corund sponsors and their business partners cleared out, leaving behind an undercurrent of tension and despair.

  In such a climate, Dumortier did not blame anyone who still applied to Polyteknical, or the children of the Forty who tolerated those experimental implants. The tragedy had marked them out, taken them out of the race.

  Tier Dwellers also valued Ocelot investigators for their discretion.

  An Ocelot’s first directive is containment and damage control. To never allow Tier Dweller shit to flow downwards to the streets and taint the rest of us, or Constabulary and its officers will be nothing more than sewer workers in their employ.

  More urine dripped out of Dumortier and flowed through the catheter, snapping him back into the hospital room with his superiors.

  “You think all Chatoyance needs are a few knocks to right itself? Like an old-fashioned neon light?”

  “You’re an investigator,” said Katyal kindly, “not an omnipresent deity. What happened with Saurebaras is not your fault.”

  “This is not a controlled lab experiment,” added Sakamoto. “Constabulary calculates the outcome but not the interplay.”

  Katyal twisted her sleeve, betraying her apprehension. Dumortier was perversely pleased.

  “You will not be going it alone.” Sakamoto’s expression brightened, like she’d been waiting for a chance to announce some good news. “Nadira Morad, landing name Gaspard, will be assisting you.”

  Dumortier paused for a few seconds, unsure if he had heard right. Gaspard was Constabulary’s most senior and eminent SeForTec. “This case does not warrant the skill set and experience of Nadira Morad Gaspard.”

  “You worked with her before?”

  “I know her by reputation. She handles the most major of cases.”

  “Your high opinion of her is duly noted—but our order stands.”

  “Why not get hold of Deputy Hitei?”

  “She is still in vitro until next week.”

  “I’ll be in this spica, also out of action, until next month at the very least.”

  “We have access to advanced healing techniques,” Katyal cut in. “It will not be that long.” She pressed a discreet button on the wall.

  A birdlike orderly entered the room and went through his medical chart. “Seventy hours to repair the patient’s hip fractures,” it confirmed in its thin metallic voice. It was designed to emulate a soothing bedside manner, but unfortunately came across as eerie. The predicted duration was all Dumortier needed to know for now. He heard the procedure explained to his two superiors and got lost in the jargon: bone matrix, suspension, amniotic fluid, body temperature...

  “Officially both of you will treat your Aront house call as a ‘courtesy visit,’” Katyal said briskly as the orderly left. “Saurebaras was a regrettable oversight, and you’re taking the blame and taking charge of the mess. Powerful people act less guarded when they believe you have less power than them.”

  “Courtesy visit, courtesy visit,” Dumortier mumbled as if consigning it to memory. At least he could try to play along with the euphemism.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AFTER SEVENTY HOURS and half a day in intense physiotherapy, Dumortier was discharged and deemed fit again for light duty. Via another Shirpen, Dumortier arrived at the Constabulary shooting range, located deep in the Catacombs of Excellent Precision. He had never really appreciated the wry humour behind the name before. Its anonymous benefactor, a long-deceased Chatoyant official, had donated an abandoned hospital to Constabulary and they had left the inscription on each of the flagstones leading up to the foyer: “Enter in the spirit of pure inquiry or do not enter at all.”

  He stepped into the old hospital foyer and was greeted by an empty reception desk set into a wall of faded Egyptian hieroglyphics and imagery. The pantheon of ancient gods and goddesses were inlaid with coloured mica and flanked by engraved water lilies flowing out towards the edges. After the sparkling eyes of an ibis-headed sculpture scanned the security credentials on his paiza, Dumortier made his way down a stairwell to a wide, high-ceilinged tunnel. It lit up in sporadic bursts of flickering blue track lights, so intense it made Dumortier think of radiation bursts. The hospital had been out of bounds for decades; maybe it was radioactive, and a whole lot more.

  But Dumortier was not here for a history tour. Disorientated and irritated by the lights, he relied on his enhanced hearing to find the chamber described in Nadira Morad (landing name: Gaspard)’s message. He picked his way along another passage that veered off the main tunnel before retracing his steps and finally locating the chamber. It must have been one of the older ones: the soundproofing had deteriorated.

  Thwack! He hea
rd an object thrown at a target practice dummy.

  Thwack! A second time.

  “Stay where you are,” ordered a woman’s voice, assured, as though from countless years of experience. The slow cadence and clipped diction punctuated and spaced each word like a highlights column printing out the news.

  He obeyed without question. SeForTec Nadira Morad Gaspard had a way of making a person feel as though she was speaking directly to their subconscious.

  “Enter now,” she said a minute later without turning to greet Dumortier.

  He did so, but hung back in the shooter’s area until his eyes got used to the harsh lighting inside the chamber. He picked up the unexpected tang of salt.

  Three target practice dummies stood at the far end. Dumortier observed Nadira pick up a fla-tessen fan from a steel basin with a gloved hand, shake off the excess brine and steady herself before aiming the fan at the head of the centre dummy. She kept her arm extended at the end of the throw, her long fingers splayed.

  The fan missed the head of the target dummy by a frustrating centimetre—and not for the first time, as Dumortier observed from her frown.

  “It’s much harder than it looks,” commented Nadira as she bent down to retrieve the fan.

  “Maybe remove your gloves?”

  Nadira straightened up and returned to the other side of the chamber to try again, taking off her gloves. She lifted her chest and dropped her shoulder blades, angling her torso at the target dummy before drawing back her arm. This time, the fan hit the dummy in its chest. Dumortier did not refrain from applauding. The scene played out in that grey space between performance art and documentary footage.

  “Engaging artform,” Nadira said, more to herself than to him. “I should take it up in my downtime.”

  “That being said,” replied Dumortier, “can Forensics pay a few Adepts to test these fans—of course, in the strictest confidence?”

  “Even with our combined Ocelot and Senior SeForTec clearance, we don’t have the time.”