The golem jerked back into life. Behind its empty eyes, a strange white fire was burning. It raised one grey hand and plunged it deep into its chest. The hand emerged in a shower of clay holding a tattered scrap of parchment. With the other hand, it started ripping more lumps of clay from its belly, its legs, its face. Soon the marble floor was splattered with sizzling gobs of clay. Meanwhile, the golem was shrinking, fast.
“That’s gross,” said Tethys, turning away. For a big girl, she sure was squeamish.
“Spoils our fun, is what it does,” said Oceanus.
Soon there was nothing left of the golem but one twitching hand. Its last act was to crush the parchment in its fingers. Then the whole hand hardened and shattered to powder. Slash was no more.
“Guess that means he’s off the hook,” I said, and I turned to face Hyperion.
Here’s the thing with gambling: once you start, it’s hard to stop.
“Why don’t we all go down to the basement?” I added. “Take a look at what’s really there?”
Hyperion smiled an earthquake smile. “Think you’re clever, don’t you, gumshoe?”
“Just doing my job,” I replied.
The Titan spread his arm out into the corridor. “After you.”
12
"SO WHAT ARE we meant to be looking at?” said Tethys.
I surveyed the cellar in amazement. The broken pool table was gone. All the blood was gone. The floor was clear and the ceiling was back in one piece. In the far shadows, another Titan was lurking. He was carrying a bucket big enough to hold two of the Great Lakes, and a very large mop.
The dead cyclops was nowhere to be seen. In the middle of the patch of floor where he’d been lying was a single blob of grey golem clay.
“He was right here,” I said. “I swear.”
Hyperion made a show of looking round. “These old pool tables bend the light,” he said. “Funny what you think you see.”
“There was a dead cyclops here and you know it!”
The dimensions creaked as Hyperion’s hand shrank small enough to clamp me round the throat. He lifted me off the floor, all the way up to his face. My feet dangled. I could see the curvature of the earth.
“Get this, gumshoe,” he said. “The golem did it! See the clay there? That proves it. Right, Oceanus?”
“Right, boss,” said his brother.
“Rhea? Tethys?”
“The lynching was fun,” Tethys allowed.
“I’m prepared to believe you,” said Rhea. “This time.”
“You didn’t need me at all,” I said to Hyperion, making a point of not looking down.
“You served a purpose,” said Hyperion as he lowered me—none too gently—to the floor. “Now you’re finished here. Go back to your office, send me your written report, and don’t give this so-called mystery another thought. Savvy?”
None of this added up. In fact, the whole thing stank. But I knew when not to challenge a Titan. The tell-tale is when all the other Titans back away.
“Sure thing,” I said, brushing dust off my coat. “No problem. I’ll just take my hat and leave. Nice doing business with you again. Kind of.”
“Before you go,” said Hyperion, “Tell me this: are you a gambling man?”
“I bet both ways on the big Derbies,” I said. “Roll the dice once in a while.”
“Let me give you a word of advice.” He leaned close enough for me to see the jackdaws roosting in his pores. “Never gamble your life on a Titan’s fancy. You will lose. Every time.”
He rose abruptly and marched his siblings up and out of the basement. “Don’t forget that report, gumshoe,” he called. “Oh, and mind the strings on your way out.”
I thought about hanging around, but what was the point? The case wasn’t shut—hell, I’d barely got it open. But it seemed my work here was done. Plus I’d been away from the office longer than planned. I was worried about the doppelganger. I was so keen to leave, I didn’t even register Hyperion’s remark about the strings. My head full, I automatically opened a snag to the first available dimension and folded myself into the void.
The angry strings swallowed me whole.
13
IT WAS WORSE than before. Far worse. The strings bit like vipers and the boundary wolves chased me all the way from one side of the bulk to the other. I barely made it through alive. By the time I landed back in my office, I’d used up half the seams in my coat and lost all the hairs on the backs of my hands. I was black and bloody, dripping sweat. It was a wonder I hadn’t soiled my pants.
I clambered to my feet, checked the snag had closed behind me. You leave a dimensional doorway open, you’ll get more than just a draught coming through.
The office looked just as I’d left it: coffee bubbling in the corner, case folders piled high. My own self sat in the chair with his feet on the desk. Okay, so that part was weird. Then I saw what was different: the mob had gone.
I turned my coat inside-out until it was made of flannel and used it to towel myself down. Then I tossed it on the couch. It didn’t feel right to sit in the client’s chair, so I just stood there and stared myself in the face.
“How did you get rid of them?”
The doppelganger slugged down coffee. “Who?”
“The crowd of clients I left here. You know, the ones who wanted to burn the place down?”
“Them. Right. I talked them down.”
“You did what?”
“I apologised for screwing up, told them to come back next week.”
“What else? Their cases would be solved? They’d get their money back?”
“Both. I made them a special offer. One week only. The truth: free of charge.”
“They bought that?”
He tossed his empty coffee cup in the trash. “I talked sweet. You should try it. So, we going to get to work?”
“There is no ‘we’.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the boss.” The doppelganger spat a wad of tobacco on the carpet. I hadn’t chewed tobacco in years. He leaned back in the chair. It creaked just like it does when I’m sitting in it. “So what happened at the Tartarus Club?”
I glanced at my coat, lying where I’d thrown it on the couch. The brass compact was in the inside pocket. One push of the button and he’d wink out of existence. I weighed the option against planting my knuckles on the bridge of his nose.
Instead, I sat down heavily in the client’s chair, grateful for someone to talk to.
“It was a bust,” I said.
“A bust?”
“A weird bust at that. Hyperion really gave me the runaround. First he wanted me to prove this poor sap of a security golem blew up the casino, just to get his sibs off his back.”
“Figures,” said the doppelganger. “Titans do family feuds like the rest of us do intercontinental ballistics.”
“Only I don’t think that’s what was really going on.”
“The golem was innocent?”
“Totally. Not guilty, just badly programmed. The whole thing was a smokescreen to distract Hyperion’s sibs from what really happened.”
“Which was?”
I stretched my back and heard a castanet click. After two trips through the unfriendly strings, my whole body ached. “I don’t know. I got a sniff of a proper lead, but by then it was too late.”
“It all sounds deeply hokey to me.”
“You win some, you lose some.”
The doppelganger snatched up a sheaf of case folders and waved them in my face. “Right now we’re not winning anything, buddy. You see all these? Not one of them solved. You might think we’re busy but I’ll tell you this for nothing: unless we start ticking some of these boxes, busy don’t mean diddly!”
“And I keep telling you there is no ‘we’!”
Sneering, the doppelganger strode over to the door and stared at the neon sign still resting against the cracked glass outside. The ash from the explosion had cleared. The street was mostly craters and wrecked au
tomobiles. The sidewalks were empty.
“Was it a good lead?” he said.
“Maybe. Probably.”
“What was it?”
“Dead cyclops in the cellar.”
“Clues on the body?”
“Some. What’s it to you?”
“Just interested.”
“Don’t be. Leave me alone.”
“Any reason I should?”
“Plenty.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re not real.”
He rushed me, fist drawn, and socked me on the chin. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming. I fell off the chair, my jaw ringing like a bell.
“That real enough for you?” he said.
I was up twice as quick as I’d dropped, my own fists clenched. He came at me again. I feinted left but he read me and ducked. He tried a gut punch, but I saw it a mile off and dodged. I unleashed a haymaker that whistled through thin air. We went at each other like that for sixty seconds and neither of us landed a single punch. In the end we just stood there, glowering.
“I can read you like a book,” he panted.
“You telegraph your every move.”
I shot another glance at the couch. His gaze tracked mine.
We both ran.
I got to the coat a fraction of a second before he did. I thrust my hand in the pocket, pulled out the compact, flipped it open. The digital readout showed the number 1:08. As I hovered my thumb over the little button marked STANDBY, it changed to 1:07.
“So that’s it?” said the doppelganger. “An hour to live and you’re just going to wipe me out?”
“You can’t wipe out what’s not real.”
“I’m more real than you, buster. If anyone should be running this joint, it’s me.”
“I don’t think so.” My thumb hovered over the button.
“At least I remember what this business was built on. At least I know why we do what we do.”
“I told you, there’s no ‘we’.”
“I thought you had a motto. Have you forgotten?”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten.”
“What is it?”
“You know as well as I do.”
“Tell me!”
I almost pressed the button then. I was sick of his sneer, his whining voice. His foul familiarity.
“‘First the client’,” I said through gritted teeth, “‘Then the truth’.”
The doppelganger nodded. “Hyperion hired you. You walked away.”
“He was playing games. Screwing me around.”
“Still comes to the same thing.”
“Which is what?”
“Unfinished business. A stinking, Titan-sized heap of it.”
“I got fired. What do you want me to do?”
“Accept help. You’re sinking fast, buddy. What you need is an assistant.”
“And you’re it? With an hour left on your clock?”
He smiled a smile I didn’t care for. The worst of it was, the smile was mine.
I pushed the button and the doppelganger vanished.
14
I SPENT THE rest of the day reviewing the case folders of the people who’d coming knocking on my door. I should have felt grateful the doppelganger had bought me time—that was why I’d activated him, after all. Instead I just felt a sullen hatred. What right did he have to remind me of the principles on which my own business was founded? Who was he to preach to me about integrity? Then, as I realised the scale of the mountain I had to climb, I felt something close to despair.
I kept looking at the compact. I felt like a murderer. But what could I do? Like most of the gadgets in the cellar, the compact was single-use only. Reactivating it wouldn’t bring him back to life. It would condemn him to death.
What would they call it, I wondered? Fratricide? But he wasn’t my brother. It couldn’t be suicide—even when he was all played out I’d still be walking and talking. The paradox clogged my head like sourdough. I worried at it until my teeth ached. I drank neat bourbon to dull the pain.
By the time the sun went down, all I’d done was move the case files from one side of the desk to the other. The doppelganger was right. If I was going to climb this mountain, I needed help.
Traffic was moving on the street again. A thunderbird had made a late pass and filled up enough of the craters with guano to make a passable carriageway. Municipal sweepers cleared the debris, opening the way for a procession of soft-tops with Rottweiler engines and lenticular paint jobs. Party animals gathered under the neon. Party people too. A pair of hamadryad hookers took root on the corner, shaking their gourds, bark peeled right back to the forks in their lower branches.
I opened another bottle of bourbon. As I downed the first slug, my stomach growled and I realised I hadn’t eaten all day. I checked the clock. Persephone’s Pizzas would be open and I was in the mood for chorizo.
Before leaving the office, I checked my coat pocket for my wallet. Instead I came up with a folded piece of paper. I flattened it out. On the paper was printed a murky view of a smoke-filled casino. Half-hidden by the smoke was something that might have been a man in a hooded cloak, or the Messiah in a potato. It was the hard copy I’d printed off Hyperion’s surveillance camera.
I went through the rest of my pockets and found the scrap of cloth, the business card and the evidence pouch carrying the grain of stuff that wasn’t salt. Also my wallet, with just enough cash in it to buy the pizza I was craving.
I hesitated in the open doorway, rain clattering off the brim of my fedora, wallet in one hand, evidence from the Tartarus Club in the other. A pair of hot rods raced past, spraying water over a crowd of cosmophysicists. Across the street, one of the hamadryads popped her seed pods at me.
I looked up, read the stitching on the needlework sampler that hung over the door:
First the client. Then the truth.
My stomach rumbled.
I closed the door, took off my coat and went to work.
15
I STARTED WITH the grain of white crystal. Curious about that miniature serial number, I hauled the baryonic rasteriser up from the cellar and plugged in the macro lens.
The rasteriser’s a clever piece of gear. It crosses a stream of left-handed muons with a optophobic laser to turn whatever you put on the slide into a Moebius hologram. That’s just like a regular hologram, only it unwraps at least five extra dimensions. Put your mother under the lens, you’d see sides of her you never knew existed. Probably wish you didn’t, too.
Two nanoseconds after the muon stream started up, the grain burst into purple flame.
The detonation cracked the rasteriser’s casing, sent the lens spinning across the room like a supersonic frisbee. It clipped my ear and sunk itself in the opposite wall. The rasteriser collapsed to the floor in a million pieces. A mushroom of silvery smoke billowed against the ceiling. If that really had been salt, you’d have been wise not to shake it on your salad.
I was pleased to have discovered a fragment of the explosive used to blow the safe. I was mad that, in the process, I’d destroyed it. I kicked the chair across the room, thumped the couch, poured coffee, spilled it, poured it fresh and chugged it down. I glared at the hamadryads—by now they’d shed most of their leaves and were attracting quite a crowd.
After I’d calmed down, I turned my attention to the surveillance photo. I didn’t need fancy equipment for that—just my eyes.
At first I favored Hyperion’s opinion that it was just a phantom image; if Tethys hadn’t put the idea of a hooded figure in my head, I wouldn’t have seen a thing. But, the more I looked, the more I thought that maybe Tethys had something. Was that trail of smoke an arm? That shadow a hidden face? Maybe it was a man after all, someone stealing through the chaos while everyone ran for the hills. The real perpetrator.
When I used the Sherlock glass to look closer, the image collapsed back into a heap of pixels. The hooded man vanished. I took the glass away and he didn’t come ba
ck.
I stared at the picture a minute longer, willing my eyes to catch him. It was like looking in an empty pocketbook, wishing it full of bills. But it didn’t happen. The ink blot was just an ink blot.
Disgusted, I tossed the picture aside. Another bust.
More coffee, then I set the two remaining pieces of evidence on the desk. These I had real hopes for. No phantoms these, but actual physical things, recovered with my own hands from the scene of crime. From a corpse that Hyperion had for some reason seen fit to sweep under the carpet.
I ran the scrap of cloth through the Planck scanner but it came up blank. Just regular burlap, badly charred, squid-ink lettering stamped by hand: SCAT. Well, scat is animal dung. Poachers track scat through the wildwood. It’s also that thing jazz singers do when they can’t remember the words. Not to mention the acronym used by the String City Association of Tulip-Fanciers, but I couldn’t see that crowd planting anything at the Tartarus Club. Least of all a designer bomb.
Which left the business card.
Even with the blood cleaned off, the card didn’t show me any more than what I already knew: the name of the dead cyclops was Brontes, and he worked at Single Vision Forge. The address put the forge in a small industrial park near Carr Industries, the biggest power station complex in String City. It’s a grim place, hot and smoggy. I’d been there a few times and didn’t relish a return visit.
I dropped the card on the burlap scrap. I rubbed my eyes and listened to my belly grumble. Outside was all darkness and neon. Why the hell was I bothering with this when I had a hundred other cases lined up?
A voice echoed in my head. It was my own voice. Only it wasn’t. It was the doppelganger’s.
“First the client,” it said. “Then the truth.”
Ignoring the hunger pangs, I picked up the stuff from the desk and went to the Feynman globe.
The globe is one of my favorite gadgets. It’s really eleven globes in one—one for each dimension, all of them contra-rotating through this fancy metaball gearbox. The machine has an integrated brane-space that warps the surface geometry of the individual globes so when they all turn together they look like beads of mercury doing the please-excuse-me. Anyway, the point of the thing is to isolate the coordinates of any given point in space-time to the nearest semi-electron. When you walk the dimensions as much as I do, coordinates matter.
String City Page 4
