Edeard shivered despite pulling on a thick woolen jumper. He had not thought of Fahin in a long time, and his disturbingly weird dream left the memory of resurrected skeletons lingering like a bad aftertaste. It was an unfortunate combination with which to be starting his first morning.
Not that it was morning yet, he noticed as they scurried down the station’s central stair to the small hall where they would spend the next six months learning their new craft. The glowing nebulae of Querencia’s night sky were still visible through the feathery curtain of cloud drifting in from the sea. Dawn was at least an hour away.
Edeard still was not used to the way Makkathran buildings blocked his farsight, so when they arrived in the hall, he was surprised that another probationary constable was already there along with Sergeant Chae. She was about his age, perhaps a little older, with dark hair cut shorter than he had ever seen on a girl before. Her face was rounded with chubby cheeks and what looked like a permanent scowl. Even by Makkathran standards, her thoughts were heavily veiled, allowing no hint as to her true feelings. Edeard tried not to be too obvious in the way he checked her out, but when his eyes switched from her legs—long but thighs rather too plump—to her chest, he suddenly realized she was watching him. She raised an eyebrow in scornful query. His cheeks reddened, and he turned away.
Chae was standing at the head of the room under one of the ceiling’s circular light patches. Thankfully, his anger seemed to have vanished. “Very good, boys and girls; almost on time. Now believe it or not, this early morning is not designed with the sole purpose of making your lives miserable, I’ll have plenty of opportunity for that over the next few months. No. Today I want us to get acquainted. That means we’ll be starting with some simple tests to discover the level—or lack of—your psychic abilities. This way we can combine you into a squad which together will perform a great deal better than the sum of its parts. And believe me, you will need to work together. There are gangs out there that will happily shred your flesh and feed you to the fil-rats if you try and interrupt their activities.”
Edeard was not quite sure he believed that and hoped his thoughts did not show his doubt. He concentrated on trying to achieve the same passivity that everyone else was displaying.
“Constable Kanseen, would you begin, please,” Chae said. He gestured at the bench in front of him. There were five metal balls resting on the ancient wood, the smallest was the size of a human fist, while the others were progressively larger. A sixth ball sat on the floor, a good eighteen inches in diameter.
“Which one?” Kanseen asked.
“You just show me what you can do, young lady,” Chae said. There was a strong note of contempt ringing through his voice. “That way I can assess what duties to assign you—if any.”
Kanseen’s face hardened into an even more disapproving scowl. She glared at the fourth ball. It slowly rose into the air.
Macsen whistled approvingly and clapped. The other probationary constables grinned appreciatively. Edeard took a moment and joined in the acknowledgment. He assumed someone had given her the same advice about not revealing her full strength.
“That it?” Chae asked.
“Sir,” Kanseen grunted.
“Okay, thank you. Boyd, let’s see what you’re made of.”
A grinning Boyd stepped forward. The fourth ball quivered and rose a couple of inches above the wood. Boyd’s brow glistened with perspiration.
Macsen managed to lift the fifth ball. Dinlay produced a confident grin and elevated the fifth and second balls, which drew a heavy round of applause. Even Kanseen joined in.
“All right, Edeard, show them how the countryside is so much better than the city.”
Edeard nodded slowly and moved forward. The others were watching eagerly. He was sorely tempted to fling the sixth ball right at the sergeant, but Topar’s caution was still fresh in his mind.
His third hand closed around the fifth ball and sent it bobbing up through the air until it was halfway to the ceiling. The others cheered. He lifted the second ball, then made a show of straining to lift the third, allowing it to hover a few inches above the wood.
The first ball shot off the table and streaked toward Edeard. His shield hardened, deflecting it easily enough. At the same time he dropped the three balls he was holding aloft.
All the probationary constables fell silent, staring at him and Chae.
“Very good, Edeard,” Chae drawled. “You almost convinced me. Little too much time between the hit and the drop, though. Work on that.”
Edeard gave the sergeant a sullen stare.
Chae leaned forward. In a stage whisper he said: “I have friends in the Eggshaper Guild guard, lad.”
Edeard reddened.
“Constables should be honest above all else,” Chae continued. “Especially with their own squadmates. Ultimately your lives may depend on each other. Now, do you want to try again?”
Edeard pulled the sixth ball into the air. He heard Boyd gasp in surprise.
“Thank you, Edeard,” Chae said. “Now, then, farsight. I have placed some markers around the district. Let’s see who can find what.”
Edeard let the sixth ball down gently. He wondered what Chae would have said if he had known how much more he could lift.
The psychic tests went on for another hour, measuring their various talents, until Chae declared he had had enough of them. Edeard was interested in the results. Kanseen had a farsight almost as good as his own, while Dinlay probably could longshout halfway across the Iguru plain, a capability of which he was inordinately proud. Macsen’s shield seemed disproportionaly stronger than his third hand; nothing Chae threw at him got through. Boyd was all-around unexceptional. It left Edeard wondering if he was above average or if his squadmates were distinctly below average. Sergeant Chae’s psychic ability was certainly powerful enough.
Chae told them to get some breakfast, then report for uniform fitting. “If any of you have money, I’d advise you to spend it on your tunic. Those without money will have the cost taken out of their pay for the next six months, and I assure you it won’t leave you with much at the end of the week.”
They trooped along to the station’s main hall, a long chamber with an arching ceiling and a big crystal window at the far end. Some of the benches already were occupied. A sergeant told them the bench at the far end would be theirs for the duration of their probationary period. The rest of the constables ignored them.
Ge-monkeys hurried out of the kitchen, bringing crockery. They were adept at receiving orders, Edeard found when he instructed one to bring tea and scrambled eggs. At least the station provided their food. He wondered if he should try to longtalk Salrana. The sun was just starting to rise outside.
“I’ve never seen anyone lift so much,” Boyd said. “You’ve got a lot of talent, Edeard.”
Edeard shrugged.
“I claim first rights to stand behind him when the shit starts flying,” Macsen said. “And the bullets.”
“You all look like you can handle yourselves if we get pushed into a corner,” Edeard said.
“Don’t have a lot of choice, do we?” Macsen said. “Not enough skill for a guild and not rich enough to buy into the militia. So here we are, all of us clinging to the ass end of life, and we’re only just starting out. One big long fall into the sewage from here on in, my fellow failures.”
“Ignore him,” Dinlay said. “He’s just bitter at the way he got treated by his father’s family.”
“Not as bitter as they’ll be when I’m through with them,” Macsen said with unexpected heat.
“Plans for revenge?” Kanseen asked.
“Don’t have to plan. Those arrogant turds break the law a dozen times a week. One day I’ll have the clout to have the whole lot of the bastards locked up and ruined.”
“Now, that’s what I like to see: ambition.”
“How come you didn’t join a guild, Edeard?” Macsen asked. “You have more psychic talent than the rest of us
put together.”
“I don’t want to be ordered around for the next seven years,” he told them simply.
“Lady bless that,” Dinlay said. “We just have to grit our teeth for six months and we’ve made it.”
“That’s a curious definition of making it,” Kanseen said in a dismissive voice as a ge-monkey brought her a tray with a bowl of porridge and a tall glass of milk. “Being allowed out onto the streets by ourselves to be shoved around by gangs and get beaten up trying to stop tavern fights.”
“Then why are you here?” Macsen asked.
She took a long drink of milk. “Do you see me being a proper little wife to some oaf of a tradesman?”
“Not all tradesmen are oafs,” Boyd said defensively.
Macsen ignored him. “Good for you,” he told Kanseen.
Her head turned ponderously to stare at him. “Not interested, thanks.”
Edeard grinned while Dinlay and Boyd both laughed.
“Me, neither,” Macsen insisted, but he had lost the moment and sounded very insincere.
“So is Chae right about buying the uniform?” Edeard asked. He was conscious that he probably had more coinage in his pocket than the others.
“Depends,” Dinlay said. “If you’re definitely going to be a constable, then it doesn’t matter how you pay. But if you’re uncertain, then you’re best off having them take it from your wages. That way, when you leave after a couple of weeks, you hand the uniform back and you haven’t lost any of your own money.”
“Oh, face facts,” Macsen said. “If we’re here, it’s not because we’re uncertain; we’re plain desperate.”
“Speak for yourself,” Dinlay said. “This is my family profession.”
“Then I apologize. I don’t have the luxury of alternatives.”
“You could have joined the gangs,” Kanseen said lightly. “It probably pays better.”
Macsen showed her a fast hand gesture.
“How bad are they?” Edeard asked. “The gangs, I mean. I’d never heard of them before I reached town.”
“Lady, you really are from the countryside, aren’t you?” Macsen said. “When did you get here?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday!” He said it in a voice so loud that several constables glanced curiously over at their table.
“Yesterday,” Edeard said firmly.
“Okay, well, too late now. The gangs are big in some districts and not in others; the majority are based in Sampalok. If you’re rich, they’re not much of a problem; if you’re poor, then it’s more difficult for you. They specialize in protection. Think of them as an alternative tax system to the Grand Council.”
“But with violence,” Dinlay said. “They’re murderous scum, and they should be wiped out.”
“After first being fairly found guilty in court,” Macsen said with a smile.
“They’re a real problem and getting worse,” Boyd said. “My brother is having to pay them to leave the bakery alone, and he’s only ten minutes away from this station, which puts him about as far from Sampalok as you can be. It used to be safe there; my father never used to have such trouble.”
“Why doesn’t he report them to the constables?” Edeard said.
Macsen gave a disrespectful snort. “Take a look around you, Edeard. Would you ask us to protect you from an organized gang that thinks it’s funny to throw your children or your mother into the canal with a rock tied to them? Are you going to stand outside a baker’s shop for twenty-four hours a day for ten years just to save them? Do you think Chae would let you? And if he did, what about everyone else in the district? No. They’re a fact of life in Makkathran now. The best the constables do is maintain an uneasy truce and stop us from falling into complete anarchy.”
“So young, so cynical,” Kanseen said. “Ignore them, Edeard. It’s nothing like as bad as they say.”
“I hope not,” he said in a subdued voice. Maybe he was still suffering from the shock of city life, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Grand Master Finitan had not been entirely honest with him about life in Makkathran.
Investigator Second Level Halran stood in the vault’s open door and surveyed the chaos inside. Every surface—walls, floor, ceiling, corpses—had been covered in a thick carpet of blue-gray gossamer fiber, as if a million spiders had spent the night spinning their webs together. The slender strands were actually semiorganic filaments that had taken over three hours to neutralize the nerve toxin leaking from spent kinetic projectiles and damp down several other lethal energy surges coming from munitions left over from the firefight. Halran was mildly surprised that the St. Mary’s clinic would use nerve agents, but then, important people did like reassurance that their secure memory stores were truly secure. He had told the clinic manager that he would be inspecting their toxic armaments user certificate at noon—a time scale long enough for high-level calls to be placed and the correct licence to be procured. It was that kind of flexible interpretation of procedure that had earned Halran his last two promotions. He figured what the hell, the big boys ran the world, anyway; there was little capital to be made from annoying them. That was why the police commissioner had handed him this assignment. And as soon as he got it, the Mayor’s assistant was calling him to explain certain political considerations, foremost of which was that the complete destruction of half a million memorycells belonging to the wealthiest, most influential people in the state had not actually happened. If there was a temporary glitch in kube data retrieval due to the unfortunate accident with the clinic’s power generator, it was regrettable but not a cause for alarm or excessive media interest. Reporters could cover the damage to the forest; they were not to be permitted into the administration block and its sublevels.
Halran’s u-shadow completed its analysis of the gossamer and reported that decontamination was complete. “All right,” he told the eight-strong forensic team standing behind him in the corridor. “I want a full scene survey down to a molecular level. No budget limit; this is way way above our usual priority rating. Col, Angelo, you build the event sequence for me. Darval, see if you can get me the name of the memorycell that bastard Telfer was after.”
Darval peered over Halran’s shoulder; the emergency lighting projector that had been rigged up in the doorway was producing a silver-blue holographic glow throughout the vault, eliminating shadows. It made the gossamer shimmer softly, resembling a rippled moonlit lake as its undulations smothered the congealed splinters of half a million kubes. “How in Ozzie’s name am I going to do that, chief?”
Halran gave him an evil grin. “There should be one missing, so all you have to do is reassemble the fragments of those that are still here and tell me which one was taken.”
“Fuck me.”
“Good point. Plan B: Go through the names on the registry and assign them a probability of someone wanting to steal their memories. Start with political, criminal, and financial categories.”
Darval gave a reluctant nod.
“Force fields on at all times, please,” Halran ordered. “There were some very nasty munitions loose in here. I don’t want to take any chances.”
The forensic team moved cautiously into the vault. Examiners scurried in with them, bots like lead cockroaches scuttling along on black electromuscle legs, bristling with sensory antennae that wiggled though the gossamer to stroke the surfaces beneath. Over two thousand were released, streaming over the floor and up the walls to build a comprehensive molecular map of the vault.
Halran waited until the tiny bots had whirled around the corpse of Viertz Accu before he gave her a more detailed inspection. Her cocooned body was still in a kneeling position, spine curved forward as if she were at prayer. They had found the top of her skull upstairs while waiting for the gossamer to run its decontamination procedure. Halran knew what that implied—this was turning into a bad case from every angle.
His exovision overlaid the results of the examiners, showing him the narrow burn lines on her exposed b
rain. A lot of energy had been applied in a fashion he recognized. He applied a deep scan module, tracking the depth of the beam penetration. Her memorycell had been destroyed.
“I hope she backed up recently,” he muttered.
“What do you make of these, chief?” Angelo asked. He was standing in front of an exotic matter cage.
“Nice idea, I suppose. I haven’t seen one before. Telfer obviously didn’t know they were here.”
“Much good it did the clinic. Those guards didn’t exactly slow him down, did they?”
“No. His enrichments were off the scale.” Halran called up the main case file again. Telfer appeared in his exoimage, a picture taken in the main reception area showing a possible Oriental ethnicity, but with odd gray eyes. Age locked into his thirties, which was unusual, and with a dense stubble shadow. Completely unexceptional. Halran knew that was deliberate, not that visual features meant anything in this day and age; even DNA identification was inconclusive now, and they had enough of that from the blood trail back up to the roof. The picture showed him smiling as he greeted the beautiful young clinician. His accomplice, though, was a different matter. She certainly did not qualify as unexceptional; a real beauty with a freckled face and thick dark red hair. Cute nose, too, he thought admiringly. People would remember that face.
Everything about their arrival had been perfectly normal right up to the moment when the clinic security net had started glitching and Telfer had vanished from the smartcore’s passive surveillance. The raid, too, had been extremely professional apart from the exit. The woman had seemed almost surprised, as if she were improvising the whole thing. That did not make a lot of sense.
“Chief,” Darval called.
“Yep.”
“The registry was hacked.”
Halran started to walk over to where Darval was stooped over the registry pillar. Several examiners were crawling over its gossamer cloak, prodding the top with their antennae. “Has there been physical—” he began to say. The sentence was never finished. A woman walked into the vault. Halran gave her a surprised look, about to ask who the hell she was, suspecting another of the Mayor’s staffers because nobody else could get through the police cordon without his permission. Then her face registered, and Halran did not need to ask. He knew all about this living legend; everyone in law enforcement did. “Oh, sweet Ozzie,” he murmured, and an already bad case turned nightmare on him. She was shorter than most of the citizens of the contemporary Commonwealth, but the confidence she exuded was much greater than average. Harlan had encountered enough Highers in his time to recognize their slightly smug self-belief; she was on a level far above them, with a composure that rated glacial. Her face was enchanting, a combination of pre-Common-wealth Earth’s Filipino and European features framed by thick raven hair brushed straight and devoid of any modern cosmetics, a beauty he could only describe as old-fashioned. That was fair enough given the fact that she had not changed her appearance once in the last fourteen hundred years.
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