by Sean Parsons
“They almost did.”
“I can’t say that I’m surprised. I don’t envy you your job. Was my brother helpful at all?”
“He was, in fact. He’s not as crazy as you think, doc.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Cho said. “But I’m glad he was coherent enough to give you information. Do you think you’re any closer to catching the killer?”
“Hard to say. It’s two steps forward, one step back.”
Cho moved over to the table, and two orderlies came in behind him.
“Well,” he said, “hang in there. She will be missed around here, and we’d all like to see justice done.”
The orderlies each took an end of the table and wheeled Susan’s body out of the room. The door opened for them automatically.
“Oh, by the way,” Cho said, turning to Erin at the door, “Ms. Laurent was looking for you. I suspect she’s worried for your safety. You should contact her as soon as you can and reassure her that you’re fine.”
“Will do, doc. Thanks. By the way, may I come with you to the furnaces? I’d like to say goodbye, once and for all.”
Cho raised his eyebrows. “Certainly, you’re welcome to come. I’m afraid it’s not very pleasant, but if it will help you or your investigation.”
Erin followed Cho and the orderlies to a service elevator, and they rode down to the level just below the prison. The doors opened and an intense wave of heat rolled over them.
Cho led him to a series of halls lit by a fierce red light. They passed through a door into a big processing room, with conveyer belts leading into roasting furnaces. The heat was unbearable.
“How is this possible in a sealed station?” Erin said, raising his voice over the roar of the furnaces.
“The atmosphere is well contained on Eden,” Cho said. “There’s no risk of explosive decompression. It’s perfectly safe to have these furnaces or to smoke cigarettes. The smoke from both is sucked into exhaust fans and filtered, and then the air is pumped right back in. There’s only a partial loss of oxygen, and that’s replenished by tanks brought in from Earth.”
They watched the conveyer belts roll up into the furnaces; all of them empty, bar two. These had long wooden boxes on them. A workman in a blue uniform, hardhat and goggles, was presiding over them. Cho walked over to him and Erin followed. The workman glanced up from the boxes on the belts and nodded.
“What have we got?” Cho said.
The workman consulted a clipboard. “Two, just come up. Apparent NCs, so we didn’t bother ordering autopsies.”
Cho nodded. He turned to Erin and explained. “NC means ‘natural causes’. If it looks like death was by natural causes the bodies come right here and are disposed of. We don’t always have the staff to do a full autopsy on all of them, so we reserve the procedure for suspicious deaths. Like Susan’s.”
Cho turned back to the workman and nodded. The workman depressed a lever and the belts started up. The long boxes – Erin now understood them to be coffins – started toward the furnace. They entered the glowing red area and disappeared. There was no perceivable difference in the steady roaring sound.
“And that’s that,” Cho said.
The workman left for an office attached to the processing room, in which white collar workers could be seen through tinted glass windows bent over desks and computer screens. The room was reached by a kind of airlock, that kept the extreme heat of the furnaces out.
“That’s the main office, where they keep all the records,” Cho explained. “It’s kept cool by the glass and airlock.”
He walked back to the conveyer belts, where Susan’s body was being placed in a coffin by the orderlies. Erin was surprised to see two workmen put a lid on it and seal it with a quick drying resin.
“There’s no formal ceremony?” Erin asked.
“No. The process needs to be quick and efficient.”
“Where’s Director Grior?”
“He didn’t want to see this. It was his choice.”
Erin watched as Susan’s body was carried up the conveyer belt and into the furnace; seeing it forced Erin to think of the case. That was the victim, and the murderer was still at large. What was the next step?
Cho beckoned for him to follow, and they walked to the office. The outer door opened automatically and they entered the glass cubicle beyond. The door hissed shut behind them, and they heard powerful exhaust fans switch on. The air sucked up all around them, ruffling their clothes. Then a blast of cold, air-conditioned air fell on them, and the internal door opened.
Inside, the room was cold. The air-conditioning hummed audibly. Otherwise, the room was silent save for the tapping of fingers on keyboards and quiet conversation. The office workers looked up and nodded at Cho, but otherwise said nothing. A man noticed him and came over, smiling. He shook Cho’s hand. He held up a piece of paper and his manner turned serious.
“Just got Susan’s paperwork,” he said.
“Yes,” Cho said, “at least now the director can have some closure.”
He turned to Erin and introduced him to the office worker.
“This is detective Erin Bradley, who’s investigating the murder.”
The man shook Erin’s hand. “I hope you catch the guy that did this. We all loved Susan around here.”
Erin nodded. “I’m doing my best, sir.”
And he hoped that was true. He glanced around at the desks and computers.
“This is where you handle all your records pertaining to the deceased?”
“That’s right,” the man said, nodding. “We get their paperwork from security and from medical. It’s all hardcopy, at first, for signatures and things like that, and we enter it manually here. There’s actually fewer errors that way.”
“That seems like a laborious job.”
The man shrugged. “It’s important. The ecosystem on Eden, if you could call it that, has to be carefully maintained. The population has to be regulated and controlled, to a certain extent, or resources and space start to run out.”
“But surely the population is growing?” Erin said.
“Eden isn’t quite like the cities of Earth, detective,” Cho said. “On Earth populations are growing out of control. Only now are some of the world governments putting in control measures. But the Life Stations Project, as it was known when it first began, is different. It was always intended to be a population control mechanism. Equilibrium has to be maintained, or the whole system will break down.”
“So what’s the population capacity?”
“We are at that capacity now,” the office worker said. “A hundred thousand residents and around a thousand staff. There just isn’t room for any more – on any of the stations. Eden is the biggest one by far.”
“I don’t think I understand. How do you control the population, exactly?”
“It’s quite simple really. We keep a record of the population level, and we use that to dictate how much procreation we allow. That’s the only way new residents are created, we don’t allow immigration anymore.”
“You govern the residents’ procreation?” Erin said.
The worker smiled. “Well, we try to. We use sterilisation methods on new mothers when they come up to the hospital, to control the number of children they can have.”
“You do what?” Erin said.
Cho stepped in at that point. “It’s a necessity, detective. It really can’t be helped. There’s no room for these people on Earth, and there isn’t enough room for any more of them on Eden. It’s been the policy here since the beginning.”
“Do they know?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do the residents know that you’re sterilising them?”
Cho paused. “Yes. Usually. It depends on the circumstances. Sometimes it isn’t communicated, if the patient is deemed unfit to hear it.”
Erin felt Cho was being evasive, but he let it go. “How effective is the procedure?”
“Almost one hundred percent,” Cho said.
“No. There is some slight chance of failure.”
“How slight?”
Cho peered at Erin through his glasses and raised an eyebrow. “Less than one percent.”
“How much less?”
“Detective, if you must know – indeed, if it will help you conclude your investigation – the chance of success is 99.9 percent.”
“That’s some procedure,” Erin said.
“Yes,” Cho said, drawing himself up, “we’re quite proud of it.”
“But I notice the population of Eden is a hundred thousand. At 99.9 percent success, if half the population is women, that means that fifty women won’t have been effectively sterilised.”
Cho stared at him, working it out in his mind. “Yes,” he said, after a moment, “that is correct.”
“Also, if you inform even some of the women about the sterilisation procedure, you can assume they are telling other women, and that at least some of those women will not want to comply. That’s especially likely when you just told me you’ve gotten resistance from some women in the past.”
Cho said nothing. The office worker said nothing. The office was very quiet, all of a sudden.
“Doctor Cho, how do you guarantee that some women aren’t having children without your knowledge?”
“We have estimates provided by food consumption, waste output, and death rates.”
“Estimates?” Erin said.
“Yes,” Cho said. “We can’t be sure. Not definitely.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve had difficulty communicating effectively with the sublevels. I’m sure Director Grossman or Mr. Rickard told you about the riots and the destruction of the cameras two years ago? Well, that has made it difficult to accurately calculate the population.”
Erin turned to the office employee. “You told me a moment ago the population was a hundred thousand.”
“Yes,” he said. “That is the official estimate.”
“Official estimate?” Erin said. “I see.”
The room was silent. Cho looked uncomfortable.
“Doctor,” Erin said, “It seems fairly obvious to me that the population must be bigger than a hundred thousand, and that you have no way of knowing how big it is. This station has been up here with a starting population of that size for a hundred years. It must have grown. How big does it have to be to cause problems?”
“I’m not sure,” Cho said, evasively. “I’d have to check my figures. But anything over a hundred thousand is probably unsustainable.”
“So what you’re telling me is the population of this station may be out of control?”
“I’m not saying that,” Cho said quickly. “We would have to do a full count before we could say that for sure.”
“But it seems likely?”
“It does not seem likely, detective,” Cho said. “You’ve asked some good questions. Now give us some time to answer them.”
Erin waited in the furnace room, listening to the blasting fires and the whir of the conveyer belts. In the office behind him Cho was on the phone; presumably to Grossman, though Erin didn’t know for sure. He kept looking at Erin, and when he saw Erin was looking at him he would turn away quickly. It was odd.
He had been waiting for at least five minutes, when Cho emerged, smiling.
“The director was grateful for your input, detective,” he said. “He’s going to order that count right away. In the meantime, would you care to continue your tour of this area?”
“So he’s going to get men down there to count the residents? That’s what he told you?”
Cho shrugged noncommittally. “Something along those lines, yes. I’m not sure of the details. It’s in the director’s hands now.”
Erin thought of Sledgehammer’s reaction to admin people on the sublevels. He would be mad, but he would almost certainly manage to conceal his purpose until 6pm. Erin glanced at his watch. It was 9am. The day was wearing away and he was no closer to finding Susan’s killer. He had to find another lead, and fast.
“Would you care to see the maintenance area, detective?” Cho said, breaking his line of thought. “It’s through the door at the back there. All the machinery for the air pumps and the water recycling system can be reached through there. It’s really quite fascinating.”
Erin looked and saw a steel door marked ‘Maintenance’. He had no better ideas, and he wanted to know in detail how the station worked.
Cho walked him over to the door, when a man came out of the office and hailed him. Cho went back and they spoke for a minute. Then Cho returned, looking apologetic.
“There’s an emergency at the hospital,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry to leave you alone down here. Feel free to inspect the equipment yourself, it’s all clearly marked.”
Erin told him he understood, and the doctor left. Having nothing else to go on, he pushed through the door and entered the maintenance hall.
11.
The hall was dimly lit, and the air was filled with a resonant hum. The noise of the furnaces was blocked by the door, which was heavy and seemed to be sound-proofed. It eased shut behind Erin, on a pneumatic hinge; but it was easily opened again from the inside. Erin checked it just in case. He went down the hall, following the signs for the air-conditioning pumps.
The hall turned sharply once or twice, and a side door appeared that was marked ‘Pump Room’. Erin entered. The room beyond was big, and filled with equipment. The steady drone of the pumps was deafening. The room was dark, and damp. The fluorescent lights along the ceiling were out.
This was how the air was circulated through Eden. The pumps would move thousands of litres of air a minute, by the size and sound of them. Large ducting went from the back of the central unit into the ceiling, where it no doubt met the air-conditioning ducts that Erin was intimately familiar with, after his escapade on the sublevels.
When the Latino man with the gun had come looking for him, again.
Who was that man? Why did he want to kill Erin? The cold, killer’s eyes came back to Erin – that last glimpse he had gotten of the man before the elevator doors had closed. This was a man who was comfortable killing, used to doing it. What was a man like that doing on Eden?
Erin’s thoughts returned to the pump machinery, and he decided he had seen enough. He left the room and was about to turn right down the corridor, to follow the signage to the recycling centre, when a strange feeling made him turn around.
In the hallway behind him, blocking his return to the furnaces, was the gunman. He smiled at Erin. In his left hand was a gun. Erin’s own hand went to his sidearm, but the other man raised his gun quickly.
“Don’t think about it, my friend,” he said, in a soft, accented voice.
Erin slowly drew his hand away from his pistol.
“Who are you, and what do you want from me?” he said.
“Who I am isn’t important,” the gunman said, smiling. He was handsome, with black hair and dark skin. “What I am doing here should be obvious. I’m here to kill you.”
“Why?”
The gunman shook his head and made a disapproving sound. “No. You’ve asked enough questions for now. Turn around, and walk slowly down the hall. Don’t try to reach for your gun, or I’ll shoot you in the back. And I know where to shoot you so that it takes a long time to die, understand? So don’t play games with me.”
Erin turned and walked down the hall. He was sweating with fear. This man would kill him without even hesitating; Erin knew that by the look of him. He desperately sought for a way out.
They walked down the hall, finally reaching a door that read ‘Recycling Room’.
“Open that door,” the gunman said, softly. “Go inside.”
Erin did so. The recycling room was the same size as the pump room, but better lit, and less noisy. The recycling equipment was a vast array of vats and tanks, connected by large pipes. There was a distinct sewerage smell in the air. The room was high,
and a grated, steel walkway surrounded it, reached by a staircase.
“Walk up the stairs.”
Erin did as he was told, his feet ringing on the steps. The gunman followed closely behind him. Erin wondered if he could turn fast enough to push the man down the stairs before he had a chance to fire. But the gunman was a professional; he followed far enough behind Erin to make such an attack impossible, and he kept his gun trained on the square of Erin’s back.
They reached the walkway and the gunman gestured for Erin to walk along it. It ran around the edge of the large room, finally coming to a stop above a huge vat. The vat was bubbling and seething. Steam was coming off the dark liquid inside. It was a sterilising vat – the water would be boiling.
The gunman forced Erin to the very end of the walkway, hanging directly over the vat. He smiled.
“I think you know what I have planned for you,” he said. “There won’t be anything left for them to find, if they ever come here. And even Grossman will wind up drinking your blood.”
He laughed loudly at his own joke.
“Who hired you?” Erin said, his mind racing for an opening. “You might as well tell me, if you’re going to kill me now anyway.”
“Very clever,” the gunman said. “I tell you and you find a way to escape. My employer is compromised. Is that about how it’s going to look?”
He laughed again.
“Listen, you’re never getting away. You’re going to burn to death, my friend. Right now.”
He shoved Erin against the rail, tipping him over. At the last minute, Erin grabbed his sleeve, pulling the gunman with him. The man’s arm jerked and he lost his grip on the gun; it went flying off into space, landing somewhere on the floor. He cursed and struggled for a foothold, but Erin’s body weight was dragging him over the edge. Erin squirmed around and caught hold of the rail, just as the gunman fell face-forward over the edge.
Erin expected to hear his scream, but then he felt a strong grip on his ankle and a sudden heavy weight pulling him down, and he knew that the man had grabbed his leg as he fell. They both hung suspended over the boiling vat, Erin’s hands straining to hold onto the steel rail, already slippery with his sweat. His shoulder screamed with pain. He wasn’t going to be able to hold them both for long.