by Eric Brown
Hendrick stared out across the rippled ice. According to an alpha-numeric display on the carriage wall, it was eighty below zero out there, and a hundred-kilometre-per-hour wind scoured the plain—not that the gale was in evidence with nothing, not even snow, to be blown through the frozen air.
Above the ice-blue wilderness was the darker blue of space and, on the far horizon, the yellow double yolk of the binary stars, Spica A and B.
“This suicide cult the Acolytes belong to,” Hendrick said. “I presume it’s of Marl origin. Is it practised by the natives?”
Miller shook his head. “Like many of these crackpot cults, it has its origins in an extraterrestrial belief system. But the cult’s founder interpreted original texts in his own way, for his own ends. The Marl believe in a sky deity, a creator, who set the planet on its eccentric orbit as punishment for the misdemeanours of a certain tribe many thousands of years ago. Therefore their periods of hibernation—where apparently race nightmares are visited on individuals—are seen as penance. There was a tradition still practised a hundred years ago, when we discovered and settled Kallithea, that in an act of contrition to their god certain individual Marl would go out on the ice at the start of winter and endure the cold for up to three Terran days. They believed that if a sufficient number of Marl performed this ritual, then their god would bless the planet with longer summers.” Miller shrugged. “Twenty years ago someone from Earth formed a cult based on this absurdity and, wouldn’t you know it, he even found willing disciples.”
Hendrick smiled. “But they can’t believe that this notional god will somehow change the planet’s orbit?”
“No, they just believe that by sacrificing themselves on the ice plains they’ll attain the Marl version of heaven or Nirvana. Typical self-centred delusion, Matt, like most human religious belief systems.”
“And that’s what they do, just walk out onto the plain and wait to die?”
“That’s about it, yes. Only it’s a bit more complicated. This madman systematised the suicides. It happens on a vast inland plain, and to a prescribed schemata. He had a line of script etched into the ground, each character a hundred metres long, and every five years the Acolytes go out onto the ice and fill these letters.”
“And what does this script say?”
“I don’t honestly know, Matt,” Miller said. “But I suspect something trite along the lines of ‘God is great’.”
Hendrick shook his head and gazed out over the plain.
“Tomorrow we’re due to travel inland to New Stockholm to interview Nordstrom’s old friend,” Miller said a little later. “We’ll be about ten kay from the plain where the sacred text is situated. They have guided tours. One of the wonders of the Expansion, so I’m told.”
“Pretty macabre, though? I’m not sure I want to look at thousands of frozen human beings.”
“I’ve read that it’s an aesthetic experience, almost a work of art, questioning the meaning of life, the religious impulse, and the notion of human expansionism.”
Hendrick smiled. “Ed, you’re beginning to sound like one of those arty intellectuals you always claimed to despise.”
Miller laughed. “I still do,” he said. “But I’m only relaying what I’ve read.”
He asked Hendrick if he wanted a coffee, then eased himself from his seat and moved along to the buffet car.
The snowtrain was taking a long, slow bend, and Hendrick looked ahead and made out the vast parabola of the track. Ahead and to the right, the landscape changed. No longer was it a perfectly flat silver-blue plain, but a broken, shattered expanse made up of jagged fragments of ice twenty metres high. He wondered at the transformed terrain for a second then recalled studying Miller’s map that morning over breakfast. The last leg of their journey to Kepplenberg would follow the line of the continent’s western coast. What lay beyond the window, stretching for as far as the eye could see, was the frozen central ocean.
He stared out at the chaotic landscape of ragged waves, stilled as if in the act of crashing ashore; he made out weird grottoes and declivities, a landscape of darkness and light, deep shadows and meagre illumination from the scattered stars above. It was an eerily hostile environment without the slightest sign of human involvement, a place that would kill a human in minutes.
He shivered and thought of the Acolytes of the Ice, and the appalling deaths to which they gladly volunteered.
Minutes later Miller returned with the coffee. “Not exactly Arabia’s best,” he said, passing Hendrick a cup.
“It’s hot and vaguely coffee flavoured,” Hendrick said. “It’ll do.”
“Considering it’s grown deep underground here on Kallithea, it’s not that bad.” Miller nodded at the view beyond the window. “Impressive.”
“How long before we get to Kepplenberg?”
“We should be there in just over an hour.”
Hendrick sipped his coffee. “This doctor who treated Katerina—how did you locate him?”
“Her,” Miller said. “Routine detective work, Matt. Pure drudgery, to be honest. I listed every one of Nordstrom’s contacts over the past twenty odd years, as far as I could, and ran checks against Kallithea’s inhabitants from the last census, a year ago. A long shot, but it came up with a couple of names.”
“What kind of doctor is she?”
“A shrink. A cognitive behaviourist, if that makes things any clearer.”
“It’s something to do with the correcting of maladaptive thinking,” Hendrick said, “and it can be applied to a broad range of emotional problems. I wouldn’t have through Kat would have needed . . .”
“Well,” Miller said, “she’s probably changed a lot since you knew her. This doctor saw Nordstrom in Paris a few years ago. I’m hoping she might be able to shed light on the woman’s character, her motivations, even if she doesn’t know her whereabouts on Kallithea.”
Hendrick nodded and sat back, considering Kat and the fact that she’d consulted a psychiatrist. He wondered if her problems had had anything to do with her abusive marriage to Gregor Behrens.
One hour later the snowtrain pulled into the coastal station.
FOUR
HENDRICK HAD NEVER SEEN A CITY QUITE like Kepplenberg.
He stepped from the train and was stopped in his tracks by the sight before him. He stared up at the rearing mountainside, into whose grey flanks the city had been inserted. What looked like globes of blown glass bulged from fissures and cave entrances across the sheer face of the mountain range. On the journey down here Miller had told Hendrick that the coastline of the continent was volcanic, the rock porous and riddled with massive chambers and hollows. Some enterprising architect, eighty years ago, had come up with a scheme to line the hollows with a malleable polymer, which would coat the inner rock with an insulated membrane and protect future inhabitants from the extremes of heat and cold.
As Hendrick looked up at the city from the station, he made out a series of distorted silver dewdrops obtruding through holes in the cliff face, some of which were mere metres across, while others appeared as vast as city blocks. He saw tiny figures going about their business in the lighted interiors, and strata’d galleries and great open plazas with escalators carrying citizens to the interior of the unique mountain city.
Dr Vanini Patel worked from an apartment in a district of Kepplenberg called Hallstrom Heights, situated at the very summit of the city in a knuckle of rock rising against the brilliant starscape. A sliding walkway carried Hendrick and Miller from the station into the base of the mountain. From a busy terminal plaza they rode an elevator pod to Hallstrom Heights; the ascent took almost fifteen minutes and passed through alternating areas of dark, enclosing rock and brilliantly lit bubble suburbs.
The pod halted at a dozen levels, disgorging passengers and picking up new ones. When he and Miller were alone in the elevator, Hendrick asked, “Is Dr Patel expecting you?”
“I contacted her from Amsterdam and made an appointment.”
“Did you tell her you’re enquiring about Katerina Nordstrom?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mention the reason for my enquiries,” Miller said. “I’ll introduce you as my deputy.”
The pod came to a halt and they stepped out into a thickly carpeted corridor that resembled the interior of an exclusive hotel. Miller consulted a schematic on his wrist-com and led the way along the corridor to another, smaller elevator. They rose again and minutes later stepped out at the penthouse level. They were in a circular chamber, the hub of which was the elevator shaft. A dozen doors encircled the circumference. Miller indicated a big timber door, crossed to it and palmed a sensor.
A screen beside the door showed the face of a young man in a high-collared suit. Miller gave his name, flashed his ID, and said he had an appointment with Dr Patel.
The door opened automatically and Hendrick followed Miller into a plush foyer. The young man looked up from behind a reception desk, indicated an inner door and said, “Dr Patel is waiting.”
As he entered the room behind Miller, Hendrick noticed two things: the stacked luggage to the right of the door and the incredible view at the far end of the room. The floor-to-ceiling window comprised a vast convex lens that looked out over the coast, the frozen ocean and, just above the horizon, the double stars of Spica A and B.
A tiny woman of Indian origin rose from behind a desk and approached them. Hendrick estimated she was in her sixties. Grey-haired and slim, her face was sharp and her expression guarded.
They shook hands, Miller making the introductions, and Dr Patel led them across to the bulging window and a semicircle of padded seats. Hendrick stepped out onto the glass, staring down at the sheer face of the mountainside falling away beneath his feet, and felt a quick surge of vertigo. He sat down and turned his attention to the psychiatrist.
“You will have tea?” she asked softly.
They thanked her, and Patel murmured into her wrist-com. Hendrick indicated the luggage. “You’re not wintering on Kallithea?”
“That’s right, Mr Hendrick. I work here during the two years of high summer, then return to Delhi for the duration of winter.”
Miller observed, “That’s a highly irregular working pattern, doctor.”
She inclined her head. “It might be, but I’d defy anyone other than a native to endure the wintertime here, Mr Miller.”
The young man carried in a tray, set it on a small table, and retreated. Dr Patel poured three cups of what she told them was Kashmiri tea, then said, “But you didn’t come here to quiz me about my work.”
“As I mentioned, I’m working on an investigation involving Katerina Nordstrom. I understand that you treated her some ten years ago in Paris. Do you recall the patient in question?”
“I had to look up the case on my files,” she said. “I had no immediate recollection of Ms Nordstrom.”
Hendrick watched the woman as she sipped her tea. She was elegant, composed, her expression professionally superior.
Miller said, “I’ll come clean, doctor. My warrant, issued by the European Police Department, isn’t recognised on Kallithea. I could always wait and demand to see your files back on Earth. But I was hoping you’d have no objection to talking about the details of the case here and now. It would save me a lot of time and aid my investigations.”
She regarded him. “The details, Mr Miller?”
“Of your sessions with Ms Nordstrom.”
Dr Patel leaned back in her seat, her trim figure silhouetted against a snow-covered flank of mountain beyond the glass. “If you’d be kind enough to let me see the warrant, Mr Miller.”
He tapped his wrist-com and routed the document to the tabletop. Patel leaned forward, read the warrant, and nodded. “That does seem to be in order. Even if, as you say, it would not be recognised here on Kallithea.” She hesitated then said, “What would you like to know?”
“Principally, why did Ms Nordstrom seek your services?”
Dr Patel sipped her tea again, considering. She looked from Miller to Hendrick, then back to the African, before saying, “I was recommended to her by a mutual friend. Ms Nordstrom consulted me on thirty separate occasions.”
“Isn’t that a lot?” Miller asked.
Dr Patel smiled. “It’s all relative, Mr Miller. Some patients require many more sessions in order to attain some measure of resolution to their . . . situations.”
“What was wrong with her?”
“Ms Nordstrom was a very complex person. I’ll attempt to state this in terminology as jargon free as I can. My patient was locked into a mutually abusive relationship with her long-term partner.”
Miller glanced at Hendrick, then said, “Mutually abusive? If you could explain exactly . . .”
Hendrick set aside his tea, his stomach tightening. He recalled the woman he had loved, whom he thought he’d known, and he feared now that he was about to learn that he’d hardly known her at all.
“Stated simply, Ms Nordstrom was a sadist with a deep-seated antipathy towards men.”
Hedrick felt his face burn. He leaned back, relieved that neither Miller nor Patel were aware of his reaction.
“This,” she went on, “manifested itself in the desire to harm the men with whom she formed a romantic attachment.”
Hendrick was twenty-five again, in love with a woman who, six months into their affair, confronted him one evening and told him that he was too nice, that she didn’t want to see him hurt, and that their affair was over. And no amount of pleading on his part would change her mind.
He felt a strong emotion constrict his throat, and it was all he could do to keep his tears in check.
“Her problem,” Patel went on, “had its root cause in her childhood and her complex relationship with her abusive father. Bluntly, they had a sexual liaison that lasted from when Ms Nordstrom was ten years old until she was almost twenty.” She smiled at both men. “I need not stress what a complicated effect this love-hate relationship had upon her nascent adolescent psyche, gentlemen.”
“And it resulted in her desire to physically harm those she fell in love with?” Miller said.
Dr Patel pursed her lips. “That’s a crude description. It’s far more complex than a mere desire to harm those with whom she developed a fixation. But in broad terms, yes. She was recapitulating her unresolved affair with her father—which, according to Ms Nordstrom, ended with his death when he was sixty. Ms Nordstrom was deeply unhappy; she wanted to lead what she called a ‘normal’ life, whatever that might be. She sought relationships with men she could dominate and hurt, but she also felt a terrible weight of guilt—from her childhood experiences and from the nature of her extant relationships—which resulted in her desiring from her partners a reciprocal measure of harm. In short, she wanted to be punished by those she herself physically abused.”
Miller was shaking his head. Hendrick stared through the membrane at the frozen world outside, the jagged motionless sea and the starlit sky. He recalled making love to Katerina on one occasion when she had asked him to hit her; he had refused, and she had never asked him again.
Miller asked, “And did her sessions with you resolve her problems, Dr Patel?”
She frowned before saying, circumspectly, “Let’s say that she came to a certain understanding of the reasons for her behaviour, an awareness of the psychological modus operandi that governed her desires. I set her a series of mental exercises to work on. I had no illusions that I might cure Ms Nordstrom of her pathological behaviour; I desired to bring her to a place where she could govern her desires, limit her need to abuse and to be abused, so that she might in future allay situations in which she might commit, or be victim of, extreme violence.”
“But do you think it worked?” Miller asked.
Dr Patel sighed. “Sadly, I do not know. After a year Ms Nordstrom terminated her sessions with me and we lost contact.”
“I see,” Miller said. He stared at his tea, considering his next question, and then asked, “In your opinion, Dr
Patel, was the woman you knew capable of the act of murder?”
Dr Patel smiled. “Mr Miller, you must know that we are all, under the right circumstances, capable of murder.”
“But some of us,” he countered, “are more capable than others.”
Dr Patel inclined her head as if conceding the point.
Hendrick stared at the drop between his feet, at the sheer mountainside and the bright obtruding baubles far below. He considered the hell of Katerina Nordstrom’s life and the fact that it had culminated in Dr Patel’s worst fears: the committing of ‘extreme violence’—the laser decapitation of the artist Karl Jurgens.
Dr Patel said, “I wonder if I might ask why you are investigating Ms Nordstrom, gentlemen? Did she . . . ?”
“She is under investigation for the crime of murder,” Miller said.
Dr Patel sighed and sat back. “The poor, poor woman,” she said, almost under her breath.
Miller went on. “You said that you lost contact with her.”
“That’s right.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“Correct.”
“You were unaware that she recently came to Kallithea?”
Her large brown eyes widened. “I had no idea at all.”
“I did wonder if she might have wanted to see you.”
“Well, if that were so, she hasn’t attempted to contact me.”
“You have my details,” Miller said. “I’d be grateful if you got in touch if Ms Nordstrom does call you.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
Miller hesitated, then said, “I wonder if you have any idea what might have brought Ms Nordstrom to Kallithea? She didn’t mention anything about the planet during your sessions, or anyone she might have known here?”
She pursed her lips. “Not that I recall, no. But surely she fled here to evade capture? After all, in less than two weeks the planet effectively closes down for five years.”