Grantville Gazette 38 gg-38

by Коллектив Авторов

  To be sure, individual sin-seers might help the cops with difficult cases, as I routinely did. But any information we provided was strictly on an unofficial "background" basis. I knew that some in the Guild took a dim view of my relationship with the police-but I'd always cleaved closely to the spirit of our craft guidelines pertaining to non-disclosure. I had my reputation to maintain, after all.

  I took a shower and got into bed. I had almost fallen asleep when a horrible thought entered my head: What if the surveillance and the break-in had not been Henderson's doing?

  What if other interested parties were in play?

  Sleep evaded me for the rest of the night, while my brain tried to corral all the alternate possibilities.

  Maybe it would be best for me to play it straight with Henderson.

  ****

  Detective Henderson leaned back in his chair and exposed the soles of his shoes to me. "So let me get this straight, Pete: You think you were tailed last night, and you think someone broke into your place. Anything taken?"

  "No, but-"

  "Anything damaged?"

  "No, Henderson. Nothing was harmed."

  "Have you received any threats recently? Any reason to believe somebody is wanting to do you wrong?"

  I stared down at the dust bunnies lying on the floor under Henderson's desk. "At first I thought it was your own guys, poking around to glom onto my confidential information. I intended to confront you about that. But then it occurred to me that it might have been somebody connected with Manny Greer's murder. Maybe making sure the job was done cleanly enough. It freaked me out. I . . . I want some investigation done. And some protection."

  "Okay, duly noted. I'll send a tech over to check things out, see if we can find anything tangible. And I'll try to arrange a squad car to swing past your street more often on its regular patrol. Understand, that's only because we're colleagues, of a sort. Call it professional courtesy. But there's no way I can pull anybody off their assignments to baby-sit you full-time. Do you own a handgun?"

  "No! Guns frighten me, Henderson. I'd never-"

  "You came here wanting my help. That's what I'm giving you, best I can. If you feel like you're under threat, I'd advise you to buy a gun, and carry it. The only thing to be afraid of with firearms is having the wrong end of one pointing at you. Better that you have a say in that, if it ever comes down to it."

  I felt a clot of phlegm lodge in my throat. It wasn't the thing I wanted to hear him say at that moment.

  Henderson lowered his feet from the desk and rose from his chair. "Look, Pete, you of all people ought to know how things work around here. Do you actually think we're gonna give priority to some dead hoodlum that nobody gives a shit about, when there are a hundred other unsolved murder cases more pressing? Personally, I couldn't care less about Manny's physical sins-or, as you claim, the strange lack of same. Nor what happened to them, if in fact they got plucked. Manny ended up right where he deserved to be. Regardless, there's one big problem with his case: You won't reveal the names of your sin-seer buddies for us to check out. You told me that none of them were murderers. Forgive me, but I happen to hold the opposite view."

  My head spun. He was right, of course. I knew the name of every sin-seer in North America. At least one of them was a murderer. And evidence indicated that I might be the next victim. But I'd taken a solemn Guild vow. Breaking it would destroy me, just as sure as having my throat slit.

  "I . . . I just can't do that. I wish I could, but I can't. I'm sorry."

  "Fine, that's your right under the law. But it seems to me you're making things more complicated for yourself, Pete. We can't help you if you don't help us." He paused, looked down at the floor, then said, "There's one other thing I ought to mention to you."

  "Another thing?"

  Henderson moved to the front of his desk, crossed his arms and leaned back against it. "The Commissioner's been reassessing our consulting contracts. Budget crunch time, that sort of thing. I hate to have to tell you this, but he's teetering on the edge of canceling yours. Not enough bang for the buck, he says. You know how it is: 'What have you done for us lately?' Sorry, but . . . there it is."

  All the blood seemed to drain from my head at that moment, leaving me dizzy. "But, but-what about the Strauss case, just a few months ago? You told me yourself that the sin of incest I recovered was helpful in cracking it!"

  Henderson shrugged his shoulders in that aggravating, condescending way he had. "Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The jury's still out on that one-literally. Who can say what we would have uncovered with our own legwork? How about the other two hundred-and-some-odd cases you've been called in on, besides that one? I count maybe a couple of useful leads you've given us in all that while. At most."

  "Heck, I know there were a few more than that, Henderson. What about-"

  "Be honest about it, Pete. You've been sucking on the public tit for a long time, and you've done pretty well with it. The good times can't last forever. You know that."

  Shit. This couldn't be happening to me. How else could I make a living? I had no formal education, no skills save one: seeing sins. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  "Look," Henderson said, "I'll do what I can for you, but no promises." He walked to his office door and opened it, a less-than-subtle invitation for me to get out of his hair. "You have to understand, Pete. A lot of folks around here just don't appreciate your kind. To be more precise, you give 'em the creeps. Hell, you even give me the creeps sometimes. Best you go on home and play with your cootie collection, and let me handle things on this end, eh?"

  ****

  There have been a few times in the past, always under severe emotional distress, when I've been tempted to extract my own sins-even though I know that would lead to an excruciating, painful death.

  It was one of the first lessons Gerd had taught me, many years ago: sins are symbiotic to a human. We cannot live without them. If we are separated, the power of our mutual longing will inevitably lead to human dissolution. Even the excision of a single sin from a living person could result in madness. A few unpublished, illicit experiments conducted by the HCG in its early days had confirmed that. Gerd had once let me read some of those private accounts. They were horrifying.

  Just as one could never undo a sin he'd committed, so too could that sin's physical manifestation never be removed from a living body without severe psychical repercussions.

  I stood nude in front of my bathroom mirror, looking at the horde of sins infesting my own body, from bottom to top, writhing languidly like so many crystalline larvae, occasionally exchanging positions, always on the slow move. They formed a colorful secondary skin, unseen by all but a few.

  It was easy to remain professionally detached when viewing the physical sins that rode upon others. But it was never easy for me to witness the evidence of my own wrong-doings, all my many prior sins of both thought and deed. How could I have accumulated so blasted many of them in the span of my short life? Hundreds and hundreds of them, infesting every square inch of my body-each one a reminder that I was nowhere near the person I wanted to be. Even more distressing was knowing that I'd carry them to my grave-and beyond.

  It was not a pleasant concept to consider.

  I watched as a new sin appeared in the center of my chest, right above my heart, gleaming with the spectral glory of fresh birth: family "hatred," genus "self-loathing." I didn't recognize the species and subspecies. I'd have to consult my HCG directory to nail them down.

  ****

  "Gerd, I'm sorry for the intrusion," I said. "I think I'm in big trouble. I've got to speak with you, and it can't wait."

  The old man ushered me into his foyer. "Forgive me, Peter," he said. "I have some guests in the library. Business matters. Please, would you mind waiting for me in the parlor? It should not take more than a few minutes for me to finish up. Pour yourself a drink in the meantime. I will be with you as soon as I can."

  Gerd went back into the
library. I heard a loud voice from within the room, muffled by the thick door: "But for Christ's sake, it's the Sin Of All Sins! And he has it! We know he does."

  I crept closer to the door and put my ear against it.

  Gerd's voice: "As I said before, he would have told me if he did. I am sure of that."

  The first voice: "So you continue to claim."

  Another voice, heavily accented: "The man conspires with the police. He is not to be trusted. Regardless of his prior relationship with you, Vanderhout, we have good reason to be suspicious."

  First voice: "We know it's not in his apartment. If he does have it, it's hidden. We must find out where it is."

  Gerd: "You are making a big mistake. Bigger than you know."

  Accented voice: //laugh// "Really, Vanderhout! Is that intended as a threat? You cannot threaten us. You may have held power in the old days, but no longer. Now you're just a weak old man, a has-been."

  I heard sounds of movement and took that opportunity to retreat to the parlor until the men left. When they did, a minute later, Gerd rejoined me. I could see the signs of emotional distress written on his drawn face.

  "Sorry, Peter," he said. "Some unpleasant business, as it turned out-but no matter. What did you need to tell me?"

  "Many things, Gerd. But now it seems more imperative to ask you to tell me things. I overheard some of the conversation from your library. It . . . seemed to cut close to home."

  Gerd sighed and bent his head down. He ran one hand through his sparse gray hair and grunted. "Och, Peter. Things are spinning out of control, as you guessed. Those men are convinced that you harvested a special sin from Manny Greer. The one we all crave to own: the Sin Of All Sins."

  "But of course I didn't! The man was wiped clean, Gerd. I told you that. Nothing was there. Nothing!"

  "I know that, and I believe that. Others do not."

  "But why would anyone think that a low-life scumball like Manny would harbor such a hamartiaphilic treasure? It doesn't make any sense!"

  "You are letting your brain speak instead of your heart, Peter," Gerd said. "Do you honestly think that sins select people according to their class in society? Do you believe that powerful sins are only destined to be affixed to powerful people? If so, you are wrong. Dead wrong. You have learned nothing of what I taught you!"

  Gerd walked to the credenza in the parlor and poured himself a drink, his hands shaking visibly as he did so. "Sins are totally egalitarian by nature," he said. "They do not care if you are Manny the Thug, or Genghis Khan the Conqueror. They only want to be. To manifest. To cling."

  "To be with us," I said.

  "Yes. To be with every one of us. It is the only way they can achieve their bliss."

  "And so Manny managed to glom onto the greatest sin in all the world?"

  "According to my informants, yes. Look at it this way: We swim through an endless sea of sins, each of them desperate to gain connection with us. You and I can only see the ones that have 'made a landing,' so to say. And it does not take much to hook one. Just an impure thought, in many cases. Your man Manny apparently latched onto a . . . what's the word? A real doozy. The biggest doozy of them all. Or so I am led to believe."

  "Incredible. But who could ever know that about Manny?"

  "Someone who is both a sinner, and a sin-seer too," Gerd said. "Someone who wanted that sin for himself. Someone who is determined to obtain it at any cost. My visitors tonight were not working for themselves. They are obviously agents, in it only for the money. Their strings are being controlled by a higher person, unknown to us."

  "But Gerd, tell me what sin could possibly be worse than, say, genocide, or serial murder? Or running scams on elderly people? Or bilking corporate investors out of millions? Manny couldn't have managed to top those. He was too stupid. What exactly is the Sin Of All Sins?"

  The old man shook his head slowly. "Not anything we can conceive by way of speculation, Peter. It is something beyond our imagining. The Holy Grail of our Art. The quintessential sin, comprising a superfamily that subsumes all the others below it."

  "If that's true, couldn't we project what it might look like from taxonomic analysis of known sin shape families?"

  "Some have tried to do so," Gerd said. "I have seen various hypothetical renderings. The best guess is that it takes the form of a hyper-icosahedron. We think it must have enormous spectral energy. But who can know for sure?"

  He raised his eyes and looked at the high chandelier in the center of the parlor. "Considering the stakes involved, perhaps it would be best for you to stay here with me for a time, for your own safety. I have plenty of spare room in this dusty old mansion. I will call in some old friends of mine who owe me a favor, to act as . . . bodyguards." He looked back down at me, lifted his eyebrows, and smiled.

  I nodded back to him. I could buy a toothbrush at the local drugstore in the morning.

  At this point, I was scared. The chances that I'd get any substantial help from the police were slim, and so I was thankful for Gerd's offer of protection.

  ****

  Sins occupy a space just a tiny bit removed from the one that most people can see. They are like the steamy fog that rises from a hot asphalt road after a shower in the middle of summer. Nothing but humid air, really-but you never see it until after the rain and the sun conspire to bring it out.

  Me, I was sick of being able to see them. As I lay restlessly in the unfamiliar bed, I cursed Gerd for developing my latent talent in the first place. In the end, it hadn't been worth it.

  And worse thoughts came to me. For example, if every man and woman alive were infested with sins, how could anyone ever hope to enter Heaven? Jesus Christ may have been able to cast out sins from the living, but I saw no evidence that anyone else had ever done that.

  Furthermore, what possible good could it do to "forgive" one for their sins? The sins didn't care. Ironically, they were sin-free. Whatever strange form of independent vitality they possessed, they had the same imperative as all other life forms: strive to exist. That is all. You might as well forgive a person for the e-coli that inhabited his gut. To me, it seemed an illogical concept.

  The Bible defined the worst sin as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the only unforgivable sin. But surely it couldn't be that obvious, else we'd have already seen its manifestation in plentitude. Even so, since no one could actually understand the mystical nature of the Holy Spirit, maybe there was something to that notion. Maybe it took an incorrigible sinner like Manny to stumble upon that most perverse of thoughts or deeds.

  And perhaps the physical manifestation of the Sin Of All Sins was not really all that breathtaking or complex to behold. It might be hard to identify, crammed amidst other sins. Maybe its spectral energy was actually not very strong. It very well may have disguised itself like that. Maybe it looked like the humblest of everyday sins.

  I rolled and tossed in bed, trying to will my brain to stop operating. These thoughts worried me. Worried me deeply.

  I knew that you couldn't destroy a sin's physical manifestation, even after the death of its original host. An early HCG study group had done experiments using all kinds of solvents, strong acids, flames, liquid nitrogen, noxious gases, you name it. All were totally ineffective. Sins were robust, and had an extraordinarily long physical lifetime. The oldest well-documented extant sin I knew about was HCG 28-147-1-1, a singular genus. It had been extracted from a religious relic, the knucklebone of St. Agothis, who had died in the third century C.E.

  I suppose it was fortunate for hamartiaphiles that the plane sins occupied was only slightly askew from normal sight. Otherwise, collectors couldn't have appreciated their individual beauty.

  And they were beautiful, to be sure. Each one splendid in its own illicit, unique way. Collectors assumed that the Sin Of All Sins was the most beautiful item in all the world. Some would kill for it. Beyond its inestimable tangible value, its ownership would secure one's legacy forever in the annals of the Hamartiaphily Collector's G
uild.

  Which was, I thought uncomfortably, just the sort of thing that would appeal to a person like Gerd Vanderhout.

  ****

  I awoke to find myself tied immobile in a chair in Gerd's library, with the residual scent of chloroform in my nostrils about to make me retch.

  "Please forgive me for this, Peter," Gerd said.

  A couple of other elderly guys I didn't recognize stood on either side of me. One of them held a small pistol in his hand.

  Henderson had been right. True fear is facing the business end of a loaded gun. I tried to look away from it, but couldn't. That small dark hole at the end of the barrel seemed to grow larger and larger, until it subsumed everything else in my vision.

  I heaved once against my bindings as a surge of adrenaline coursed through my body, bearing its primary chemical instruction: fight or flight. I could do neither. Somewhere inside my head, panic quickly evolved into an odd sense of detachment. The room, the people inside it, the situation itself became surreal. I found my voice, surprised that it was so coherent under the circumstance.

  "It's not like I couldn't expect something like this to happen, Gerd," I said. "You were my last hope, and now you're betraying me for the sake of your own greed. A variant of HCG 3-14, as I reckon it. I can see it blooming on your chest right now, ready to be born. Bright as a new star. Weighing down your wings even further."

  My fingers teased at the knot that restrained my wrists behind the chair. Gerd's ancient accomplices were obviously not accustomed to this kind of sordid business. The knot was loose enough for me to unravel, given time.

  "I had to be sure," Gerd said. "Surely, you can understand that. It is much too important for me not to follow up on."

  "You killed Manny Greer, didn't you? Or had someone in your employ do it. And when your assassin came back empty-handed, you figured he missed reaping the target you were after. I don't know why I can't see the evidence of your crime crawling on you, but it must have been you."