The Dark Side

by Anthony O'Neill

  “It’s from a printout message delivered by an anonymous courier to the offices of the Tablet,” Justus says. “We’re gonna need Forensics to examine the original for fingerprints, DNA, ink signatures.”

  “I’ll get it from the Tablet,” Carvalho offers.

  “I’ve already done so,” Justus says, to everyone’s surprise. “Along with DNA samples from all those at the newspaper who’ve touched it. And I’ve got a positive ID on the courier who dropped it off at the desk. But for now it’s safe to assume that the senders themselves were professional enough not to leave any obvious traces. I’ll get to the contents of the first message in a moment, but what’s more important right now is the second message, which the Tablet—being the responsible news organ it is—has so far refrained from publishing.”

  “Second message?” asks Chin, scratching his ear.

  “It’s no secret—it was mentioned in the article.”

  “Well, what’s it say, sir?”

  “It identifies the explosive used as a mixture of ammonium nitrate and propane. It lists the quantities required very accurately. So either the senders have some sort of direct involvement in the bombing or they’ve been availed of inside information.”

  Pfeffer grunts. “Not saying there’s been a leak in the PPD?”

  “Just covering all bases,” says Justus. “Anyway, I’m no counterterrorism expert, but I’d have to say it more likely indicates that the senders are genuinely involved. So that leaves the substance of the first message itself, and what we can read into it.”

  He glances up at the screen.

  “First of all,” he says, “there’s the name of the group itself—The People’s Hammer—a name I gather has never been heard in Purgatory?”

  Everyone shrugs or shakes their heads.

  “Well, it’s a throwback, that’s for sure—very Bolshevik. So we’re not talking religious extremism here; we’re talking political ideology.”

  “Assuming the group is for real,” offers Dash Chin.

  “Of course. But it needs to be checked out anyway. Because if the bombing was a political act, then the perpetrators aren’t dumb. They’re well-read and they know how to cover their tracks. So we need to narrow the field, as quickly as possible, to those who might classify as revolutionaries under those terms.”

  “It’s still a big field,” says Chin.

  “Of course it is. But not so big that we can’t find a snake in the grass if we need to. Second, we’ve got a specific reference here—”

  But at this stage Chief Buchanan maneuvers his gas-giant gut through the doorway and draws up an oversized chair. “Don’t mind me,” he says to Justus, waving a hand. “I just wanna sit in on this—see how it’s swingin’.”

  Justus does mind but bites his tongue. “Second,” he says, “we’ve got a specific reference to Otto Decker. That marks him as the bomb’s target, not Ben Chee or Blythe L’Huillier or anyone else.”

  “Well, of course he was the target, sir,” says Pfeffer. “We don’t need any terrorist statement to tell us that.”

  “With respect, Detective,” returns Justus, “we can’t sign off on that just yet. I’ve had others suggest differently, and I’m not discounting anything.”

  “Who?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Who said differently?”

  “That’s irrelevant,” says Justus. “But if Decker really was the target, and he was as popular as you all seem to think, then we need to know why someone wanted him dead.”

  “Because he was a close friend of Fletcher Brass,” says Jacinta Carvalho.

  “Yes, but is that all there is to it? There’s a mad power scramble going on now that Brass is leaving for Mars, is there not? Partly between Brass and his daughter?”

  Justus expects some sort of response—even a challenge—but the room is oddly quiet. Which, he guesses, passes for some sort of approval.

  “Anyway, the final two lines of the statement could be significant. ‘No More Brass’ is nicely generic, because it could refer to either Fletcher or QT Brass—or both. Meaning we could have someone who’s just opposed to the Brass dynasty in general. But that’s unusual around here, isn’t it? It seems you’re either in one camp or the other.”

  Again, approving silence.

  “And then there’s the last line,” he says. “ ‘Viva Redemption.’ Which, unless I’m mistaken, is a reference to QT Brass’s proposed name change for this city, from Sin to Redemption. So does that mean the terrorist group is aligning itself with QT Brass? Or is it just a coincidence?”

  Silence. Chief Buchanan unwraps a Moonball® and tosses it in his mouth.

  “Anyone?” asks Justus, looking around.

  “With respect, Lieutenant,” says Pfeffer—and Justus isn’t sure if he’s mocking him—“I think you might be reading too much into that message.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, QT Brass has got plenty of reasons to bump off Otto Decker—I ain’t disputing that. But that this is a terrorist attack? Class warfare? I mean, come on.”

  “Why couldn’t it be a terrorist attack?”

  “Because we’d know if it was.”

  “You’d know,” Justus says, and wonders why he’s surprised. “Well, knowing and feeling aren’t good enough, I’m afraid. If there are significant tensions brewing in this city then no law enforcement agency, not even the PPD, can be aware of everything. Not at all times. And especially not in a place which prides itself on being surveillance free. So what’s to stop a new terrorist group rising up right now?”

  A sustained, starchy silence fills the room. It’s left to Chief Buchanan, licking sugar dust from his fingers, to speak up. “Mind if I throw in my two cents, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Well, it’s like this, see.” The Chief shifts his body and the whole chair scrapes around. “These boys have got good reason to be a little cynical about terrorists and their so-called statements—know why? Because we’ve had this sorta shit before. You probably didn’t hear about this on Earth—or maybe you did, because it got blown out of all proportion, is what we hear—but we once had a little cult livin’ here in Purgatory. Called themselves the Leafists or some bullshit. Nature freaks, sap drinkers, dolphin kissers, you know the sort. Anyway, they were up to their neck in so much stink back home—lawsuits, libel charges, ecoterrorism, all that—that they were lookin’ for a way out. Permanently. So Fletcher Brass hears about it and decides to offer them sanctuary in Purgatory. Offers them a whole compound out on the crater floor—somethin’ they can turn into a self-sufficient farm, so they never have to eat anything genetically modified ever again, never have to breathe another exhaust fume, never even have to look at anyone in a suit and tie. It’s a friendly gesture to the leaf eaters and it’s a big middle finger to all those on the Blue Ball”—Buchanan uses the disparaging term by which lunatics sometimes refer to Earth—“who say it’s unhealthy to live on the Moon. So all goes well for a few years—the leaf smokers just live out there all alone, chewin’ grass or whatever they do, until one day someone gets a little alarmed that no one’s heard from them for a while. So he heads out there and guess what? They’re all dead. Asphyxiated. A gas leak or something. Or that’s what it looks like, anyway. And that’s embarrassing enough, right? That’s real egg on the face of Fletcher Brass. But then we get a terrorist message, which makes it look even worse. Some local group callin’ themselves The Blue Pencil claim it’s their work. Say they’re dedicated to ‘editing out’ radical and disruptive influences or some shit, and they’d deliberately poisoned the air supply.”

  “Nitrogen tetroxide and monomethylhydrazine,” chips in Carvalho. “Everyone’s worst nightmare in an enclosed environment.”

  “That’s right,” says Buchanan. “Monomethyl whatever. So anyway, all across the PPD the bells are ringing, because no one has ever heard of The Blue Pencil. And Fletcher Brass wants answers immediately—he’s breathing down our necks, he’s
really giving it to us. And we turned this whole town upside down—we busted down walls, we tossed people through windows, we even killed a few. And in the end what did we find? In three months? Nada. Not a fuckin’ thing. And you know why? Because it turns out this Blue Pencil group was just a front. The real culprit was some aerospace mogul on Earth—some bitter old turd with a grudge—who wanted to damage Fletcher Brass, his old rival, any way he could. So he hired assassins to come to Farside, infiltrate criminal elements in Sin, and take out the whole Leafist cult in one stroke. Easy enough, if you know what you’re doin’.”

  The story seems highly improbable to Justus. He even sees Kalganov in the squad room shaking his head mockingly. He says, “Has all this been verified?”

  “ ’Course it’s been verified. You really never heard about this on Earth?”

  “If I did, it was a different story.”

  “Well, it was the wrong story,” Buchanan says. “It was propaganda. Ask anyone here. That’s the way it was. On my grandmother’s fuckin’ grave.” He tosses another Moonball® in his mouth and starts munching even as he talks. “Anyway, that’s why you can forgive us all for bein’ a little leery about bullshit terrorist statements. Especially ones that get sent straight to the press.”

  Justus nods ambivalently. And clears his throat. “Well, what’s your theory, then?”

  “What’s my theory?” Buchanan wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Well, this isn’t a place for my theories—I don’t wanna put words in your mouth. But I do know one thing. There’s gonna be more murders here, of course there are. So we’ll all be better off not followin’ false trails and heading up dead ends.”

  “What makes you think there’ll be more murders?”

  “Ain’t it obvious? Everythin’ in the terrorist statement suggests that.”

  “But you’ve just said the terrorist statement is very likely bogus.”

  “Yeah”—Buchanan is looking frustrated—“but that doesn’t mean the threat is bogus. Y’understand the difference? Or not?”

  Justus doesn’t answer.

  “Look, Lieutenant, I’m just tryin’ to help. You’re good at what you do, sure, but that doesn’t mean you can do everythin’ by yourself. And all I’m doin’ is nudging you along to a place you’d get to anyway. In quicker time, that’s all.”

  Justus shrugs. “I’ve heard that before.”

  That catches Buchanan off guard. “Oh yeah?” he says, then sniffs again and hesitates, as if debating whether he should proceed. “Well, that’s another thing,” he says. “You spoke to QT Brass yesterday. You never told us you were gonna do that.”

  “I’m sorry—was I supposed to?”

  “No, you can do whatever the hell you goddamn like. But if you were intendin’ to speak to Little Miss QT I thought you woulda told us first.”

  “Why? Is it illegal around here?”

  “No, it’s not illegal.” Buchanan starts munching again, angrily. “But you should think about these sorta things. Speak to the wrong people in Sin and you’re likely to get some wacky ideas in your head, that’s all.”

  “Funny you say that,” Justus says, risking a jab of his own. “Yesterday I went to speak to Fletcher Brass. And everyone here did know that in advance. And yet no one bothered to tell me that I wouldn’t be speaking to the real Fletcher Brass—that I’d be speaking to some paid actor.”

  For a moment Buchanan seems stunned, as if he can’t believe Justus has broken an unspoken taboo. The other cops in the room seem to be relishing the tension. Even a few in the squad room outside are looking in. But finally Buchanan manages to restrain himself. “Well,” he says, “that’s just the way it is in Purgatory.”

  “It might be the way it is. But for me it’s unacceptable.”

  “It’s perfectly acceptable.”

  “Not to me it isn’t.”

  “I speak to the proxy Brass.”

  “Well, I don’t. Not when it’s a murder investigation. And not when the man himself might be in danger.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t think you’re gonna meet the real Fletcher Brass.”

  “Why won’t I?”

  “Because you won’t.”

  “I’m confident I will.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, what a fine fuckin’ . . .” For a moment the terrestrial Buchanan—the one who brutalized prostitutes, conspired with drug dealers, and accepted kickbacks or whatever—seems to be reinhabiting his body. But then he shifts his great bulk, as if to shake off the intruder, and just says, “Well . . . I guess we’ll see about that.”

  “I guess we will.”

  The two men stare at each other for a moment. The only sound in the room comes from the retro wall clock—tick . . . TOCK . . . tick . . . TOCK—and then suddenly there’s a knock at the glass. The door swings open and a junior officer pokes his head in.

  “Chief—interrupt for a second?”

  Buchanan is still staring at Justus. “Yeah?”

  “Brass’s valet—the tinnie—is here.”

  Buchanan turns and so does Justus. And through the windows they see Leonardo Grey standing primly at the other end of the squad room, his hands folded in front of him.

  “What’s he want?” Buchanan snaps.

  “Says he’s come for Lieutenant Justus. Says he’s been ordered to take him to Fletcher Brass. The real Fletcher Brass.”

  Sheer disbelief for ten seconds.

  Then:

  “Well,” says Chief Lance Buchanan.

  21

  JEAN-PIERRE PLAISANCE ARRIVES AT the chain-link fence and has to make a crucial decision. He’s spent the last two hours well off the beaten track, following the northward path of the Zenith 18. Now he’s come to the place where the droid broke through into the danger zone. His first impulse is to follow, but there are two reasons to hesitate.

  First, he knows virtually nothing about this site. He’s heard about it but never actually seen it. He doesn’t know how large it is and he’s pretty sure there won’t be any emergency supply caches within. Which is a problem, because Plaisance’s oxygen supply is now down to its last three hours. He’s already exhausted his PLSS auxiliary supply and he’s on to his second emergency canister. Plus he has only six amp-hours left in its batteries and just a few sips of water in his suit reservoir. So if he runs into trouble there’s a good chance that he won’t have sufficient air, energy, or water to make it out of the test site and get to a cache. He’s not sure where the caches are this far north. He can’t even be sure the ones on this side of the equator are as vigilantly checked as the caches in his own domain.

  Second, there’s the radiation factor. Plaisance is already carrying in his body over three hundred individual cancers: in his lungs, his thyroid, his stomach, his kidneys, his mouth, his skin, his blood, his bones; melanomas, osteosarcomas, angiosarcomas, lymphomas, liposarcomas, and papillomas. He is, he likes to think, a living museum of cancer. And for most people in such a state, the prospect of absorbing a new dose of non-medicinal radiation—even if levels within the site have decreased significantly over time—would be like twisting a knife in an old wound.

  But with just a few months to live—at best—Plaisance finds these complications strangely attractive. He has nothing to lose. And even if the site somehow accelerates his decay, and even if he can’t find his way out when he needs to, he judges it will be worth it. In fact, the dangers just add luster to his act of redemption.

  So in the end the decision isn’t difficult at all. He passes through the same hole cut by the droid. He drives tentatively at first, following the tracks of the Zenith 18. And for the first ten minutes everything goes smoothly. He doesn’t encounter any hazards. He doesn’t feel any physical effects. He gains confidence. He picks up speed.

  But then, just like the droid before him, he strikes the outer rim of pyroclastic beads. The LRV’s wheels struggle for traction. The vehicle starts mis-steering. The hand controller vibrates in his hand. And Plaisance experiences something he has
not felt as a driver in many, many years—uncertainty.

  The beads become more numerous and the whole vehicle jolts and shudders. Plaisance shoots into the milky blue wonderland of ice sculptures and frozen waves. He narrowly misses projections. He passes within centimeters of yawning holes. He slaloms across the moving carpet of beads. Worse, his faceplate is misting. The sunlight is making the condensation luminous. He has to tilt his head so he can see. And he can no longer make out the droid’s tracks—not at all.

  He tries desperately to steer onto a safe course but the LRV is caught up in its own momentum. It skids. It slides. It starts to spin. In quick succession there are three or four counterclockwise rotations. Plaisance sees all the horizons in a flash. He sees glass beads scattering in all directions. He sees a vaguely triangular projection, like the prow of a sinking ship, looming up in his path. And the LRV, spinning like a Frisbee, is heading directly for it.

  Plaisance wrenches on the hand controller but the rover doesn’t respond. He grits his teeth and braces for impact. And then the vehicle hits the projection laterally—with great force.

  Plaisance feels the LRV crumpling around again. And flinging him out of his seat, and tipping over on top of him. And dragging him down a slope.

  On Earth he would certainly be crushed by now. And even as it is the LRV’s chassis is painfully heavy. But Plaisance doesn’t panic. Pinned underneath the vehicle, he slides down the slope, with beads skidding around him, and eventually grinds to a halt. Still alive. And, as far as he can tell, undamaged. He gives praise to God.