by Dan Abnett
Endor sat down in the seat indicated, and looked at himself in the smeared mirror. He was overpowered by the smell of stale perfume. Spent lho-sticks choked a glass near his left hand. The words ‘Good luck Mira XXX Lilo’ were written in lip rouge in the lower right-hand corner of the mirror.
Endor opened the small drawer under the mirror. It was full of blood. He shut it again, hastily, trying not to slosh anything out onto his lap.
‘Could I have a moment?’ he asked.
‘I’m not really allowed–’ the man began.
‘Inquisitor, inquisitor,’ Endor snarled.
‘I’ll be outside,’ the man said, and closed the door behind him.
Gently, Endor slid the drawer open again. It wasn’t full of blood at all. It was full of dark rose petals. He laughed at himself. The rose petals were as black and red as the halls of the Theatricala. He dipped his hand in and slid it around. The petals were as soft and cold as snow flakes or random clues.
He took out the knife. It was double-sided and stained. He sniffed it. Blood. From the bathroom in 870 Arbogan, no doubt. He leant back into the seat, and took out the pict. Dance steps? Practice marks? Surely nothing so innocent.
Endor decided he had to get Liebstrum working on the Number of Ruin. He needed proper information. The Number of Ruin wasn’t something one took lightly. There had been a case, years back, an old fool…
Endor wondered where Liebstrum was. He hadn’t seen his interrogator in days.
He put his hand back into the petals, and found a card, a business card. On one side, it read ‘Cloten and Sons, Funerary Needs and Final Rituals’. There was a vox number and a street address.
On the other side, handwritten, was ‘Master Titus, you need to conclude your business with these men. Order number 87.’ 435, Endor thought, was divisible by 87 five times.
‘Hello?’ Endor called out.
The man poked his head around the dressing room door. ‘Sir?’
‘What are the chances of a man getting a drink?’ Endor asked.
Cloten and Sons occupied a grim ouslite building at the end of Limnal Street. Polished long-bodied hearses sat in the snowy yard. A brass bell tinkled as Endor went in.
‘Can I be of assistance to you, sir?’ asked a young, pudgy man in mourning weeds.
‘No, you can’t,’ Endor replied, ‘but he can.’ He pointed at the tall, slender man at the back of the musty little shop, a place of dark velvet drapes and samphorwood.
‘Master Cloten?’ the young man called. ‘For you, sir.’
Master Cloten walked over to Endor. He was no longer wearing the tall back hat, but he was unmistakeable. His face was hard and pale and sinewy, the face a man wore when he had spent his life dealing with grief.
‘How may I help you, sir?’ he asked.
‘Order number 87,’ Endor replied.
The man went to his heavy ledger, and heaved it open, but Endor knew he already knew the details.
‘Ah, indeed. Already fully paid. A nalwood coffin, and a confirmed site in the municipal yard. Headstone already inscribed. Eighteen paid mourners. We have two of our most saddest-faced boys ready, sir, a horse-drawn carriage. Full wreathes. Two hymns already chosen and applied. The choir of the Theatricala will attend and sing them. Well, everything looks in order.’
‘Good,’ said Endor, ‘and it’s all paid for?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I saw you in the street this morning,’ said Endor.
‘Quite probably, sir,’ the slender man agreed. ‘Death visits all the time. It stalks us, so to say.’
‘I’ve heard that,’ Endor smiled.
‘And it’s never subtle,’ the slender man said. ‘It strikes where it wants. Such is the way of the cosmos.’
‘Indeed. Well, the ceremony seems well catered, and I am thankful for that. I knew him well.’ Endor looked at the slender man for a reaction. None came. ‘A splendid send-off. These are the hymns?’
‘They are.’
Endor studied the sheets. ‘I had wanted to make a contribution towards costs,’ he said. ‘As I told you, I knew him well.’
‘Mistress Zaleed has already paid for everything,’ the slender man said.
‘Has she? Has she?’ Endor murmured. ‘May I see the inscription?’
The slender man passed him a pict of the headstone.
‘Such a lamentable loss,’ the slender man said. ‘To be killed by a monster like that. Throne, I didn’t know there were any predators left on Karoscura, not like that. Imagine.’
‘Indeed,’ said Endor.
He looked at the pict. His own name was on the headstone.
The backstreet alchemist’s had shut up for the night. In the swirling snow, he hammered on the door until the adept unlocked it.
‘Tonight!’ Endor spat. ‘Tonight, you said!’
‘You’re late,’ the adept replied.
‘Just tell me what you found,’ Endor snapped. He felt peculiar, and in no mood for nonsense.
‘I ground it down. It’s a saurapt tooth, just as you thought, from Brontotaph.’
Endor joined the queue at the doors of the Theatricala. The overture was pumping out already, the windows glowing with gold light.
‘Anywhere in the circle,’ he told the girl in the box office, pushing crowns at her as he waited for his ticket.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ he replied.
He hired glasses, bought a programme and a glass of joiliq, and hurried to his seat.
The ruddy auditorium pulsed like a box of flesh, red and dark, pumping with movement. He took his seat after a few thank yous and excuse mes.
He swung his glasses up. Yes, there in 435, the glint of opera glasses. I have you now, Maliko, he thought.
The overture ended. The curtains drew back, and the dancers mounted the stage. There she was, perfect and poised. Where had she been hiding?
Endor’s body started to twist and turn, dancing the zendov in his seat.
‘Will you stop that?’ complained the woman beside him.
‘Sorry,’ said Endor, sitting still and sipping his drink.
He looked up at the box, and saw the glint of brass and glass again. 435. 435.
Of course, there was no box 435.
Liebstrum sat down beside him.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Endor smiled. ‘Just in time.’
Liebstrum looked at him strangely.
‘I’ve been calling you, you know?’ said Endor.
‘I know,’ Liebstrum sighed.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Busy. Look, sir–’
‘Oh, hush! You can’t talk through this. It’s beautiful. Watch them dance. Watch her.’
‘Sir, I… sir… the ordos sent me, sir,’ said Liebstrum. ‘I was concerned, sir. Your calls, and everything. I had them run some tests on your last routine clinical. They wanted you to know. I’m so sorry, I would never wish this on you, sir.’
‘Wish what? For Throne’s sake, watch her!’ Endor craned forwards, and looked through his opera glasses. They caught the light.
‘Sir?’
‘What?’
‘Sir, the worms, sir, the cerebral worms. They think you may have been infected years ago, perhaps by Hapshant.’
‘He was a real character.’
‘Sir, your mind is being eaten up. Dementia, sir.’
‘Don’t be silly, Liebstrum. By the way, where the hell have you been?’
‘Sir, I think it would be best if you came with me now. I have summoned doctors. They can make your last weeks comfortable.’
Endor lowered his opera glasses.
‘Is this some kind of trick?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ replied Liebstrum.
‘Listen to me, Liebstrum, she’s got me. It was very canny of her. There’s a saurapt stalking her too.’
‘A what, sir?’
‘A saurapt. She fended it off, made the rituals. She transplanted her curse
onto me, you see?’
‘No, not really, sir.’
‘Oh yes you do!’ cried Endor. He reached for his glass, but it was empty. ‘I smelt the same, don’t you see? I was already a target. She performed the rituals and switched her predator after me. I’m her blood sacrifice. I suppose it was easy, given that I’d already got the curse on me.’
‘Sir, the doctors are waiting. They will look after you.’
‘Liebstrum? Liebstrum?’ Endor called. He dropped his opera glasses. Liebstrum had vanished. Below him, the performance was continuing. He was in a box. He turned around, and saw the number on the door.
435.
But there was no box 435.
He felt peculiar. His head ached worse than ever. He wanted a drink, something to dull the pain. Grain joiliq, with shaved ice, and a sliver of citrus. His hands were numb. Where was Liebstrum? Hadn’t he just been talking to Liebstrum?
The performance ended with a flourish, and the Theatricala exploded with applause.
It was all over now. Endor smiled. He realised it wasn’t his fault. Just circumstances.
Out of the red darkness behind him, something loomed and finished its bite.
THE CURIOSITY
He was, it is fair to say, already weary of Gershom when the curiosity came to light. Seven years is a long time in any man’s career, seven years living and working in grubby tenements, backwater hostels and frontier habs all over the planet. Long enough to feel like a native, and certainly to look like one, although he had been born forty-two years and many million AU distant. The patched worsted suit with shiny, calloused elbows, the slate-grey weathercoat, fingerless leather gloves, wire-framed spectacles, the skin of his face etiolated from too many short, wintry days, his thin hair unnaturally black from a biweekly chemical treatment that he purchased and applied himself.
This insipid and forlorn figure stared at his reflection in the smoked glass screen of the demograph booth.
‘Present papers. State name and occupation,’ the indistinct form behind the screen said. As he spoke, the words appeared in glowing, block-capital holos on the glass.
He put his crumpled documents into the metal drawer below the screen and it gobbled them away with an un-oiled clatter. Hunching low, he aimed his mouth helpfully at the vox-grille, and said, ‘Valentin Drusher, magos biologis.’
‘Purpose of travel?’ the voice said, subtitled as before.
‘I am a magos biologis, as I said. You’ll see I have a permit for travel to Outer Udar stamped by the office of the Lord Governor. He is my patron.’
The shape behind the tinted glass panel paused, and then the legend ‘please wait’ appeared on the screen. Doing as he was told, Drusher stood back, rubbing his hands together briskly to chafe warmth into them. It was a miserably early morning in the last few days of autumn and the terminal was vacant. Outside, it was not yet light; the sky was a patchy blue, the colour of a Tarkoni tarkonil’s winter plumage, and the orange glare of sodium lamps reflected in the puddles on the rain-slicked concourse. Drusher studied the reflections, and they reminded him of the fluorescent banding on the abdomen of the southern latitude glowmoth, Lumenis gershomi.
The air held the bitter foretaste of another hard Gershom winter closing in. He consoled himself with the thought that he would be long gone before winter came. Just a few more days to tidy up this annoying loose end, and then he would be done at last.
The drawer slot clacked open again, his refolded papers laid inside.
‘Proceed,’ said the voice.
Drusher retrieved his papers, gathered up his bags and equipment cases, and walked into the boarding yard to find himself a seat on the interprovince coach.
It wasn’t hard. The vehicle, a converted military gref-carrier from the Peninsula, was all but empty. An old woman in a purple shawl sat alone, fingering rosary beads as she read from a dog-eared devotional chapbook. A young mother, hard-faced and tired, occupied another bench seat, her two small children gathered up in her skirts. A rough-faced agri-worker in leather overalls nodded, half-asleep, one arm protectively around the baskets of live, clucking poultry he shared his seat with. His hound, lean and grinning, prowled the aisle. Two young men, identical twins, sat side by side, motionlessly intent. Drusher set himself down near the front of the cabin, far away from anyone else. He shooed the dog away when it came sniffing at his bags.
A hooter sounded, waking the agri-worker briefly. The coach’s big, caged props began to turn and beat, and the patched rubber skirts of the bulky ground-effect vehicle began to swell out. Drusher felt them drunkenly rise up. One of the little children laughed out in glee at the bobbing motion as the vehicle picked up speed.
Then they were out of the city terminal and roaring up to the state highway, fuming spray into the gloomy dawn.
Outer Udar, the most western and – many said – the most heathen of Gershom’s provinces, lay far beyond the Tartred Mountains, forty hours away. For the first hour or two, he worked on his notes, refining technical descriptions on his data-slate. Such polish was simply cosmetic. He’d been over it a hundred times, and the taxonomy would have been published as complete by now. Complete but for the curiosity.
He put his slate aside, and took the crumpled voxgram from his pocket, hoping yet again that it was a mistake.
Seven years! Seven damn years of rigorous work. To miss a sub-form of tick-fly, a variant weevil, even a divergent rodentae, well that would just be the way of things. Even, he considered, some class of grazer, if it was localised and sufficiently shy in its habits.
But an apex predator? Surely, surely not. Any systematic taxonomy identified all apex predators in the initial phase of preparation by dint of the fact they were the most obvious of any world’s creatures.
No, it was a mistake. The curiosity in Outer Udar was an error. He’d stake his reputation on that.
The rolling motion of the gref-coach began to lull him. He fell asleep, dreaming of the characterising mouthparts of filter snakes, the distinguishing feather-palps of lowland locustae, and the bold, striated beaks of peninsula huskpeckers.
He woke to the sound of infant laughter. The coach was stationary, and sleet was dashing against the grey windows. Blinking, he sat up, and repositioned his dislodged spectacles on his nose. At his feet, the two children had his sketchbooks laid open and were giggling as they surveyed the hand-painted images of beasts and fowls.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘please be careful with those.’
The children looked up at him.
‘Zoo books,’ said one.
‘Yes,’ he replied, taking the sketchbooks away from their grubby hands and closing them.
‘Why have you got zoo books?’
‘I make zoo books,’ he said.
They thought about this. Their simple grasp of professional careers did not reach so far. One nudged the other.
‘Are you going to put the beast in your zoo books?’ the nudged one asked.
‘The beast?’ he asked. ‘Which beast?’
‘The hill beast. It has teeth.’
‘Great large teeth.’
‘It eats men up.’
‘And swine.’
‘And swine. With its great large teeth. It has no eyes.’
‘Come away!’ their mother called, and the two children scurried back down the aisle to her.
Drusher looked around the cabin. It was just as he had last seen it. The agri-worker continued to snooze; the old woman was still reading. The only change was the twins, who now sat facing one another, like a mirror.
The cabin door thumped open and flakes of sleet billowed in around several newcomers. A black-robed demograph servitor, its face a cluster of slack tubes beneath augmetic compound eyes. A short-haired woman in a leather bodyglove and fur coat, carrying a brown paper parcel. Another agri-worker, his face chilblained, fighting to keep his long-haired terrier from snapping at the roaming hound. A matronly progenium school teacher in a long grey dress. The short-haired woman h
elped the matron with her luggage.
‘Leofrik! This is Leofrik!’ the servitor called as he walked the cabin. ‘Present your papers!’
Each voyager offered up his or her documents for the servitor to scan. Gershom was very particular about its indigents, the side effect of being so close to a warzone. The Departmento Demographicae maintained a vigilant watch on the planet’s human traffic.
The servitor, waste spittle drooling from its mouth tubes, took a long time studying Drusher’s papers.
‘Magos biologis?’
‘Yes.’
‘Reason for travel?’
‘I went through all this at the terminal this morning.’
‘Reason for travel?’
Drusher sighed. ‘Seven years ago, I was commissioned by the Lord Governor of Gershom to draw up a comprehensive taxonomy of the planet’s fauna. It is all but complete. However, a curiosity has appeared in Outer Udar and I am travelling there to examine it.’
Drusher wanted to go on, to talk about the extended deadlines he had been forced to request, the increasingly reluctant project funding that had obliged him to take the overland coach instead of a chartered flier, the preposterous idea that he might have missed an apex predator.
The demograph servitor wasn’t interested. It handed the papers back to Drusher and stalked away.
In the meantime, the short-haired woman had taken the seat opposite him. She smiled at Drusher. Her face was lean and sturdy, with a tiny scar zagging up from the left-hand corner of her lip. Her eyes were dazzling amber, like photoluminescent cells.
Drusher looked away.
‘Magos biologis?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I couldn’t help overhearing.’
‘Apparently.’
The servitor had dismounted. With a lurch like sea-swell, the gref-carrier rose and got underway again.
‘I was told you were coming,’ she said.
‘What?’
The woman reached into her fur coat – highland fox, if he wasn’t mistaken – and produced a wallet, which she flipped open to reveal the golden badge inside.
‘Germaine Macks, province Arbites.’
‘You were expecting me, officer?’