“I’m Dualist.” Then he adds, solemnly, “Reformed.”
Oh for fuck’s sake, please excuse me for dragging Mummy and Daddy into it, but, you know how it is, the whore spewed you out of her arse into a world where Daddy had just taken a shit.
Dualists. There’s the mother: i.e. feelings, nature, no rules and a big fucking mess. A whore, in fact. Then there’s the father: the architect, tradition, order and other assorted bollocks. You light a candle to him if you want a promotion. One can’t exist without the other and vice versa, but they’re in constant conflict. On the other hand, according to the reformed—the worst kind, with their smartypants attitude—they are in constant harmony, a divergence which, four hundred years ago, stirred up a real hornet’s nest, including a few dozen deaths. That’s some universal harmony. If I had to pick a religion which is less nasty than the others, then I’d go for Pantheon. The elders are nearly all much more reasonable and human, kind of. There’s Ao, the big chief, the Owl of wisdom, the Slitherer for intrigue, the Pale for death, Thunder for strength and so on, and they all argue together all the time. The sacred Pantheon texts are a sort of adventure novel featuring characters with egos as huge as their superpowers. It’s no coincidence that they do comic strips as well. The best thing is that the followers take sides, too, and blaspheme their heads off at their darlings’ rivals. It’s not like I believe a single word of their religion, but it’s pretty funny. The religious programs on Sunday afternoon hosted by Pantheon priests get really high ratings, because everyone likes watching them squabble over whose representative gets the most attention, trying to explain the week’s news from a mystical angle.
“Oh, forget it,” answers Cohl, trying to avoid confrontation. But I don’t want his pity.
“But aren’t you reformists duty-bound to ‘save confused souls’? Promote harmony?”
“I said, forget it. Here’s the file. We’ve got nothing on that Gilder.”
He tosses the report onto the table and makes a face when he drinks the icy-cold coffee, before calling the waiter over. I start leafing through the papers.
“Can you please take all this away, and bring me… what do you have that isn’t spicy?”
“Erm… salad… and bread. I mean, bread that isn’t spicy, sir,” he answers, taken aback. “Shall I bring you a mixed salad?”
“And a bottle of still mineral water, thank you.”
“Leave the beer,” I add, grabbing the glass without looking away.
Inla Inla Inla. You are deep in my heart, at least until I find the ass you were riding. Arrested during the “protest” on 3 June in Cross Square. Eight years ago. I was there, too. I remember it like it was only yesterday.
“Close ranks! Steady!” barks the sergeant from the second row.
A hundred or so agents in riot gear guard the entrance to the main tower on the Fourteenth Level. Plastic shields, truncheons, helmets with plastic visors, gas masks hanging from their chests. I’m at the front. There are uprisings everywhere. It’s the Year of Uprisings, even though the horoscope says it should be the year of the gentle Elephant, the lesser God of Memory. In actual fact, it’s not gentle at all. All the security forces had been called to defend the institutions, so I, from the vice squad, ended up in the Abyss. And the Abyss roars. During the briefing, the colonel of the MP talked about ‘potential coup d’etat’, ‘subversive plans’, ‘risk to democracy’, ‘sacred duty to protect the Federation’. Many colleagues shouted at the language that was being used, to give themselves courage. We were all shitting bricks. Twenty-two agents died in the first two hours of the day, and more than four times that number were seriously injured. The army was just outside the City, but they were up against strong resistance on the ramps on the Third and Fourth Levels. The Special Forces, on the other hand, had been teletransported to the Sixteenth Level. The higher floors and Nexus had been secured a couple of days previously.
There was an ocean of rabid street cleaners, hysterical shop assistants, furious electricians, blood-thirsty butchers before us. No Colonel, sir, there are no subversive plans. And the democracy is right here, in front of us. The population wants heads to roll.
“Stones!”
We raise our shields to protect ourselves from the improvised bullets raining down on us. They’re not exactly stones—at least, not only stones. My shield deflects, in the following order, a dead rodent, a toaster, the right-hand wing mirror of some mutilated car and another dead rodent. A shower of bricks hurled by a gigantic ogre sends four cops a few metres away on my left flying into the air. Three pick themselves up and resume their position, but the one who got the full force of the bricks drags himself behind us, yelling and clutching his shattered arm, his ulna bone sticking out of his flesh and uniform.
“Sergeant, they’ll murder us if we stay here!” shouts a voice from the front.
“Oh Father! Father protect me… aargh!” wails a fellow cop, crying.
“We’ve got to break them up!” adds another at the top of his lungs.
“Get ready for a lighter charge!”
Is he completely mad?
“Masks! Two canisters … Stones!
The shields go up. A pair of shoes, half a brick. More stuff thrown at us. A gremlin arrived from somewhere, he gets battered with truncheons until he stops struggling. A wheel rim rolls in the few metres, separating us from the frenzied mob. It falls short and doesn’t do any damage, thank God.
“Masks!” repeats the sergeant. “Two canisters of tear-gas and then charge! Ready!”
We’ve got some tear-gas left, I thought we’d used it all. Perhaps we have a chance of surviving our own attack. Maybe not all of us.
The dull thuds of the tear-gas canisters spread smoke all over the square where the four main ringroads of the Fourteenth meet. It’s supposed to be a chic area, instead it’s a battlefield. We’re wearing gas masks, and the religious among us pray to their Gods. I pray to a random God, it’s not like he’s going to answer anyway.
As soon as the shapeless mass starts to die down, we surge forward, with a blood-curdling cry, and cosh them. We cosh everywhere. I cosh a psycho with a scarf over his mouth and a plank of wood that is bigger than him. Despite the tear-gas he’s still standing. I cosh a woman kneeling who suddenly raises her arms. I prefer not to wait and find out whether she’s pulling out a weapon or simply surrendering. I cosh one of those bastard gremlins who infiltrate armour with shards of glass to slice officer’s tendons. I cosh a half-ogre, his face is a mask of blood. I cosh a bearded fella who’s taken a truncheon from an officer, but he’s too intent on coughing and crying to defend himself.
Inside the smoke, all we do is cosh.
…
“Are you listening?” Cohl’s got this annoying habit of talking when I don’t feel like listening to him.
“What do you want now?”
“Know what you found out, seeing as I worked this morning.”
I give him a quick summary, suitable for the whole family, leaving out personal details, ogres and suchlike. In the meantime, the waiter brings a mixed salad to the Inspector, who enthusiastically plunges his fork into it and extracts a rich mouthful of vegetables. He sticks it in his mouth and his face immediately flares up, his eyes wide with shock. Then he gulps down half a bottle of water, draining three glasses in quick succession. The waiter clearly forgot to say “not spicy” to the chef, who prepared a classic bowl of molten steel. Once he’s collected himself, Cohl feels ready to deliver some prime bullshit.
“Well, I think we can trust a person like Mr Valan.”
“This is why I’m a Lieutenant of the Guard and you’re an Inspector of the MetroPo, kid. You understand fuck all.”
“But you said yourself that it was probably all about these lovebirds, so to speak. Come on, what could an elf know of such importance if she’d been disowned for nearly ten years?”
“Who knows. Something exciting perhaps.”
“No. I think the passion lead is more promis
ing.”
“That’s what worries me.” The fact that Cohl is a dick, I mean.
I go back to the report. Just before an army of lawyers—possibly literally called up from hell—arrived at the police station to get her released, Inla stated that she’s been attending a protest “in favour of equal rights for all races, against corruption and bad government”. It’s easy to play the big defender when your grandfather summons half the Sulphurous Throne to save your arse. This might be why she left shortly afterwards. Maybe she was able to work out in that brain of hers, strangled by hair and ears, that two and two makes four, and she realised that the people pulling the strings inside that corrupt government were none other than the noble elf dynasties. Not that they’d gone to any great lengths to hide it. I finish up Colh’s flat beer.
“Drinking on duty isn’t allowed,” Nohl reminds me, strictly.
“Indeed. You drink like a fish, you ought to stop. Anyway, we’ve got an address that needs checking out.” I look around but can’t see the car. “Where the hell did you park?”
“There’s a carpark two blocks up the road.“
“You paid for a carpark? Two blocks away?”
“I’m on my lunch break, so…”
“See you there then. I’m not walking two blocks because you’re too dumb to park close to where you have to go.”
I indicate the square, where, naturally, there are no other cars, apart from mine, right in the middle. Parked all wonky.
I stand up and remind the Inspector to pay the bill.
We drive around most of the city before we get to where we need to be. I have to get petrol at one point during our pilgrimage. It’s like watching the lives of the two lovebirds condensed in an afternoon. And it stinks.
It’s still light when we find a nice apartment block at the address Lonny gave me. Seventeenth Level, it’s bound to be nice. The streets are incredibly clean, and the houses have a garden. I wonder how much it costs to get soil all the way up here to create these gardens. The sparkling aviomobile in the driveway is practically ubiquitous, looking all the world as if it’s been washed just after the rain, ready to be shown off. A preposterously gorgeous sexpot, the masterpiece of some talented plastic surgeon smiles at me slyly while taking her cat for a walk, on a lead. I bet Miss Balcony’s husband is a wizened old bird with pots of money and a wizened old cock to match.
As far as I can see, as soon as they fell out of favour with their respective families, our centuries-old young things lived the high life on their liquidation. After a year of this, the bank balance can’t have been very healthy, according to what an old trout with aristocratic airs living across the road told us. She insisted on offering ‘two good police officers’ a cup of tea.
The inside of the house would make anyone want to take up thieving. I reckon even Cohl got a hard-on when he saw the gold and crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall. What’s really incredible amongst all this splendour is the gremlin. There’s a fashion amongst the rich to breed gremlins and keep them as pets, to show the skeptical sentients of Saros that, with the right upbringing, the little beasts can be a part of society. So that little green turd is standing in the corner dressed like a pageboy from some long-forgotten era. The old bag—or most likely some unfortunate slave—had put white make-up on its face, and rouged its cheeks. I would laugh at the contrast between the creature’s lost expression, but the thought that the hag spends much more money on food to feed it than I spend on food for myself, kills all the comedy. Normally, the well-to-do get rid of the gremlins after a few months, when they start to show all the characteristics of their personalities. They’re demons at the end of the day, many seem to forget that. Noticing my interest in the creature dressed up to the nines, the woman says smugly, “Our Jaja ith tho elegant, tho polite. Right, Jaja?
“Yeees… Ma-dam…” it answers, before performing a little bow. In order to be so docile, it’s probably drugged up to the eyeballs from morning ’til night. The queen of crow’s feet here is probably prepared to do anything so as not to admit defeat. All things considered, Jaja is probably better off than most who have to choose between their daily bread sor a dose, a dozen levels or so further down.
Following a stream of bullshit about her late husband, prominent businessman and philanthropist, photograph and hagiography, the embalmed mummy finally spills the beans. It turns out that, like any good pensioner, she just adores sticking her beak in other people’s business and talking about it during her weekly bridge game with her cronies. She clearly remembers those two elves, despite it being such a long time ago, because it’s ‘tho’ unusual for elves to live outside of their spires. When they moved, the urge to find out where they went was irresistible, and she made a note of their new address. She got it from the removal company and wrote it down in an enormous book containing all the contact details of all the people, most of them dead, she had met during her life. Never mind the filing system at MetroPo. This rich relic’s hypothesis, brimming with artificial optimism, is that the pair needed to live in a neighbourhood which was more… suited to them. When she let slip about some trouble with their families, it’s clear that the old lady had sussed the pair out, pigeon-holed and discarded them. Who knows how many bitchy comments were tossed around the bridge circle about the two destitute, disowned elves. They’re probably still making fun of them today.
Four levels further down, life is still worth living. It’s the heart of the city, full of offices, restaurants, theatres, classy shops. The buildings have several floors which keep the ceiling at a safe distance, lighting is a public good. Nectropis is undoubtedly a mess, but it’s still the political and financial capital of the richest and most influential state in this ball of mud floating in the cosmos.
Nefertiti’s directions lead us to the entrance of a luxury apartment building south-east of the cross. I think the facade is illuminated during daylight hours, both because it looks as though it’s been built in relation to an aperture towards the south, and because, if it were always in the decent but timid street lights, the mirrored windows would look pretty ludicrous. At the reception desk there is an economics and business student, he’s found an easy job which pays the rent of some hole several levels further down. When we go in and I flash my badge, he comes over all diligent, puts down his gigantic tome about private law and calls the manager; the latter, who for the past twenty years has kept an extremely organised digital file on all his clients, promises to send us a fax with all the details in ten minutes. Ten mortal minutes Cohl has to fill with conversation.
“So…”
I look at him impatiently.
“Are you from here? Born in Nectropis, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“And…”
Oh for the love of God.
“… your father, police officer too?”
“Yep.”
“Still in the force?”
“No. He found a new job.”
“Ah!” He thinks he’s finally found something he can continue the conversation with. “And what does he do?”
“He fertilizes the grass in the graveyard.”
“Oh.” His face clouds with sadness. “I’m sorry…”
“Yep.” I kill the conversation once and for all. The next nine and a half minutes are spent in rigorous silence. I smoke three cigarettes underneath the NO SMOKING sign, just to pass the time.
The fax turns out to be exhaustive, as promised. The unmarried newly-weds lived on the thirteenth floor for two years, during which time nothing much happened. According to the tenant’s contract, Gilder was a dancer with the Hulyen Xen’Atheron company, while Inla described herself as a “painter”, without leaving any additional information. So Gilder went to work for one of the minor dynasties, who presumably hired him to get back at the Lovls. Obviously the manager couldn’t have cared less what these two did for a living, as long as they paid their rent regularly. At a certain point though, they started skipping payments.
Six months later they were evicted, but for some reason they weren’t reported to the police. I suppose it was the manager who wanted to avoid any trouble with the elves, even though they had no money. You never know, once they got back in with their families they could have come back and wreak revenge. Unfortunately there was no indication as to their next address.
We have more luck at Hulyen. Nohl is in and out in under twenty minutes, after he begged me to let him do something to break the boredom. He comes back with an address and a leaflet of the opera season. There’s a telephone number written in one corner.
“Your shirt is buttoned-up all wrong. Loverboy.”
Embarrassed, he fixes his buttons.
“Aren’t you Reformed supposed to get married before you screw?”
“Oh, no. Sex is a tribute to Mother, not to Father. Marriage is one of the last goals of illumination, because it combines—“
“Okay, whatever, who cares. What did she tell you this…” I stretch my neck to read the name above the telephone number. “…Marena?”
“Well, Gilder worked here for a couple of years. After that, he only did the odd off-season performance, up until three years ago. Marena told me that the last time he was here, he had an almighty row with the manager, and he was never seen since.”
“What did he want?”
“A new two-year contract.”
“The Xen’Atherons mustn’t have wanted to piss the Feltus off anymore. Address?”
“An apartment on the Ninth.”
“Ah, crap. We’ve been driving around all day and we’re going back there.”
“Well, not exactly. It’s quite a way from Mezzodì. At the other end of the Level.”
“At the Bazaar?” I ask, incredulously. Then I add, sarcastically, “From hero to zero. There’s no blueberry shampoo round those parts.”
We go back to the cars and go down. The Bazaar is a rough area even by the Ninth’s already embarrassing standards. The only thing that stops it from being a complete sewer is that the hundred and eighty is quite nice. The nickname comes from the fact that you can buy almost anything here: drugs, light weapons, sex, black market goods. Let’s say it bridges the gap between the dregs of the lower levels and the growing glitz of the upper levels.
Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets Page 6