"Hey, you're a Nuclear Darwinist." The leader looked at her with narrowed eyes. "Or did you steal someone's I.D.?"
Lilia refrained from telling him how difficult it would be to not only steal someone's identification bead, but to have it embedded in one's own neck. They faked I.D. all the time at the circus, after all, but it was a refined art requiring special, illegal equipment.
"It's all mine," she said. "Check the description."
He read from the display of his reader, then nodded.
"Check the sign," Lilia suggested, pointing upward, ever the helpful citizen. The hotel had a big sign welcoming Nuclear Darwinists to their annual convention.
"Huh, that's you then." He snapped his fingers and the two thugs released her. "Catch anything?"
"Not tonight."
"You're looking pretty hot." He gestured to her radiation reading badge while his fellows snickered.
"Oh, it's the end of the month and I've been working overtime," Lilia said, dismissing the high reading. The tenor of their exchange had altered, presumably because she was a tourist contributing to the local economy.
She guessed that she was about to contribute more.
"Thirty creds," he pronounced, giving Lilia a hard look. He wanted her to challenge him, she could see, because the fine should have been twenty creds, max.
But he would have loved to have made it forty.
As much as Lilia would have liked to have argued the matter, she ceded. That was the smart choice.
Maybe it was even prudent.
When she shrugged acquiescence, he logged the charge onto the I.D. bead in the back of her neck. Lilia knew that ihe creds were being removed from her bank account and deposited somewhere, presumably the account of the police department or of the metropolis of New Gotham itself.
She wouldn't have bet on that, though.
He scowled at her. "Now, don't let us catch you again."
Lilia practiced her demure smile. "I wouldn't dream of it."
"Chester will," one of the guys teased the one who had slammed her into the wall. He eyed Lilia, the way a stray dog eyes lunch.
She put out her hand for her laze and there was a pause in the festivities. She knew that if they didn't give it back to her, she wouldn't be able to hide her anger.
"It's in her I.D.," their leader said finally. "She's licensed and it's registered in her name."
"She could lodge a complaint," noted the one who had been silent so far.
The ape with Lilia's laze gave it a slight caress and handed it back. At home, she would have gone down the street and pretended to be staying elsewhere, but Lilia had learned her lesson: less time on New Gotham's streets was better, as long as she was wearing her pseudoskin. They already knew where she was staying, anyway.
Lilia strode straight to the hotel, aware of their hungry gazes the whole way. She was starting to see a pattern: ever since she'd gotten to New Gotham, she'd been feeling like prey.
She didn't have to like it.
And she didn't have to like Montgomery's role in this little tutorial.
Maybe she would hunt him down again, just to tell him off.
From The Republican Record,
Monday, April 6, 2099 DOWNLOAD VERSION 1.3.2
"Angels" Among Us?
Nouveau Mont RoYAL-Circus proprietor Joachim De-lorenzo presented his two newest shade performers as "angels" yesterday for the first time, in defiance of widespread suspicion. The capture of the two shades, somewhere in the wilderness by Nuclear Darwinist Lilia Desjardins, has been controversial since the news was first leaked.
Delorenzo insisted yesterday that the shades are the result of spontaneous mutation and not surgical alteration. The pair, which both have large luminous wings, appeared in the nude. Delorenzo exhibited X-rays and certifications from several medical authorities to support his claim of authenticity. When pressed, he admitted the extremely low probability of two such mutations occurring simultaneously.
"Truth is stranger than fiction," was Delorenzo's conclusion.
The Society of Nuclear Darwinists has refrained from acknowledging the shades or confirming their safety within the Frontier Circus, and has called instead for their immediate surrender to the Society's labs for further study, in a prepared statement, Ernestine Sinclair, president of the Society, declared the angel-shades to be "a remarkably complex mutation, well beyond the evidence currently gathered with respect to radiation effects. We owe it to the citizens of the Republic-present and future-to not only to verify that these are genuine mutations, but to isolate any conditions responsible for such radical deformity."
In an interview, Ernestine expressed her own doubts of the pair's authenticity. "It's so unlikely as to be impossible," she said with a smile. She quoted the probabilities of such a mutation occurring twice simultaneously to be "lower than one in 76 million, according to our foremost statistician, Gideon Fitzgerald."
In an uncommon expression of defiance from a Society follow, shade hunter Lilia Desjardins declared that the angel-shades, known in the Frontier Circus as Armaros and Baraqiel, "would be surrendered to the Society's labs over my dead body."
The Republic, when asked, confirmed that the shades cannot be harvested by the Republic or the Society, under Republic law, as long as they remain within the bounds of the circus and upon its payroll. Delorenzo and his legal counsel were quick to provide evidence of pay statements to the Republic Inspectors who attended yesterday's show.
If others had doubts, the five hundred citizens who flocked to see the first public appearance of the angel-shades were unanimous in accepting the celestial nature of the shades. Angel enthusiasts thronged the streets of Nouveau Mont Royal and images of the two angel-shades were available for download from virtually every kiosk in town. The main tent of the circus was filled to capacity and a line had already formed for today's exhibition.
Armaros and Baraqiel themselves had nothing to say during their appearance, but their smiles and their presence were seemingly sufficient for the adoring crowd. Many attendees fell to their knees before the pair. Others spoke in whispers or prayed quietly. Delorenzo acknowledged that the exhibit lasted three times as long as he had intended, but declared himself reluctant to force people to move quickly. "They've come far: they deserve a good look for their creds," he said. "This is a wonderful event."
Yesterday's admissions at the Frontier Circus for the angel-shades alone surpassed ten thousand creds.
"It's a miracle," declared Georgina MacKay, who had traveled from New Houston to see the angel-shades. She declared herself satisfied with their authenticity. "They're not human: there's something otherworldly about them, They've come from God."
Popular vid-evangelist Reverend Billie Jo Estevez evidently agreed. She was unsuccessful in arranging a live vid service with the pair, later citing Delorenzo's insistence that the circus was a secular forum (per Republic law). Undaunted, the Reverend conducted a prayer service outside the bounds of the circus. The live broadcast was cut with vid captured during Estevez's private encounter with the pair, and instantly became the Republic's most-forwarded and most-downloaded broadcast of the decade.
The Society for Nuclear Darwinists, simultaneous to the first public display of the angel-shades, filed a motion for the shades' immediate surrender in the Chicago District Court.
IV
After his shift, Montgomery strode into the darkness, his faux leather cloak swinging. He moved like a wraith though the quiet streets of New Gotham, a shadow blending into the shadows.
He ducked into the netherzones, moving with purpose through the primary level. Despite the curfew on the street, there was still some foot traffic. Attractive shades assigned as personal assistants to the rich and powerful took breaks at all hours, their owners inclined to be indulgent. Other shade domestics walked colicky babies and ran late errands.
Montgomery slipped the stud from his ear with practiced ease and stashed it inside his glove. He bought a daily download on a chip, declining the privil
ege of datasharing with the vendor, and headed to a beverage bar close to the pleasure fringe.
He settled in front of a public reader with a steaming cup of dark brew at his elbow, spared a wink for the curvy blonde smiling at him from the bar, and palmed a scrambler hidden in the top of his boot. The scrambler was a thin biodegradable film, encoded to disrupt the tracking abilities of the Republic's central databases. It began to disintegrate upon exposure to air.
Montgomery spread the scrambler quickly on the dat-achip, noting that he only had two left, and pushed the datachip into the port.
The daily download was displayed, along with an additional window with a prompt. Montgomery accessed Lilia's file, following the link to her capture of what she called angel-shades. He was struck by the fact that it had been Fitzgerald who had provided stats to the Society to discredit her find.
The firewall on the coroner's reports was easily breached, especially as Montgomery had done it before, and in a heartbeat he was reviewing the autopsy report of Gideon Fitzgerald.
The decedent had initially been a John Doe, discovered in the old city by a routine security patrol. The death had been assumed to be accidental from the outset—there were no images, much less a description, of the scene of death. There was a physical description: a Caucasian male, mid- to late thirties, unidentifiable due to the extensive radiation burns to his face and hands. The victim had died of a concussion, having been struck on the head, presumably by a piece of stone cornice found in his proximity, but not before removing his helm and gloves.
Bad choice, Montgomery thought. Part of the danger of old cities was the lack of maintenance upon damaged structures; falling chunks of buildings were a constant hazard.
Anyone with a speck of sense should have known that. Had Fitzgerald been one of those clever types who couldn't deal with practical realities? Montgomery couldn't see Lilia marrying such a man.
Or maybe he didn't want to.
Face and fingertips had been burned beyond recognition. The identification bead that should have been in the decedent's neck had been removed before his death. The coroner suggested that the angle of the wound indicated that it had been self-inflicted. The rationale had been that the decedent, knowing he intended to do something illegal, had tried to disguise his identity.
But Fitzgerald couldn't have planned on the radiation burns.
Not unless his death had been a suicide. The surprising possibility made Montgomery blink before he continued reading.
He pulled up the image and wasn't so sure that the wound had been self-inflicted. There was a black market in reprogrammed I.D. beads, one sufficiently lucrative that someone might have taken his chances in the old city for a retrieval. Old cities were so poorly secured that it was comparatively easy for people to enter them.
Of course, the health hazard provided a certain deterrent.
The decedent's palm had been wiped, except for the address of a shipping and expediting company in New Gotham. It was Breisach and Turner. The receptionist, Rachel Gottlieb, had confirmed that no one of that name or description had ever worked there.
It wasn't quite a lie. Fitzgerald had been there to talk to her, twice, but she hadn't told NGPD that.
She had told Montgomery.
The investigating officer had concluded that the decedent had had a software worm installed on his palm, one programmed to wipe his palm clean upon his death. According to this logic, the subroutine had missed one random piece of data.
Montgomery didn't believe in random.
The decedent's pseudoskin had provided the clue to a positive identification. It was a good suit, custom made, and had been traced by its maker's mark to a customer named Gideon Fitzgerald.
Who hadn't been reported missing, even though a corpse wearing his pseudoskin had been lying in Gotham for a good week before the patrols found the body. The pseudoskin might have been sold or borrowed—except that no one knew Fitzgerald's location, once they were asked.
Fitzgerald's wife, Lilia Desjardins, had said that he was on assignment, and although she hadn't heard from him in months, that wasn't uncommon. Montgomery had smelled a lie even then in Lilia's tone, but maybe she had been sworn to secrecy.
What kind of marriage had they had?
The Society had nothing to say to the police about one of their members and refused to confirm Fitzgerald's whereabouts. The dental records had been declared insufficient for identification. Fortunately, the cadaver had been ornamented with a number of distinctive tattoos.
Some in quite personal locations.
Montgomery squinted at the images, still amazed by them. The occult practices of Nuclear Darwinists didn't officially occur according to the Society, but Fitzgerald's body proved otherwise.
Did Lilia have tattoos?
Montgomery frowned in concentration as he reread Lilia's list of the eight tattoos that her husband possessed. The first tattoo was a Pictish knot on the top of Fitzgerald's head. That and the Eye of Horus she'd claimed was on Fitzgerald's forehead had been impossible to verify due to the radiation burns.
But then the investigating officer hit paydirt. The bee Lilia had said was on the front of Fitzgerald's throat matched the tattoo on the body in the morgue.
The first hundred digits of pi were tattooed around her husband's chest, according to Lilia, the spiral of numbers beginning over his heart and ending less than two turns later under his right arm. The corpse had the same tattoo. Montgomery was struck again by the distinctiveness of the tattoos and Lilia's very precise descriptions.
Did the tattoos have specific meanings?
There had been a universal man around Gideon's navel, a man with outstretched arms and legs standing in a penta-cle, and the decedent had also possessed that tattoo.
On the base of the decedent's spine was a smiling sun that matched Lilia's description and also looked vaguely familiar to Montgomery. He tracked back to the images Lilia had snagged earlier that evening and recognized Orv the Orange. He made a mental note to find out more about Orv.
On the top of Fitzgerald's right foot was a symbol that Lilia had said was the symbol for Mercury. It looked like a circle on a stem, with a crescent lying atop it. The decedent had it too.
The most shocking tattoo to Montgomery was the one at the decedent's groin. In her list, Lilia had called it a melusine. To Montgomery, it looked like a mermaid with a split tail, one that had been tattooed on the decedent's pubis. The melusine smiled coyly, her breasts bare and her dark hair flowing loose. She held one end of her tail in each hand and the split in her tail was right at the root of the decedent's penis.
Montgomery was incredulous that anyone would have endured the pain of a detailed tattoo in such a tender location. His heart stopped cold when he realized why he'd recognized Lilia earlier.
The mermaid had Lilia's coy smile and heart-shaped face.
Montgomery would have bet everything he had that Fitzgerald had loved his wife. Yet he had denounced her and what she called her angel-shades.
Publicly.
Had she loved Fitzgerald?
Did she still?
Montgomery couldn't believe that the Lilia he had met would have let that pass without comment.
Would she have killed Fitzgerald for trying to discredit her? He couldn't believe it.
Or did he just not want to believe it? She was clearly a passionate woman, one unafraid to act on her convictions.
Had she hired the shade to kill Fitzgerald and gone into the old city to silence the shade forever? No. Montgomery couldn't reconcile that kind of cold-blooded strategizing with the woman who had lost her temper so readily in his office. She seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve.
Or was that an act?
His old question still remained: what had Fitzgerald been doing in the old city? Montgomery was starting to think that Lilia knew exactly why he had been there, and that she had gone there to finish what Fitzgerald had started.
Whatever that had been.
"Wh
at the hell are you doing?" a woman demanded.
Montgomery turned in surprise to find a furious Rachel at his elbow. She was early, just his luck. "I'm following a lead," he began, but Rachel wasn't listening.
"You've wasted a scrambler," she snapped, glancing at the reader's display. "The Republic doesn't care if you look at porn vid. Do you think these tools come out of the air?"
"That's not what I'm doing," Montgomery argued. "It's about Fitzgerald." He backtracked through the record to prove it to her. He had a feeling it was a losing battle.
He was right.
"Good evening," the shade on the front desk said to Lilia, sounding as welcoming as a badly programmed robot. It was the same shade who had checked Lilia in earlier, and she had been struck then by the woman's detachment.
Maybe it was the particular sedative cocktail she was being given.
Lilia didn't ask and didn't answer; she just went to her unit. She felt the shade following her progress across the lobby and was surprised. She'd seemed too zoned out to be watchful.
Maybe it was a trick. Maybe she sold dirt. The Republic employed many tattles, after all, some of whom were in the most unlikely of places. Lilia was too tired to care whom the shade told about her pseudoskin now.
What else could go wrong?
She knew she shouldn't have wondered. She took the stairs to the third floor, unwilling to take the elevator even in her exhaustion. She plodded down the hall to her unit, entertaining a fantasy of a long undisturbed sleep.
Maybe Montgomery could make a cameo appearance in her dreams. The Republic, at least so far, hadn't figured out a way to record that little indulgence and use it against citizens.
Lilia silently gave them another decade to conquer the technical obstacles.
She locked the unit door behind herself, leaned back against it, and closed her eyes. No matter how she considered it, this hadn't been one of her better evenings. Clearly, someone didn't want Lilia to know whatever it had been that Y654892 had known.
This was both good and bad. On the upside, it meant that there was a greater probability that she was right about Gid's death not having been an accident. The shade's death could have been a random act of violence. Unlikely, given the location, but not impossible.
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