The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  EVEN SEEN FROM afar, the Mexica District in Fenliu was distinctive: tall, whitewashed buildings clashing with the glass-and-metal architecture of the other skyscrapers. A banner featuring Huitzilpochtli, protector god of Greater Mexica, flapped in the wind as my aircar passed under the security gates. The god’s face was painted as dark as blood.

  A familiar sight, even though I’d turned my back on the religion of my forefathers a lifetime ago. I sighed, and tried to focus on the case ahead. Zhu Bao, the magistrate in charge of the district, had talked me into taking on this murder investigation because he thought I would handle the situation better than him, being Mexica-born.

  I wasn’t quite so sure.

  The crime scene was a wide, well-lit dome room on the last floor of 3454 Hummingbird Avenue, with the highest ceiling I had ever seen. The floor was strewn with hologram pedestals, though the holograms were all turned off.

  A helical stair led up to a mezzanine dazzlingly high, somewhere near the top of the dome. At the bottom of those stairs, an area had been cordoned off. Within lay the naked body of a woman. She was Mexica, and about thirty years old – she could have been my older sister. Morbidly fascinated, I let my eyes take in everything: the fine dust that covered the body, the yellow make-up she’d spread all over herself, the soft swell of her breasts, the unseeing eyes still staring upwards.

  I looked up at the railing high above. I guessed she’d fallen down. Broken neck probably, though I’d have to wait for the lab people to be sure.

  A militiaman in silk robes was standing guard near one of the hologram pedestals. “I’m Private Li Fai, ma’am. I was the first man on the scene,” he said, saluting as I approached. I couldn’t help scrutinising him for signs of contempt. As the only Mexica-born magistrate in the Xuyan administration, I’d had my fair share of racism to deal with. But Li Fai appeared sincere, utterly unconcerned by the colour of my skin.

  “I’m Magistrate Hue Ma of Yellow Dragon Falls District,” I said, giving him my Xuyan name and title with scarcely a pause. “Magistrate Zhu Bao has transferred the case over to me. When did you get here?”

  He shrugged. “We got a call near the Fourth Bi-Hour. A man named Tecolli, who said his lover had fallen to her death.”

  I almost told him he was pronouncing “Tecolli” wrong, that a Mexica wouldn’t have put the accent that way, and then I realized this was pointless. I was there as a Xuyan magistrate, not a Mexica refugee – those days were over, long past. “They told me it was a crime, but this looks like an accident.”

  Li Fai shook his head. “There are markings on the railing above, ma’am, and her nails are all ragged and bloody. Looks like she struggled, and hard.”

  “I see.” It looked I wasn’t going to get out of this so easily.

  I wasn’t trying to shirk my job. But any contacts with Mexica made me uneasy – reminded me of my childhood in Greater Mexica, cut short by the Civil War. Had Zhu Bao not insisted . . .

  No. I was a magistrate. I had a job to do, a murderer to catch.

  “Where is this . . . Tecolli?” I asked, finally.

  “We’re holding him,” Li Fai said. “You want to talk to him?”

  I shook my head. “Not right now.” I pointed to the landing high above. “Have you been there?”

  He nodded. “There’s a bedroom, and a workshop. She was a hologram designer.”

  Holograms were the latest craze in Xuya. Like all works of art, they were expensive: one of them, with the artist’s electronic signature, would be worth more than my annual stipend. “What was her name?”

  “Papalotl,” Li Fai said.

  Papalotl. Butterfly, in Nahuatl. A graceful name given to beautiful Mexica girls. There had been one of them in my school, back in Tenochtitlán, before the Civil War.

  The Civil War . . .

  Abruptly, I was twelve again, jammed in the aircar against my brother Cuauhtemoc, hearing the sound of gunfire splitting the window —

  No. No. I wasn’t a child any more. I’d made my life in Xuya, passed the administrative exams and risen to magistrate, the only Mexica-born to do so in Fenliu.

  “Ma’am?” Li Fai asked, staring at me.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll just have a look around, and then we’ll see about Tecolli.”

  I moved towards the nearest hologram pedestal. A plaque showed its title: the journey. It was engraved in Nahuatl, in English and in Xuyan, the three languages of our continent. I turned it on, and watched a cone of white light widen from the pedestal to the ceiling; a young Xuyan coalesced at its centre, wearing the grey silk robes of a eunuch.

  “We did not think it would go that far,” he said, even as his image faded, replaced by thirteen junks sailing over great waves. “To the East, Si-Jian Ma said as we departed China; to the East, until we struck land —”

  I turned the hologram off. Every child on the continent knew what was coming next: the first Chinese explorers landing on the West Coast of the Lands of Dawn, the first tentative contacts with the Mexica Empire, culminating in Hernán Cortés’ aborted siege of Tenochtitlán, a siege cut short by Chinese gunpowder and cannon.

  I moved to the next hologram, spring among the emerald flowers: a Mexica woman recounting a doomed love story between her and a Xuyan businessman.

  The other holograms were much the same: people telling their life’s story – or, rather, I suspected, the script Papalotl had written for them.

  I headed for the hologram nearest the body. Its plaque read homewards. When turned on, it displayed the image of a swan, the flag-emblem Xuya had chosen after winning its independence from the Chinese motherland two centuries ago. The bird glided, serene, on a lake bordered by weeping willows. After a while, a hummingbird, Greater Mexica’s national bird, came and hovered by the swan, its beak opening and closing as if it were speaking.

  But there was no sound at all.

  I turned it off, and on again, to no avail. I felt around in the pedestal, and confirmed my suspicions: the sound chip was missing. Which was not normal. All holograms came with one – an empty one if necessary, but there was always a sound chip.

  I’d have to ask the lab people. Perhaps the missing chip was simply upstairs, in Papalotl’s workshop.

  I moved around the remaining holograms. Four of the pedestals, those furthest away from the centre, had no chips at all, neither visu nor sound. And yet the plaques all bore titles.

  The most probable explanation was that Papalotl had changed the works on display; but given the missing sound chip, there could have been another explanation. Had the murderer touched those holograms – and if so, why?

  I sighed, cast a quick glance at the room for anything else. Nothing leapt to my eyes, so I had Li Fai bring me Tecolli, Papalotl’s lover.

  Tecolli stood watching me without fear – or indeed, without respect. He was a young, handsome Mexica man, but didn’t quite have the arrogance or assurance I expected.

  “You know why I’m here,” I said.

  Tecolli smiled. “Because the magistrate thinks I will confide in you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m the magistrate,” I said. “The case has been transferred over to me.” I took out a small pad and a pen, ready to take notes during the interview.

  Tecolli watched me, no doubt seeing for the first time the unobtrusive jade-coloured belt I wore over my robes. “You are not —” he started, and then changed his posture radically, moving in one fluid gesture from a slouch to a salute. “Apologies, Your Excellency. I was not paying attention.”

  Something in his stance reminded me, sharply, of my lost childhood in Tenochtitlán, Greater Mexica’s capital. “You are a Jaguar Knight?”

  He smiled like a delighted boy. “Close,” he said, switching from Xuyan to Nahuatl. “I’m an Eagle Knight in the Fifth Black Tezcatlipoca Regiment.”

  The Fifth Regiment – nicknamed “Black Tez” by the Xuyans – was the one guarding the Mexica embassy. I had not put Tecolli down as a soldier, but I could see n
ow the slight callus under his mouth, where the turquoise lip-plug would usually chafe.

  “You weren’t born here,” Tecolli said. His stance had relaxed. “Xuyan-born can’t tell us apart from commoners.”

  I shook my head, trying to dislodge old, unwelcome memories – my parents’ frozen faces after I told them I’d become a magistrate in Fenliu, and that I’d changed my name to a Xuyan one. “I wasn’t born in Xuya,” I said, in Xuyan. “But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.”

  “No,” Tecolli said, coming back to Xuyan. There was fear in his face now. “You want to know about her.” His eyes flicked to the body, and back to me. For all his rigid stance, he looked as though he might be sick.

  “Yes,” I said. “What can you tell me about this?”

  “I came early this morning. Papalotl said we would have a sitting.”

  “A sitting? I saw no hologram pieces with you.”

  “It was not done yet,” Tecolli snapped, far too quickly for it to be the truth. “Anyway, I came and saw the security system was disengaged. I thought she was waiting for me —”

  “Had she ever done this before? Disengaged the security system?”

  Tecolli shrugged. “Sometimes. She was not very good at protecting herself.” His voice shook a little, but it didn’t sound like grief. Guilt?

  Tecolli went on: “I came into the room, and I saw her. As she is now.” He paused, choking on his words. “I – I could not think. I checked to see if there was anything I could do . . . but she was dead. So I called the militia.”

  “Yes, I know. Near the Fourth Bi-Hour. A bit early to be about, isn’t it?” In this season, on the West Coast, the sun wouldn’t even have risen.

  “She wanted me to be early,” Tecolli said, but did not elaborate.

  “I see,” I said. “What can you tell me about the swan?”

  Tecolli started. “The swan?”

  I pointed to the hologram. “It has no sound chip. And several other pieces have no chips at all.”

  “Oh, the swan,” Tecolli said. He was not looking at me – in fact, he was positively sweating guilt. “It is a commission. By the Fenliu Prefect’s Office. They wanted something to symbolize the ties between Greater Mexica and Xuya. I suppose she never had time to complete the audio.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” I was annoyed he would play me for a fool. “What’s the matter with that swan?”

  “I do not see what you are talking about,” Tecolli said.

  “I think you do,” I said, but did not press my point. At least, not yet. Tecolli’s mere presence at the scene of the crime gave me the right to bring him back to the tribunal’s cells to secure his testimony – and, should I judge it necessary, to ply him with drugs or pain to make him confess. Many Xuyan magistrates would have done that. I found the practice not only abhorrent, but needless. I knew I would not get the truth out of Tecolli that way. “Do you have any idea why she’s naked?” I asked.

  Tecolli said, slowly, “She liked to work that way. At least with me,” he amended. “She said it was liberating. I . . .” He paused, and waited for a reaction. I kept my face perfectly blank.

  Tecolli went on, “It turned her on. And we both knew it.”

  I was surprised at his frankness. “So it isn’t surprising.” Well, that was one mystery solved – or perhaps not. Tecolli could still be lying to me. “How did you get along with her?”

  Tecolli smiled – a smile that came too easily. “As well as lovers do.”

  “Lovers can kill each other,” I said.

  Tecolli stared at me, horrified. “Surely you do not think —”

  “I’m just trying to determine what your relationship was.”

  “I loved her,” Tecolli snapped. “I would never have harmed her. Are you satisfied?”

  I wasn’t. He seemed to waver between providing glib answers and avoiding my questions altogether.

  “Do you know if she had any enemies?” I asked.

  “Papalotl?” Tecolli’s voice faltered. He would not look at me. “Some among our people felt she had turned away from the proper customs. She did not have an altar to the gods in her workshop, she seldom prayed or offered blood sacrifices —”

  “And they hated her enough to kill?”

  “No,” Tecolli said. He sounded horrified. “I do not see how anyone could have wanted to —”

  “Someone did. Unless you believe it’s an accident?” I dangled the question innocently enough, but there was only one possible answer, and he knew it.

  “Do not toy with me,” Tecolli said. “No one could have fallen over that railing by accident.”

  “No. Indeed not.” I smiled, briefly, watching the fear creep across his face. What could he be hiding from me? If he’d committed the murder, he was a singularly fearful killer – but I had seen those too, those who would weep and profess regrets, but who still had blood on their hands. “Does she have any family?”

  “Her parents died in the Civil War,” Tecolli said. “I know she came from Greater Mexica twelve years ago with her elder sister, Coaxoch, but I never met her. Papalotl did not talk much about herself.”

  No. She would not have – not to another Mexica. I knew what one did, when one turned away from Mexica customs, as Papalotl had done, as I had done. One remained silent; one did not speak for fear one would be castigated – or worse, pitied.

  “I’ll bring her the news,” I said. “You’ll have to accompany the militiamen to the tribunal, to have your story checked, and some blood samples taken.”

  “And then?” He was too eager, far too much for an innocent, even an aggrieved one. “I’m free?”

  “For the moment – and don’t think you can leave Fenliu. I need you at hand, in case I have more questions,” I said, darkly. I would catch him soon enough, and tear the truth from him if I had to.

  As he turned to leave, he straightened his turtleneck, and I saw a glint of green around his neck. Jade. A necklace of jade, made of small beads – but I knew each of those beads would be worth a month’s salary for an ordinary Xuyan worker. “They pay you well, in the army,” I said, knowing that they did not.

  Startled, Tecolli reached for his neck. “That? It is not what you think. It was an inheritance from a relative.”

  He said the words quickly, and his eyes flicked back and forth between me and the door.

  “I see,” I said, sweetly, knowing that he was lying. And that he knew I’d caught him. Good. Let him stew a bit. Perhaps it would make him more co-operative.

  After Tecolli had left, I gave orders to Li Fai to trail him, and to report to me through the militia radio channel. Our young lover had looked in a hurry, and I was curious to know why.

  Back at the tribunal, I had a brief discussion with Doctor Li: the lab people had examined the body, and they had come up with nothing significant. They confirmed that Papalotl had been thrown over the railing, plummeting from the high-perched mezzanine to her death.

  “It’s a crime of passion,” Doctor Li said, darkly.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Whoever did this pushed her over the railing, and she clung to it as she fell – we analysed the marks on the wood. And then the murderer kept on tearing at her until she let go. From the disorderly pattern of wounds on her hands, it’s obvious that the perpetrator was not thinking clearly, nor being very efficient.”

  Passion. A lover’s passion, perhaps? A lover who seemed to have rather too much money for his pay – I wondered where Tecolli had earned it, and how.

  The lab people had not found the missing audio chip either, which confirmed to me that the swan was important – but I did not know in what way.

  “What about fingerprints?” I asked.

  “We didn’t find any,” Doctor Li said. “Not even hers. The railing was obviously wiped clean by the perpetrator.”

  Damn. The murderer had been thorough.

  After that conversation, I made a brief stop by my office. There I lit a stick of incense o
ver my small altar, pausing for a brief, perfunctory prayer to Guan Yin, Goddess of Compassion. Then I turned on my computer. Like almost every computer in the city of Fenliu, it had been manufactured in Greater Mexica, and the screen lit up with a stylised butterfly, symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the Mexica god of knowledge and computers.

  This never failed to send a twinge of guilt through me, usually because it reminded me I should call my parents, something I hadn’t had the courage to do since becoming a magistrate. This time, though, the image that I could not banish from my mind was of Papalotl, stark naked, falling in slow motion over the railing.

  I shook my head. It was not a time for morbid imaginings. I had work to do.

  In my mail-box I found the preliminary reports of the militia, who had questioned the neighbours.

  I scanned the reports, briefly. Most of the neighbours had not approved of Papalotl’s promiscuous attitude. Apparently Tecolli had only been the last in a series of men she’d brought home.

  One thing Tecolli had not seen ft to mention to me was that he had quarrelled violently with Papalotl on the previous evening – shouts loud enough to be heard from the other flats. One neighbour had seen Tecolli leave, and Papalotl slam the door behind him.

  So she had still been alive at that time.

  I’d ask Tecolli about the quarrel. Later, though. I needed more evidence if I wanted to spring a trap, and so far I had little to go on.

  In the meantime, I asked one of the clerks at the tribunal to look up the address of Papalotl’s sister. I busied myself with administrative matters while he searched in the directory, and soon had my answer.

  Papalotl had had only one sister, and no other living relative. Coaxoch lived on 23 Izcopan Square, just a few streets away from her younger sibling, on the edge of the Mexica District – my next destination.

  The address turned out to be a Mexica restaurant: The Quetzal’s Rest. I parked my aircar a few streets away and walked the rest of the way, mingling with the crowd on the sidewalks – elbowing Mexica businessmen in embroidered cotton suits, and women with yellow makeup and black-painted teeth, who wore knee-length skirts and swayed alluringly as they walked.