by Steve Perry
While more than a few felons had swung at or shot at her over the years, it sure didn’t endear this guy to her that he was among them. Besides, he had answers that would help her solve the murders on her homeworld, she was fairly certain of it.
Taz left the customs office and went out into the sunshine. Almost immediately, Saval arrived to retrieve her from her meeting. His flitter fanned to a stop at the curb, but didn’t settle to the plastcrete, bobbing a handspan off the road on the air as might a cork on a calm pond. The passenger door gullwinged up.
He’d been watching for her, she realized, and now he kept the repellors running. Careful, her brother.
“How’d it go?” he asked, as she got in. She noticed he was wearing his spetsdods. She’d never actually seen him shoot, but if half the stories were true about how good the matadors were with those little back-of-the-hand dartguns, they could use them to swat flies at close range. She felt safe enough with her own pistol snugged over her right hip, but she didn’t mind that Saval was armed.
“Apparently the thief was Merlin the Magician,” she said. “Invisible, able to walk through walls, and faster than the halflife of a gotcha-chronon particle.”
“Hmm.”
“That a professional opinion?”
He returned her smile.
“Where are we going?”
“Jail,” he said. “The boss talked to some people before he and Juete left. Speeded up things some.
They’re going to do a scan on your dance partner in about an hour. We can watch, you’re interested.”
“Oh, I’m interested.”
The chamber was not much different from a standard interrogation and medical exam room, Bork saw.
Form-chair, diagnostic bank, cabinets, a sink. But the man in the chair was restrained, pressor field clamps pinning his wrists and ankles and hips. His head was free to move, the scanner being a fairly wide induction field that was not affected by motion. With a competent tech running the gear, they could peel him like an onion; he couldn’t run and he couldn’t hide. Next to the prisoner, a tech adjusted controls on the medical scanner.
The viewing window was cleared, though it could be opaqued or mirrored as needed. Bork stood next to Taz; a young and attractive blonde woman rep from Legal Aid stood on the other side of her, wearing puce skintights and holding an inducer; two cools in blue and gray work uniforms leaned against the wall behind the Legal. One was the officer in charge of the Crimes Against Persons section, the other the Medical Procedures Commander.
“You about ready, Lu?” the MPC asked.
The tech next to the prisoner nodded. “Yeh, we can fire it up any time.”
“Telemetry?”
A voice from the speaker on the wall said, “Recording. Baseline and feed are green and green.”
“Okay, Lu, give us a nice, clean insertion and for-the-record ID.”
“Extruding,” Lu said.
The MPC leaned toward the young woman Legal. “This is your first one of these, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we start by pulling the guy’s ID, a name, cit number, occupation, like that. The scanner strums a dendritic chord that makes the brain call up what we want. Real simple stuff. Hooks him like a fish on a line.” He put a hand on her shoulder and nodded at the prisoner, then smiled at her. She smiled back.
Bork felt a small grin tug at his lips. Watch yourself, kid, he thought. Pretty soon the MPC’ll be asking you to his cube so you can see the great holoproj he’s got installed on his bedroom ceiling. Just lie right here, hon, and you can see it perfectly. Here’s an idea-what say you get out of those hot old tights and let me rub your back for you … ?
Well, she was an attractive enough woman, she didn’t have any problems showing it off, he could see why the MPC was interested. But Bork was spoiled. Nobody compared to his wife.
The man in the chair jerked his head from side to side; his eyes went wide, he bared his teeth. He growled, the sound coming clearly from the speaker, then said something Bork didn’t understand.
“Something’s wrong,” the CAP said.
The MPC dropped his hand from the Legal’s shoulder and stared. “Lu, what’s happening in there?”
“Got a block,” Lu said. “I’m compensating-”
The prisoner opened his mouth, clacked his teeth together hard. Repeated the word he’d said before.
“What language is that?” the CAP said.
“Sounds like Tembonese,” Taz put in. “Maybe Numish.”
“I’m getting a spike=” Lu began. “Oh, shit!” he said.
“Lu-?”
“He’s flatlining, chief!”
“Fuck!” The MPC ran to the door. Three seconds later he ran into the interrogation chamber. He moved the tech aside and fiddled with the instruments. “Goddammit!”
The Legal blinked, puzzled. “What is it?”
“I think maybe this fish just slipped off the hook,” Taz said quietly.
They were scheduled on a short-hop ship that would connect them with the starliner Bellicose for the trip to Tembo. The man Saval had called Cream was alive and in the jail’s hospital but he wasn’t going to be helping solve anything. He was brain-dead, checked out, nobody home. His lungs worked and his heart beat, but his mind was a ruin, destroyed by an implanted block the scan had triggered. Taz knew such things existed; even on a backrocket world like Tembo the police had come up against them.
Usually the implants were nanomechanical or some kind of fast viral or explosive charge that would wipe or destroy certain areas of memory. Cream’s block was different, hypnotic or something else undetectable by ordinary checks. The single word he had spoken, duly recorded by the telemetric computer, had been “Moja,” and according to the translation program, had meaning in sixteen of the archived languages or dialects to which the computer had access. If Cream had been, as Taz suspected, speaking Tembonese, then the term meant, depending on how one used it, “lone,” or “single,” or “one.”
In some of the other languages the word could have been “power,” or “evening,” perhaps “party,” or even “earlobe.”
Moja. Could have even been the guy’s name.
Not a whole fucking lot of help, that.
Taz finished packing her travel bag. Looked around the guest room in Saval’s place, saw nothing she’d missed. She drew her pistol, popped the magazine, and checked to see that it was fully loaded, the battery and capacitor diodes green. The magazine was a blue code, the entire chunk of plastic and each dart a bright and unmistakable azure. That meant each needle collected a less than lethal electrical charge as it zipped through the muoplastic barrel, somewhere around seventy-five thousand volts with moderately low amperage. The needle would punch through clothes or even lightweight body armor to deliver its charge to bare skin or muscle, and the juice was almost always enough to knock a roegg off his feet. Blues were what the Leijona police were allowed in their duty weapons. Like most of the cools she knew, Taz had a couple of magazines of reds tucked away. A normal man or mue shot with a red needle wasn’t going to get up on his own afterward.
She reholstered the pistol. This whole thing kept getting nastier and nastier, and she didn’t have a good feeling about it. Not like she could do much other than what she already doing. At the very least Saval was going along. That was something.
She slung her bag. Time to go. Saval was down the hall, telling his wife goodbye in the way Taz had heard them communicating almost every night since she’d been here. She grinned. Well. Nobody had ever accused the Borks of being antisex.
She moved toward the door. Maybe she’d have time for lunch while she waited for Saval and Veate to finish.
Chapter FOUR
FROM LOW ORBIT Bork thought Raion looked something like a lopsided boomerang, fatter on the bottom than the top, thick with greenery. Taz had told him there were four major land masses on the planet, the continent of Raion being the second largest. The convex curve of the land was to the ea
st, and even though much of the southern portion was obscured by clouds, it appeared that a range of fairly high mountains ran the length of the west coast. As the boxcar dropped in its spiral to the spaceport in Leijona, Taz pointed out other features on the seat’s holoproj viewer.
“That’s the Mafalme Ocean to the east, the Gulf of Pagotono to the west. The Tabik Coastal Range stops a lot of the weather, so there is some desert between them and the more temperate side of the island.
Most of the civilization is on the east coast. Leijona is the biggest city, million and a third population, Shaba City is next with half that-to the south on Mkia Bay, see there? That’s Shaba. Tibois is a timber town, and pretty much the southernmost civilization on the east side of the island.”
Bork nodded, letting the names soak into him. He had a pretty good memory, if he thought stuff was worth keeping, and since this was going to be work, everything about this world was potentially useful.
Emile used to teach them at the Villa that you never knew what tiny scrap might save your neck, so it was best to file it all away.
“We’re coming in from the south, over Ini Bay,” Taz said a little later. “The Rubani Spaceport is just offshore from Central City in beautiful downtown Leijona.” She waved her hands over the holoproj and a map lit the air next to the nosecam view. Ini Bay was shaped sort of like a foot in a sock, with a bump on the front of the ankle. Leijona lay along the western shore of the bay, cupping it like a fat crescent.
The middle of the city was at the confluence of two rivers.
“There are the Zonn Ruins,” she said, pointing at the ‘proj.
Even under full magnification, there wasn’t much to see at the boxcar’s height. Dark lines against the greenery.
“I didn’t know you had any of those on your world,” Bork said.
She shrugged. “We knew they were there, but the Confed kept them off limits to civilians. I understand they’re all over the galaxy, but the Confed kept them mostly hidden, too. You know anything about them?”
It was Bork’s turn to shrug. “Not much. Some long-dead aliens supposedly built them. I’ve never been to any of the ruins, only know what I’ve seen on the ent-or edcom casts.”
“They’re in pretty good shape for being half a million years old. Impressive to see up close. We get some time, maybe we’ll run out there,” she said. “After you help me solve these murders.”
Bork leaned back in his seat, feeling the hardfoam strain under his weight. He wore the matador uniform now, the dark orthoskins and spetsdods. Since the baby had been born, he’d mostly done local security consulting, and more often than not had been in biz clothes and unarmed. Muto Kato was a pretty peaceful world. Good place to raise kids.
Of course, he’d stayed in shape. Went to the range now and then and shot a few magazines, kept the skills up. It wasn’t the same as being in a shoot-or-get-shot situation, though, and was a long, long way from the revolution. Last time he’d been in any real danger was when Sleel had needed a hand with that crazy nobleman on Rift. Reminded him, he’d have to call Dirisha and Geneva pretty soon, he owed them a com. They were training a police force on a new wheelworld somewhere in Delta last he’d heard. Sleel would know.
But he didn’t think there would be any real problem on Taz’s planet. A few local murders didn’t stack up against some of the bad spots he’d been in.
It felt good to get home, Taz thought. As she and Saval made their way through customs-here she had some clout and they weren’t bothered-she noticed some of the stares. She was a fairly large woman and used to drawing curious looks, but Saval made her seem quite ordinary and even small. People would glance at him, then away, then back again, as if seeing a big cat escaped from some zoo. His years with the matadors had given him a smoothness when he moved, a kind of grace that she admired. Oh, she was strong enough, more powerful than an average basic-stock man, and she had learned some useful fighting tricks from her years as a street cool, but she wasn’t much of a gymnast. Saval almost glided when he walked, very little friction evident in his stride.
A blue-and-blue waited where the pedway met the street, and a uniformed officer Taz vaguely recognized stood leaning against the side of the vehicle. The officer was in work tans, short-sleeved khaki shirt and knee-length pants with thin, matching osmotic socks flowing into darker tan flexboots.
He wore the garrison hard cap, and the usual gear on his belt: pistol, a reel of memory cuffstrap, shockstik, override keycard, com. He snapped upright when he saw them, and Taz knew he’d had been sent to collect them. The Watch Commander had supplied a ride. How nice.
“‘Lo, Chief,” the officer said.
Saval looked at her.
“Even the assistant chief gets the title,” she said. “This is Peace Officer Jolerie,” she said, spotting the man’s name on his badge. “Po, Saval Bork, my brother. And if you remember your training from the academy, you might have noticed he’s a matador.”
Jolerie nodded once at Saval. “M. Bork.” He looked back at Taz. “Chief, the Supervisor sends his best and hopes you had a nice vacation.”
“Why is it I hear a ‘but’ attached to that?”
“We just found another one,” Jolerie said. “Got the com not half an hour ago. The labbos have secured the scene and the Supe wants you to take a look at it before anybody else tromps around in it.”
Taz shook her head. “Welcome home,” she said.
“Sorry, Chief, I didn’t kill him.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.” She turned to look up at Saval. “Well, don’t say I let you sit around doing nothing to earn your money.”
“I get paid?” he said. He grinned.
“Get in the flitter, big brother. Somebody might mistake you for a bus and try to put their luggage in your mouth.”
The crime scene was wound with flashing ribbons, plastic strips that alternated orange and red pulses to warn off the curious and threaten punishment for trespassers. Taz led the way and the uniformed cools patted in front of her without asking for ID.
The building was low, almost a squat rectangle of cast plastcrete designed by somebody with taste and a lot of money to spend on it. The entire front was decorated with a bas-relief sculpture that cleverly included the door and windows as part of the design, and the mural told a story of natives dealing with gods and magic and a lot of bad weather, from what Bork could tell.
“Nice artwork,” he said.
“It was done by Fabrini Senh Buel.”
“I think I’ve heard the name.”
She laughed. “He’s the highest-paid artist in the entire galaxy, Saval, he got more for this mural than you and almost everybody you know put together will make in the next ten years. He has a waiting list he won’t live long enough to do half of, and his staff won’t even return your calls unless you have half a billion stads in your personal accounts.”
“Yeah, that’s the guy.”
“That’s what I like about you, brother; you’re so easy to impress.”
Armed men and women in different uniforms than the tan and sandy tropical wear of Taz’s department paced in front of the building.
Taz said, “Bevin’s private guards. He’s got-he had fifty of them. Lot of ex-military and ex-cools among them.”
“Bevin being the dead guy?”
“Yep. Tibois Bevin, named for his grandfather. The family owns half of the Kimanjano Rainforest, made their money in wood products, timber, exotic papers, livestock feeds. His grandfather built most of the town of Bully Bay, which the locals later renamed ‘Tibois’ in his honor.”
They reached the door. The private guards nodded at them. Bork watched the men move, decided they were not too bad. But somebody had gotten past them.
Inside, more local cools, more bodyguards.
Taz and Bork took a lift up three levels.
A man nearly as tall as Bork but maybe a third as heavy stood outside a door, blinking as if somebody was shining a bright light into his eyes. He wore a stretch
-white coverall that hung loosely on him.
Didn’t see that very often.
“Missel,” Taz said.
The gangly man blinked at her. “Where have you been, Taz? WC says that Supe says I can’t run the drill until you get here. Jesu Buddha, woman, evidence is evaporating and breaking down in there!”
“Damp your drive, Missel. This killer doesn’t leave tags.”
“Not before. This time, maybe. Go, go!”
He reached down and touched a control on a chunk of metal with heat sinks along one side. Bork felt a blast of warm air splash against his face. An airwall, to seal the room once the door was opened.
The entrance slid wide as Taz palmed the admit. She looked inside for a moment, then stepped across the threshold. “Behind me, Saval.”
As Bork moved, the tech said, “You aren’t going to take this human tank in with you? Jesu, Taz-!”
“This is Saval Bork,” she said. “My brother. He’s a matador, Missel, he knows about this kind of stuff.”
“He’s got feet like cargo carriers!”
“I’ll try not to step on anything important,” Bork said. He knew tech-types. He would bet money that Missel’s next words would be something about everything being important at a crime scene.
“Everything is important at a crime scene!” Missel said.
Bork smiled.
“Do you want us to stand out here in the hall all day discussing this while your evidence decays or do you want us to get in and out so you can run the drill?”
“Go, go, go!”
Inside, Taz said, “He’s really not a bad guy.”
“I used to get along with Sleel before he met Kildee,” Bork said. “No problem.”
They were in an outer office, and to look at, nothing was amiss. As they moved, Taz handed Bork a com button from her belt. He pressed the speaker into his left ear.
“Assistant Chief Bork making inspection of the Tibois Bevin homicide site. Who’s first on the scene?”