The Disk Mirror Solution (Galaxia Mortem Book 1)

by Danielle Ste. Just

  It came apart all at once. A white ampoule clattered onto the floor.

  Twomanrie turned at the noise. “The ampoule. You found it. Excellent.”

  “How did you know it was here?”

  “Because I was expecting to find one in this room.”

  “It was a scientific miracle, he said!” the maid sobbed. “Something that tastes just like sugar but has no calories. People’ve been trying to make it for centuries. And when he found out who I worked for, he said, ‘Ms. Sixer is one of the pickiest on the planet. If she can’t tell the difference between my sugar and the real thing, then no one can.’”

  “So he asked you to put his sugar in Ms. Sixer’s coffee?”

  “He gave me that little ampoule you have there and then said he’d have to work up the nerve to have me test it. He had to go on a trip for two months. When he came back, if I saw him walking in front of the house that morning wearing a green rain-repeller coat, then I should do it. And then dispense it into her coffee without looking at it, so my eyehook wouldn’t record it. I practiced for two weeks in my room to get it right.” She sounded momentarily proud of her accomplishment, but then realization hit her and she sobbed again.

  The constables extracted the pertinent hook recordings. When they showed the face of the suspect to Roxanya Sixer, she gasped. “That’s Aom Howrd. My husband’s business partner. But that’s can’t be true. They’ve been best friends since they were children.”

  “But it has to be true,” said the lead detective. “The evidence is irrefutable.”

  Twomanrie, Armintor, the lead detective and three other constables packed into two skimmers and rushed to Mr. Tamobi’s office. On the way, the lead detective, somewhat chagrined, said, “I’m at a loss as to how we missed the ampoule.”

  “You weren’t looking for it,” Twomanrie said without much pity. “That’s what you get when you lose the art of detection and instead rely on mechas to do your work for you.”

  “But,” Armintor said, “how did they not detect this sugar? They said they tested every molecule in the house.”

  “Well, that ampoule has molecule retrieval. It will automatically retrieve any loose molecules from the air after it has dispensed its contents.” Twomanrie waggled her fingers. “A veritable miracle for the criminal class.”

  “But,” the detective said, “why did the maid have to poison Roxanya Sixer and not her husband?”

  “That’s where your professionally uncurious nature let you down. We talked with a chemist, and learned it wasn’t a poison. Aom Howrd primed Ted Tamobi with the yeast, outside the home. It could have been months ago. It waited within him like a silent sentinel of death. And then he tricked Roxanya Sixer’s maid to administer the catalyst. It didn’t harm her, as she hadn’t been primed. And Aom Howrd knew that Roxanya Sixer wouldn’t see her husband until the day after, until all traces of that sugar substance would be washed away from the dishes. And then, she kissed him. And he died.”

  “How did we miss this?” the detective asked.

  “Now that,” Twomanrie said, catching Armintor’s gaze, wanting an audience for her long-suffering genius, “is the real question.”

  They stepped inside the office building, built of stone with big holes in it like sourdough bread, all rounded at the edges as if it had been rained and blown and shined on for many decades.

  A large older man blustered into the lobby. Aom Howrd. “What are you doing here?” The three constables grabbed him. Aom Howrd’s face turned red. “What is this about?”

  “Mr. Aom Howrd, it was you all the time,” the lead detective said, wrapping a slim black cord around the man’s hands while a constable stuck an opaque sticker over his hook eye. The lead detective removed a dizrup from his belt and inserted it into Aom’s tie-in socket with a kind of creepy pleasure.

  Aom looked wildly from Twomanrie to the detective. “You think I murdered my best friend? I never did such a thing. I—”

  “Quiet,” said the lead detective.

  “Ted was like my brother,” Aom whispered.

  “If you don’t remain silent,” said the lead detective, “I’ll put a stasis field on you. Then everyone at your work will be able to record you being hovered out like a corpse.”

  Aom Howrd staggered, and the constables struggled to hold him up. Armintor felt a stab of pity. He seemed so earnest. She could see nothing fake in his grief and consternation. But Twomanrie gazed stoically at the man, obviously convinced of his guilt.

  Twomanrie allowed the detective to laud her for another few moments. Then with a small wave she led Armintor out of the office and into the cool drizzle of the late afternoon.

  They ate a celebratory dinner. As usual, Twomanrie ordered for both of them, allowing Armintor a half glass of cherry-red wine, which Armintor didn’t much like. A mecha musical group played in the corner for the amusement of the diners. Armintor watched the other customers and sipped her water. But the next time she glanced at her mentor, she saw a strange look on her face. A look of chagrin, perhaps, or self-doubt.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Twomanrie met her gaze. “You really are growing quite observant.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Twomanrie sat back against her chair and laughed. “I should be feeling proud of myself. I’ve turned you from an unobservant, unmotivated, unresponsive person into a shrewdly observant and self-assured person. Yet I’m not sure I like how you’re treating me right now. We are not equals.”

  Armintor felt a rush of anger, which drowned out any hint of fear that she might have otherwise felt. Every time before, she swallowed those insults that Twomanrie liked to bestow upon her like fertilizer. But something inside her had altered. This time, she couldn’t not respond. “So you’ve been lying to me all these years? You don’t want me to change?”

  Shaking her head, Twomanrie leaned forward. “We are still of Variegor. Even though we’ve been living off-planet for years. You’re still a Beta, and I’m an Alpha. We are not equal.”

  “You may be of Variegor, but I’m not.”

  The skin around Twomanrie’s eyes tightened. “What did you say?”

  Armintor’s entire body tightened. She leaned forward. “I’m not of Variegor.”

  Twomanrie’s eyes flew wide. “Of course you are. We took you in. We saved you from death on that planet of yours. We treated you the same as our own children.”

  All her years of resentment, shame and frustration expanded inside her until she couldn’t contain it. “But almost everyone on Variegor is a slave!”

  Twomanrie scoffed and looked away. “Slave. Ha! We give everyone a job. A job perfectly suited for their skills and intelligence. How is that being a slave?”

  “Before you made me your apprentice, I stood around looking at a dishwasher all day. Are you saying that’s all I could have managed in my life?”

  “If I hadn’t taken you in, yes. That’s all you would have managed in your life.”

  Armintor felt tears gather in her eyes. She scrubbed them roughly with the heels of her hands. “Really? But now I’m magically able to understand complex concepts? I don’t think you gave me an intelligence transplant, did you?”

  “No, but I gave you drive. You had absolutely none. You were letting those two girls in your dormitory bully you, obviously. You couldn’t even muster up enough will to stop them.”

  Armintor felt her face crumple. Dil and Josie. Left behind so long ago, and yet never forgotten. “I was grieving!” she cried, ignoring the staring diners at the other tables. “I’d lost my entire life.”

  Twomanrie shrugged. “Others lost their families too, and yet they managed to not become utterly incapacitated.”

  A tear trickled down Armintor’s cheek. “That’s what you think of me?”

  “Armintor. I just told you I was proud of the woman you’ve become.”

  “But you still treat me like a servant.”

  “How, exactly, do I treat you like
a servant?”

  All the resentment she’d hidden came out. “You’ve never given me one credit. Not one! I’ve never bought anything for myself since I was twelve years old!”

  Shock slackened Twomanrie’s face. “Credits? That’s what this is all about? You just want some credits?” She dug her credchip—a non-incorpo substitute for a thumbnail implant—out of her pocket and tossed it on the table. “Transfer as many credits as you want to yourself.”

  Armintor knew that Twomanrie expected her to demur, to push the credchip back across the table. So instead, she grabbed it and punched in a 10,000 credit transfer. She held it up to her thumbnail. The credchip chimed.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take that as a first payment on my years of work for you.”

  Twomanrie bit her cheek as she leaned forward to drag her credchip back toward herself. “And when are you going to pay me for all the work I’ve done for you? What about me losing my entire life to save you? I lost everything I’d worked for, gave it all up to travel around the galaxy so you wouldn’t be culled. But perhaps you forgot that.”

  The crushing weight of guilt settled onto Armintor’s heart. “I’m sorry.”

  Waving her hand, Twomanrie said, “The only reason I mentioned it is to calm the concern of all these eavesdropping people around us who now consider me a monster.”

  Armintor looked around. As she met their gazes, the other patrons looked away. Her cheeks flushed hot. She leaned forward. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Let me give you back the credits.”

  To Armintor’s relief, Twomanrie’s face softened. “No, that’s not necessary. Truthfully, I didn’t even think to give you any credits this entire time, and that was not right of me. This isn’t Variegor, where you can get all your needs met for free, whether you’re an Alpha or a Beta.”

  “What needs are you talking about?”

  “All the basic needs. Food, clean clothing, shelter.”

  Armintor stared at her mentor. How could Twomanrie even suggest that Betas could get anything they wanted? The arrogance and callousness of that statement astounded her. She wanted to argue again, but she didn’t want Twomanrie to be angry anymore.

  “We Betas couldn’t ever choose what we wanted to do,” she dared to say in a low voice.

  “But Armintor, you would never have wanted to do anything worthwhile.” Twomanrie smiled. “You needed me.”

  The mecha waiter brought them dessert. Twomanrie had ordered what looked like floating chocolate bubbles, tethered to the plate with silver strings. Armintor plucked one and popped it in her mouth. The bubble burst, and intense chocolate and almond flavors exploded onto her tongue.

  The diners next to them departed, and three people took their place. Armintor noticed Twomanrie looking askance at them, and studied them herself. One of the men bore a strong resemblance to Aom Howrd, the man they’d captured that afternoon in Ted Tamobi’s office. It made her remember how shocked—almost ill—Aom Howrd had looked when the constabulary had arrested him. His reaction felt unlike the dozens of criminals Twomanrie had captured over the past four years. She realized she didn’t think Aom Howrd was guilty.

  She plucked another chocolate bubble. This one tasted like chocolate and sweet-tart aramansa berries. “These are delicious,” she said. When Twomanrie didn’t answer, she noticed that her mentor was leaning against the chair back with a disturbed expression.

  “Twomanrie? Do you really think…” She didn’t dare finish her sentence. She didn’t want to crush their fragile-seeming truce.

  “What? You know I find it extremely irritating when you don’t finish your sentences.”

  “Do you really think Aom Howrd is guilty?”

  Twomanrie turned back and cocked her head. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just a feeling. It feels to me like he didn’t do it.”

  To Armintor’s surprise, Twomanrie gave a slow nod. “I’m beginning to think the same way. It just doesn’t feel right. And, Armintor, one of the benefits of not having hooks is to be able to recognize and act on these feelings. They aren’t drowned out by teknological blather.”

  “What are we going to do?” Armintor asked.

  “Do? Well, we’re going to find out who really did it. And if Aom Howrd really did kill Ted Tamobi, then we’ll give him a prize for acting.”

  “That’s what I thought! So what are we going to do first? Check his optical recordings?”

  Twomanrie flipped her hand. “The constabulary’s already downloaded them. If there was anything relevant, they’d have contacted me already.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’re going to have to look into his movements. Chart them over the past two months for a start. If that doesn’t bring something to light, we’ll requisition every single hook recording of everyone he passed by on the street, if we have to.”

  “The constabulary won’t be happy if we find out he didn’t do it after all.”

  “I’m not the constabulary’s tame pet that they can call out to give them an easy answer. Or to quote Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. And just like Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I’d rather let a hundred murderers free than to send one person to an undeserved doom.”

  “You won’t catch the true culprit like that,” said someone in a low voice.

  Both Armintor and Twomanrie looked up, startled. A woman stood beside their table. A woman without distinguishing features. Beige hair cut short but not excessively so. Beige skin like the hide of an animal whose primary survival mechanism was stealth. Beige clothing which seemed to have been chosen to match both skin and hair. A pair of eyes which, had they been a color other than beige, Armintor didn’t notice.

  “Yes?” Twomanrie asked. Armintor knew her mentor well enough to know she was feigning mild interest. But she could tell by the set of Twomanrie’s shoulders and the tension around her eyes that she was almost unbearably eager.

  “I am here for your help.” The beige woman spoke with grim determination.

  “All right. Tell me what you want.”

  The beige woman shook her head. “Not here. Not now.”

  Twomanrie lifted her eyebrows in feigned shock. “What does this have to do with?”

  The beige woman leaned forward and whispered two words. “The Butcher.”

  Chapter 21

  Underworld

  Bituminous Tarsi

  Date: 2422

  Redcholate approached the Underworld café known as Twiney’s Chostim Shop.

  In deference to her secret-agenty mission, she wore an OTS avatar known as the Velma Dane. Short hair, square face, freckles. But she couldn’t let a little thing such as undercover work keep her from good style choices, so she wore an eleven-planeted solar system that rotated around her breasts and partially obscured them, and a blazing sun at her crotch. Anyone could see every detail about her avatar… if they could hold their eyecubes open while staring into the sun. And they couldn’t. Which was the entire idea.

  Twiney’s Chostim Shop had an outside patio, with about fifty seats. They were all filled. To a rubie, the shop would look dinky: only fifty customers among potential billios. But if you stared at the patron avatars, you’d see they were flickering from one to the other so fast as to appear almost static. Thousands and millios from all over the Milky Way. Twiney’s had the largest client base of any business in the Underworld.

  Redcholate herself had only visited Twiney’s a few times. A single espresso here, a double shot there, but nothing more intellectually caloric. She was usually too busy to pay attention to the news.

  The Forger pinged her.

  Ignore, she told her OS.

  This ping makes it—

  I don’t want to know how many times he’s pinged me. I’m my own forger now. I need to get some intel on my own before I go see him. Prove that I’m just as good as he is.

  But… Her OS drifted into silence. She wanted to ask what it was going to say, but she didn’t want to k
eep standing here like a dunderbobble while avatars streamed past her by the millio, walking into the shop.

  She stepped inside and up to a long white counter. Defying the number of avatars she’d just seen enter, the shop appeared utterly empty.

  “Special order,” she said to the pleasantly featureless, long-limbed, pea-green avatar.

  It gestured with its triple-jointed fingers to its right. “One station to the left, please.”

  Redcholate took a giant step left. A squat, red, featureless avatar almost as freckled as hers leaned forward. “Is your news request confidential?” it asked in a delightfully low voice.

  “Ye—” Redcholate started to say, then cut herself off. Any confidential transactions about the Butcher might spark an increased interest from the Butcher. Millios all around the galaxy must ask for intel about him. The Butcher couldn’t look into every single person with a modicum of curiosity. So she’d just take a gander at the basic facts. Sylvey’d been fine when he was doing fundamental research. It was only after she pressed him to go after more valuable intel that he’d been caught. A guilty shiver ran through her avatar. She couldn’t think about that. Not now.

  “No,” she said. “Not confidential.”

  The red avatar nodded. “State your order.”

  “Intel on the Butcher.”

  The red avatar froze a milli. “The Butcher?” Its voice rose an octave.

  “Just the, you know, the facts. Like the things he’s done.”

  The red avatar’s shoulders sagged in relief. “That is not a special order. Merely step to the right and order the triple chostim shot with crème caramel fluff.”

  Redcholate nodded her thanks, stepped to the right, and ordered. It was ready in a split milli: a steaming cup of intel.

  She carried it out to the patio and sat on a chair already seemingly occupied, becoming to the outside observer one of a millio flickering avatars, and brought the cup to her lips. Sweetness and fluffy cloudlike crème caramel flooded her avatar tastebuds, and the intel appeared in her cranium.

  Scanning through the Butcher’s confirmed kills made the crème caramel curdle in her avatar tum. There was the Yobbo Attack Cat Massacre where the Butcher had released giant Yobbo wildcats on a planet. They’d killed the entire human population, including the forger stupo enough to try and catch them. Then there was the Self-Evisceration Genocide, where she couldn’t even really orb the pics. And then there was one of the most horrible—at least in Redcholate’s cranium—the Drowning of Planet Ezed. The Ezedians were a society where each extended family had built their own dome habitation. The Butcher had sealed the exits of their domes and flooded them. Everyone inside the domes had drowned. There had been injuries on many of the corpses consistent with people pushing others down to save themselves. She couldn’t even imagine the last live Ezedians’ final few breaths, breathed at the very top of the domes. Those people had killed their family members for a final few millis, a final few breaths.