But there wasn’t any real intel on the Butcher themself. About them as a person. And no speculizing about how they’d done any of the terrible mass murders. Pithy official statements from the Milky Way’s Joint Armed Forces investigators, descriptions of the devastations, details about exactly where they’d found the creepto signature the Butcher always left. The intel’s unusefulness was why, she knew, the Butcher allowed Twiney’s to sell it.
Twiney’s Chostim Shop included a related file gratis, said her OS.
Redcholate perused the gratis file. It included massacres and genocides that were believed not to be related to the Butcher, or that the M-JAF claimed weren’t conclusive enough. She read through the accounts, shaking her head a little. The Butcher obvs imagined themself too great to murder without letting everyone know. So that would eliminate things like the Cracked Planet, or Terry’s New Earth’s Blue Mist Plague. Which sounded lachry. Thousands of orphaned tots. It kinda made her heart do a Newton, and not in a good way.
She sighed, stood, and tossed her empty cup into the pixel recycler. Kinda a waste of millis. But maybe Sylvey’d been right. She had to build the pyramid layer by layer.
The Forger pinged her again. Come see me.
That made it about two millio times by now. No, don’t tell me how many exactly, she said, to stop her OS from supplying the facts. I’m going to do some research on the Yobbo Attack Cat Massacre.
I’m not sure that is wise, said her OS.
Then it’s a good thing I don’t care what you think, she said. Why was her OS acting so bizzo? He had jero time for me when I was his intel broker, she added, so now that I’m a forger too, he can just wait.
Her OS didn’t say anything else.
She stepped off the patio and into Mainframe Street. Since the Cat Massacre’d—
The Forger interrupted with a short and bitter message: Are you sure that was Sylvey you found in pod 4487?
The thought stopped Redcholate dead in her avatar tracks. What the necrotic weevil nostril hairs did he mean by that? Who else would it’d’ve been? she sent back.
Come see me in my niche. Bring me his bifile. Now.
She rolled her eyecubes. Delete the Forger’s messages, she told her OS. She had better things to do than go see him. Namely, forgery things in exciting Underworld locales a la Tanto.
But the Forger’s interest in Sylvey’s thumb was creepto. Shouldn’t she… shouldn’t she see if it really was Sylvey? Probs. If she cogiked about it, Sylvey’s—or not-Sylvey’s—corpse was her first real lead.
Unjack me, she said.
The overworld obtruded, with its weight, its smells, and its dull reality. After a few groany, moany real-flesh millis, she dug into her bag for Sylvey’s thumb, bouncing it on her palm a few times. It was crumbling a little. Though she’d never extracted a bifile before, she knew how it was done. If you didn’t have those fingertip hooks like a constable, you needed a non-incorpo sub. It was sold in the higher end forger shops.
Redcholate slipped into a multicolored lint dress, borrowed Chinya’s shoes with the live fish microcosms inside each hollow plazstik platform sole, and went out the door.
Twenty minutes later she stood outside her local forger shop, pressing the tiny non-incorpo bifile extractor to the mummified thumb, then to her own thumb.
Incoming packet, said her OS. Scanning for viruses. Then, Bifile is clean, but encrypted.
Redcholate’s entire set of gibs shivered. No one encrypted their bifile. This must’ve been… it must’ve been the murderer’s doing. The Butcher’s doing.
Run my unencrypto prog, she told her OS.
I have already run your unencryption program. It did not work.
She needed help. Real forger help, not her own apprentice forger licks. The Forger wanted to see her now, so he’d presumy help, but she didn’t want to see him. His sudden interest seemed way too creepto. She should go see Tanto. He’d know what to do.
Chapter 22
Gallawaygg
Date: 2419
“The Butcher is behind Ted Tamobi’s murder,” said the beige woman.
They were in Twomanrie’s room. The beige woman and Twomanrie sat on the reflexive cushioning chairs, facing each other. Armintor perched on the couch.
Twomanrie leaned forward on her chair, hands set precisely on her knees. “How do you know?”
“His ego,” said the beige woman.
“Explain.”
The beige woman didn’t seem to mind being addressed like a Beta. “I’m the mecha tech for the city of Llyl—”
“The mecha tech?” Armintor interrupted. “You mean you’re the only one?”
Both women stared at Armintor. “Mechas are self-sustaining,” the beige woman said. “Only a few ever encounter a problem strange enough that they can’t figure out how to deal with it.”
“I know they’re self-sustaining, but…” Armintor drifted into silence. She wanted to ask how many mechas Llyl had, but it didn’t seem like the proper time. Twomanrie didn’t even berate her for not finishing her thought, and instead gestured for the beige woman to continue.
“Earlier today the morgue’s hook harvesting mecha flagged an anomaly on Ted Tamobi’s body,” said the beige woman. “It was a level 2 technical glitch, well under any threshold that would trigger a glance by the constabulary.”
“And what did this mecha find?” Twomanrie asked. Armintor could feel her mentor’s barely controlled excitement.
“Well, I pride myself on checking all my mechas’ flags. No matter what priority. It had identified a miniscule tattoo on the nape of the victim’s neck. The mecha scanned the area in preparation for harvesting the victim’s storage, which is actually quite large, and—”
“What’s the tattoo of?” Twomanrie interrupted.
“A woman, reclining on a couch. A picture from an ancient clock.”
Twomanrie jumped to her feet, eyes bright with excitement.
A shiver ran through Armintor’s body. “It’s the ormolu clock,” she said into the silence. “The Butcher’s calling card. Right?” She winced at her plea for affirmation.
“Are you positive?” Twomanrie asked, breathless, ignoring Armintor’s question.
The beige woman shook her head. “It wasn’t absolutely clear. Microscopic outline, really. The harvest-mecha just got the go-ahead from the constabulary to recycle Ted Tamobi’s body this afternoon, and during harvesting it flagged the tattoo.”
“So the Butcher didn’t want the tattoo to be noticed, but his ego couldn’t let him forego it,” Twomanrie said.
“But the autopsy mecha would have already scanned the body, right?” asked Armintor.
“Head to toe,” said the beige woman. “It would have flagged anything, even an ingrown toenail. Which means that tattoo wasn’t there before.”
“So what does that mean?” Armintor asked. “The tattoo was given post-mortem?”
The beige woman shook her head. “Even more intriguing than that. Melatonin levels were slightly increased in that area immediately after death, which the autopsy mecha did flag, but there was no tattoo. Now, the melatonin levels have decreased back to normal and the tattoo appeared.”
“The Butcher used his victim’s melatonin to create the tattoo?” Despite herself, Armintor was impressed with their ingenuity.
The beige woman nodded. “Stimulated the melatonin somehow, so that it would create the tattoo at a later date. Not sure if I should actually be calling it a tattoo, but I don’t have a better word for it.”
“So what are we going to do?” Armintor asked.
Twomanrie glanced at Armintor with suppressed excitement tinged with annoyance. “I think I want to see this tattoo myself,” she said to the beige woman.
“I was expecting you to say that. I have an appointment, but I can meet you in one hour at the morgue.”
“Shouldn’t we let the constabulary know?” Armintor asked.
“No.” Twomanrie’s voice was firm and final. “We’ve alr
eady learned they can’t handle a simple murder investigation. How would they handle an inquiry into the Butcher?”
Armintor subsided. She wondered, in later years, if she’d pressed Twomanrie on the point whether it would have made any difference. But she would never know.
Twomanrie led Armintor back to their hotel. “Change into something sober,” she said. “We need to appear as… wait, we didn’t even get her name, did we?”
“The Beige Woman?” Armintor asked.
“Perfect. We want to appear as the Beige Woman’s colleagues. We need to pass unnoticed.”
Armintor nodded and entered her own room. Twenty minutes later, she knocked on Twomanrie’s door. There was no answer. She knocked again, and thought she heard something inside the room.
She pressed her ear to the door and heard a faint garbled sound. “Are you all right?” she called.
The sound intensified for a moment, then grew weaker.
“Twomanrie?” Armintor called. There was no answer.
Movement caught her eye, and she looked down. A slow-moving puddle was emerging underneath the bottom of the door. Black fluid. No, not black. Red.
Blood.
Armintor surged backward, hiked up her grey skirt, and with a spin to gain momentum—that same spin-and-kick she’d practiced countless times with Twomanrie—kicked the door. The plazstik locking mechanism shattered. She ran inside.
Twomanrie lay on the floor less than a meter inside the room. As if she’d fallen while standing at the door. Blood covered her face and puddled around her head. She stared up at Armintor with wide, panicked eyes.
Armintor fell to her knees. “Help!” she screamed into the hallway. “Help!” She had no cranial hook to call a mecha-doctor herself.
She gathered her mentor’s slight body into her arms. Twomanrie trembled, and her body already felt cold. She made a choked, garbled sound. When her mouth opened, Armintor saw that her tongue had been severed at the base.
“Don’t try to speak,” Armintor sobbed. “Help!” she screamed again.
A man finally appeared at the door. He summoned the hotel’s mecha-doctor, but even as it whirred down the hallway toward them, Twomanrie sighed. Her body sagged in Armintor’s arms. Her head turned. A last mouthful of blood spilled to the floor.
“No!” Armintor gathered Twomanrie’s slight body closer.
The mecha-doctor arrived, extracting Twomanrie’s body from Armintor’s grasp. It sutured Twomanrie’s severed tongue stump. It transfused liters of blood into her veins. It attempted resuscitation.
Twomanrie would find it the ultimate insult to be handled by a thinking mecha. To be resuscitated by a thinking mecha. But even if Armintor had to face Twomanrie’s unending wrath, it would be worth it to have her back.
“Please save her,” she begged the mecha-doctor.
But all its efforts were in vain.
“Time of patient decease 9:78 post meridian local time,” the mecha said. “All reasonable life-saving measures have been employed. The patient’s advanced age and the presence of an unidentified substance in the patient’s veins complicated resuscitation efforts. This death is classified as suspicious. Local constabulary has been informed.”
“No. Try again.” Armintor clutched at one of its retracting appendages. “Stay and try again.”
“I will request a grief counseling mecha to visit.” With that, the mecha-doctor whirled around and departed.
Armintor was left with Twomanrie’s cooling body. She reached out with one tentative, blood-stained hand, and touched her mentor’s flaccid arm.
“What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do?”
The lead detective from Ted Tamobi’s death came to investigate Twomanrie’s murder. Armintor explained that the beige woman had wanted to show them something strange on Ted Tamobi’s body, but didn’t mention anything about the Butcher. Even in her grief, she felt beholden to honor Twomanrie’s wish to keep the knowledge from them.
Armintor and the detectives went to the beige woman’s place of business only to find that she hadn’t come back after her appointment. Without her to reauthorize a hold on Ted Tamobi’s body, it had already been recycled.
They rushed to the beige woman’s small house in the suburbs of Llyl. They found her inside. Her head sat proudly on the floor, surrounded by a moat of blood and small pieces of chopped bones and flesh. Armintor stared at the head for a long time. Its optical hook and cranial embed had been fried beyond repair. What kind of intel had it held?
If he’d known what he was looking for, the detective would find the Butcher’s calling card. But she kept silent. Not only out of loyalty, but also because if he did learn the Butcher was involved in the murders, he’d be killed too.
Twomanrie’s credchip also held her bifile, and her end of life wishes. The lead detective extracted the intel from the chip and told Armintor that Twomanrie had requested her body be brought back to Variegor.
“I’ve already sent a notification to Variegor. Two representatives are coming to pick up her body. They’ll be here in five days.” He eyed her with compassion.
“F-five days?” Armintor’s voice sounded rough and reedy.
“I had to confiscate her credchip. She left Variegor’s government all her worldly possessions. Are you all right for creds? I do know something about Variegor’s society.”
She nodded, throat too thick to answer. If she hadn’t taken those 10,000 creds, Twomanrie’s death would have left her destitute. Twomanrie would have left her destitute.
Armintor walked slowly back to the hotel. The trees dripped water constantly. Like tears. But she shouldn’t feel sad. In the end, Twomanrie had chosen Variegor over Armintor. She’d never shed another tear. Only two steps later, she started sobbing, and braced her forearm against a tree trunk to keep from collapsing. Twomanrie, who had replaced her father, her mother, her brother, her friends… everyone…. Twomanrie was dead.
Once again, Armintor was alone.
Chapter 23
Bituminous Tarsi
Date: 2422
At least it was gratifying that the security mecha in Tanto’s building let Redcholate in immediately. It seemed she was now on the let-in-and-be-nice-about-it list.
Tanto’s OS popped his door for her, and told her via the house speakers that Tanto’d unjack in about twenty. So she got a chostim from the nutrition panel and lounged on the floor, staring out over the silvery cliffs at the mercury-colored ocean.
You are due to reprogram your holobeads, said her OS.
She reached up to touch her hair. Obvs it just felt like hair, with the holobeads clacking together. It still had the Timmon 5 ladybird style. Needle-thin blue feathers in a giant puff around her head, each with a pink micropuff. Boro. And she’d never missed a day of reprogging her beads in three years. But she couldn’t muster up enough forgery mojo to reprog them at the milli.
A groan sounded behind her. She sipped her chostim, pretended not to notice. Ignoring someone’s unjacking blues was just good manners.
He visited the bathroom, got a cup of coffee, plopped back down on the couch and sipped it before he spoke. “Red, how are you?”
She turned. “Are you good at breaking encryptions?”
“You know.” He shrugged. “Pretty good. You’re too, from what I remember.”
“Not good enough for this. I have Sylvey’s—” She tried to say bifile, but couldn’t. Something was preventing her from speaking. Her stupo magical power.
“His what?”
“A… a file,” she gritted out. What are you doing? she hissed. Why can’t I tell him it’s his bifile? But her magical power didn’t answer. It never answered.
“From who?” Tanto asked.
“S-sylvey.”
“He sent you a file before he got mummified?” Tanto held out his right thumb. “Gimme. I’ll take a look at it.”
Her right hand moved as if of its own volition. Something… something must be really wrong with the bifile. Somethin
g her stupo magical power knew about. No! she tried to shout. But her stupo magical power—her hateful magical power—held up her thumb.
Stop the file! she shouted at her OS.
I… I cannot. I must obey it. The OS shared the file with Tanto.
“Don’t…” she croaked before a pain hit her eyecubes so hard her brain felt as if it had split into two hemispheres. She dry heaved into the empty chostim mug.
“You gonna yack again, go to the bathroom,” Tanto said in a distracted voice. “What kind of encryption is this, anyway….”
Tanto, she mouthed. Don’t. But he wasn’t looking. She started to crawl forward. Her legs cramped, then became as rigid as plazstik cylinders. She dragged forward using only her arms. He didn’t even notice. His eyecubes were glazed. He was immersed in intel.
“Tanto,” she gasped.
His body stiffened, then convulsed, then stilled. He took a raspy inhale. His eyecubes unglazed, focused on her face. He gave her one terrible, reproachful look. “Red, what have you done?”
His cranial embed exploded. Flames erupted from his tie-in socket. Bits of bone, silicon and flesh mushroomed up, then showered down on the couch, the floor, Redcholate, and Tanto’s own corpse.
The Disk Mirror Solution (Galaxia Mortem Book 1) Page 16