by Nina D'Aleo
The noble and his entourage led Copernicus through the Galleria to another chamber. In the centre of the room, rust and discolouration marked the large circular outline of where the sculpture had sat. Beside the empty space a hologram sign, intended for visitors to the Galleria, flashed information and a picture of the Mazurus Machine. Copernicus skimmed through the words, learning that the machine was the first astronomical telescopic magnifier, invented by Maximus T. Mazurus several eras ago. The spherical structure was made up of several thousand powerful magnifying panels on rotating hinges, allowing for multi-directional positioning of the lenses. Fundamental to the functioning of the machine was its central magnifier, a massive telescope that could be extended from the body of the machine high into the sky. According to the information, the inventor, Mazurus, had used the concept of sound to power the machine. He’d focused the magnification of the lenses onto instruments that emitted particularly intense frequency vibrations, which travelled through each of the panels, gathering force until they reached the central magnifier. The combined soundwaves blasted up the tubular body of the telescope, passing through a small circular band of special conductive metal, through the powerful lens and out into the air, creating a momentary ‘supersound’ through which a brief but enormous magnification of the night sky occurred. It had long since been surpassed by superior technologies, but the machine had been an important breakthrough for its time.
‘Over forty years-cycles ago, when the Mazurus Machine was shipped to the Galleria Majora from the Galleria Minora, someone stole the conductive band in the core lens of the machine,’ the Vice-Standard said. He stabbed a finger at the picture of the Mazurus, at the head of the central telescopic magnifier, just below the lens. ‘From there.’
‘Who stole it?’ Copernicus asked.
‘If we knew that we’d have it back, wouldn’t we.’ The noble gave him a disdainful stare and added, ‘Your people never found it.’
‘So the machine doesn’t work?’ Copernicus said.
‘The individual panels are still powerful magnifiers, but the core telescope needs the conductive band of metal to function as it did. Nevertheless, the Mazurus is a priceless artefact of the Black Sun era,’ the noble said. ‘It is the largest Black Sun relic still intact.’
‘Which makes it not exactly easy to pawn off,’ Copernicus replied. He crouched down examining the ground. ‘Or easy to carry, for that matter.’ He scanned the room for any dust residue that a morpher might have left.
‘All our art is protected against shape-shifting evil, if that’s what you’re looking for,’ the Vice-Standard said.
‘And yet there are no spaces here big enough for the sculpture to have passed through. Think about it. Its size must have been altered.’ Copernicus refused to encourage the noble’s ignorance.
‘I just told you all our art is —’
‘I heard you,’ Copernicus cut in. ‘So obviously the perpetrator is not a morpher.’
The Vice-Standard flicked back his robe. ‘Who else could change the form of the inanimate?’
‘A witch, perhaps,’ Copernicus suggested, knowing the reaction it would provoke.
The noble’s eyes stretched wide and the lizard-faced enforcers at his side glowered and hunched forward, waiting for the command to arrest him.
‘How dare you!’ the Vice-Standard snarled. ‘His excellence, King Miron XI, has eradicated such evil from our city.’
‘Just making a suggestion,’ Copernicus said.
‘Just do your job,’ the noble demanded.
‘My job is to hunt murderers. I’m only here because your machine may be a clue.’
The Vice-Standard ground his teeth, but Copernicus knew the man wouldn’t have him arrested. He was a coward. The commander turned his back on the noble and searched the room for any irregularities. He spotted an unevenness in the marble floor in the centre of the vacant space where the machine had sat. Copernicus walked to it and saw someone had cut a trapdoor in the stone. He used his blade to prise up the section of marble, exposing a coffin-shaped box underneath the floor. Someone had cut out one side of the box to form an opening. A ladder led down from the opening into darkness below. A musty smell wafted up from the depth.
‘That is there for maintenance personnel to access the hollow interior of the machine for cleaning purposes,’ the Vice-Standard offered. ‘I’ve been informed they stood in that box.’
The commander took the light-blaster from his weapon belt and shone it down through the trapdoor, through the open end of the wooden structure. The light skimmed piles of books.
‘Written word?’ he asked.
‘I believe it was a library at some stage,’ the noble said with uninterest.
‘Where does it lead to?’ Copernicus asked.
The noble blinked vivid blue eyes and said, ‘I have not been down there.’
‘Of course not,’ Copernicus muttered.
He tucked the torch into his belt and climbed down into the box, having to first crouch and then lie almost completely on his back before he could slide through to the ladder. As his head touched the wooden surface, the walls of the box shrank around him. Cruel laughter and distant applause echoed in his mind. Fear tightened in his chest. Copernicus forced himself to push through the open side of the box and dropped down into darkness, drawing his electrifier as he landed.
17
It was more a graveyard than a library, an abandoned place where forgotten books lay buried by dust, decaying in silence, with silhouettes of broken furniture creeping up the walls like gnarled and twisted limbs. Copernicus scanned the light-blaster through the gloom, trapping particles of dust, ghost rain, in the slivers of light. Ahead of him, on a ground made of unstable piles of books, were signs of a newly trodden path where spider webbing had been snapped and dust disturbed by footprints. The commander moved cautiously forward, careful to walk around the existing marks. He followed the long corridor until it split into two. One side led into another corridor, full of pipes, ending in stairs stretching upwards. The other side, where the footprints travelled, led to a dead-end wall. Copernicus went to the wall and examined the stonework. Crouching down, he felt cold air on his face. With a fingertip, he traced the air all the way up almost to the top of the wall. He holstered his electrifier and slid the blade from his belt. He wedged it between the stones, where he’d felt the air, and pried until a hidden door swung open, revealing a corridor lined with prison cells – remnants of the old asylum.
A solitary functioning fluoro-light lit the last cell at the end of the corridor. Copernicus made his way towards the bars. He stopped in the doorway, feeling captivity pressing in from all sides of the cell, a bare square except for a drain that dripped incessantly. Above the barred door the globe flickered, flinched, casting misshapen silhouettes over the cell’s disfigured walls. They were scarred with the evidence of the damaged sanity of its previous inhabitants – scratches and marks made with blood and blunt objects, names and dates and pleas for help, final desperate hopes of being remembered. Gian was here, May, Angus, Aneka, and a thousand faded others. Something bright in the centre of the floor drew his attention. It was a pattern, an arrangement of shapes drawn in red – triangle, triangle, square. The wetness of the mark suggested it had been recently made, and what’s more, the configuration was incredibly similar to the hanging pattern of the victims.
When he entered the cell for a closer examination, he saw that it definitely looked like a mark of dark magics. Sweat trickled down the side of his face. Eli had suggested a demon cult and Copernicus had accepted it as a possibility, but having solid evidence that this was true disturbed him greatly. It complicated everything. As he studied the mark, capturing it holographically in his memory, it sparked a more distant recollection. At some time in his life he must have come in contact with it, and from the vagueness of the memory he assumed it must have been a glimpse in passing many year-cycles ago, maybe even in childhood.
While trying to place exactly w
here and when, Copernicus took a sample of the blood used to draw the pattern, then straightened up to scan the rest of the cell. Everything appeared as it should, until he looked up at the ceiling.
The entire surface was covered with millions of tiny separate pictures, like an instantaneous and momentary snapshot of the entire city. The more he looked at it, the more he saw in it. He strained upwards for a closer look and words appeared across the whole picture, as though written in an ink only visible from certain angles – or by certain eyes. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Nerves twitched all over Copernicus’ skin. These were the final words of the serial killer Englan Chrisholm, who had maintained his innocence until the end, but had been so widely and intensely hated that the state hadn’t been able to keep him in any of the penitentiaries. His whereabouts were kept a secret up until his execution. Copernicus’ mind flashed back to when as a kid he’d stood in the crowd for the event, familiar with pain, but a newborn to death. That day he’d learnt it had a face of its own. Not ugly, not peaceful, just nothingness.
He shook his head, trying to free himself from the memory, then moved swiftly from the cell, hurrying back to the ladder and up through the trapdoor to the chamber and light above. The Vice-Standard stood waiting for him, both metal fists clenched with impatience, his people milling around him. He saw Copernicus emerging and strode towards him.
‘Well?’ the noble demanded.
‘You’re right, it’s been stolen,’ Copernicus said, dusting off his clothes.
The Vice-Standard curled his lip. ‘Do you think you’re amusing? You’re said to be one of the best trackers of this century, but I see what you really are – a gutter-born thug consorting with low-borns, half-breeds and criminals.’
Copernicus lowered his voice so that only the Vice-Standard could hear. ‘If I did consort with criminals, I’d be in royal company, wouldn’t I?’
The Vice-Standard’s stare sharpened. He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Clarify the meaning of your words – immediately!’
‘Put simply – for your benefit – I heard a story that twelve year-cycles ago you orchestrated an assassination attempt on Crown Prince Isaiah U. An attempt which failed.’
The Vice-Standard’s composure faltered and Copernicus saw his heat signature flare with guilt.
So that part was at least true.
‘Blasphemer!’ the noble hissed.
‘Arrest me,’ Copernicus replied. ‘And I’ll make it known that the crown prince lives and that you tried to kill him.’
‘Where is that foul half-breed product of adultery?’ the Vice-Standard snarled.
‘Is that why you tried to kill him? Because he’s a half-breed?’ Copernicus demanded.
‘Where is he?’ the Vice-Standard repeated.
‘What is his other half?’
‘Where-is-he?’ The noble over-pronounced each word and glared at Copernicus with murderous fury.
‘Nowhere you will ever find him,’ Copernicus said.
‘You’ll regret protecting him,’ the noble threatened.
‘Send your assassins and I’ll send them back to you – one piece each day.’
He sidestepped the Vice-Standard and headed for the door, barging through the centre of the entourage.
The Vice-Standard called after him, ‘You – I met your father once. He was also called the greatest – what was it? – Illusionist. He was a drunkard, a fraud and a devil.’
The commander stopped and rounded on him. Satisfaction gleamed in the noble’s blue eyes that he’d reached him, but Copernicus answered with complete control. ‘Just when I’d decided once and for all that you’re irretrievably witless, you go and say something so insightful.’
The entourage gasped in shock. The Vice-Standard’s stare widened and Copernicus left the chamber, re-entering the Hanging Room.
The hologramographer stood capturing images of the victims. Suddenly, the shadows of the hanging bodies looked to Copernicus like dangling puppets, making him think of clowns and carnivals. A wave of sickness attacked him at the thought, and he clenched his fists in an attempt to drive it away.
Jenkins and his team were gathered around the victims, collecting samples and taking notes. When he saw Copernicus, Jenkins gave his usual scowl and barked, ‘We’re not done. Stay away.’
Copernicus said nothing, keeping his face expressionless. Jenkins seemed to be back to his normal self, but the commander intended to open an investigation into the forensic specialist as soon as he and Diega returned to Headquarters. He stopped at the entrance to the Hanging Room and spoke to the waiting guardian. ‘Round up everyone in the building for questioning, including those on the second level.’
The guardian’s face creased with confusion. ‘The only people here are you, the forensics and the Vice-Standard and his people, and everyone is on the ground floor. We’ve already taken the Vice-Standard’s assistant away for his statement.’
‘There’s a woman in the building. I saw her at the window,’ Copernicus said.
The guardian shook his head. ‘Sir, I’ve had the heat and ultraviolet scanners running over the entire gallery since I arrived. No one has come in or out aside from the people I just mentioned.’
Copernicus narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Show me the footage.’
The guardian led him to the holo-screen set up to display the data, then proceeded to reverse the footage to its initialisation. Copernicus sped it up until he saw the heat signatures of Diega and himself arriving. At the time there was no one on the second floor of the building where he had seen the woman a few moments earlier. He studied all the heat patterns the sensor had captured over the entire time he had been there. There were none that he didn’t recognise as belonging to one of the groups. That was very strange. Even wraiths and other spectral-breeds would show up. The woman had looked human-breed.
‘Commander!’ Diega called out from across the lobby. She ran to him, breathing heavily. ‘I just checked my messages. There is something from Eli, but I can’t figure out what he’s saying. He sounds upset.’ She replayed the message, but it was too crackly to decipher any words, just the occasional half-word that seemed distressed.
Copernicus switched on his communicator. It immediately began whining. He smacked the side of it and the whistling subsided. He also had a message from Eli, but feeling the guardian watching them, he decided to exit the building before replaying it.
Outside, Eli’s voice burst out above the background noise.
‘Boss! Boss! Come in – are you there? Diega – are you there? Silho, their machines are off, but I’m coming for you right now. I’ll find you. I’ll— Oh no!’
There was a whistle and a clank, which Copernicus guessed was the communicator dropping to the ground. Then Brabel’s frantic screams broke through the static buzz.
‘Eli! Eli, answer!’
‘Silho!’ Jude’s voice cut in. ‘I’m here, not far from you. I’m under attack as well. Look at your locator. Can you see me?’ Copernicus heard the distinct cracking zap of an electrifier discharging and a distant screech. Silho breathed heavily into her communicator. She called out, ‘I see you!’
‘Keep running towards me,’ Jude yelled. Copernicus heard him fire again, then the soldier moaned and his communicator dropped out, leaving only the sounds of Silho running and gasping. They heard her cry out and then the dull thud of someone getting punched. Silho kept going, and a man yelled an abusive word behind her, then gurgled as though his throat had been cut mid-sentence. Silho’s footsteps stopped abruptly. She uttered something that sounded like please, then gave a chilling scream. The sound was cut short and the breath hacked out from her as though she’d fallen over and hit the ground hard. The message blurred with static. They heard the bashing clunk of falling rocks, then the line went dead.
With a thudding heart, Copernicus checked the locator screen of his communicator and saw that Eli was still at Headquarters, or at least his communicator was. Silho was stationary in Moris-Isles a
nd Jude’s positioner had completely vanished.
He turned to Diega and she was also staring at the screen, her skin pale almost to grey. She raised her eyes to him and there was no need for words. Snatching the silver coin out of her pocket, she threw it up into the air and called ‘Xpel!’ The Ory-4 stretched into form beside them and they leapt into the transflyer. Diega summoned all of her electrosmith skills and sent the craft shooting towards Moris-Isles.
18
When Eli was growing up, he had burned with embarrassment every time his gran’pa had started in on his Armageddon theory. He would talk about it anywhere and everywhere – in the shopping centre, at the park, in the temple, at weddings, at funerals, at birthday parties, if anyone visited him, if he visited anyone, over the fence to his neighbours and, when they stopped listening, in the garden to the trees themselves. He was even kicked off his senior Oblong Throwing team because his endless theorising was disturbing the old ladies. One nearly had heart failure because he’d scared her so much. Grampy went on and on and on. Even when Eli and his gran’ma were sitting watching the holo-screen, with the volume turned up full blast, pointedly paying no attention, there would be this quiet voice in the background talking unceasingly about bomb shelters and long-life foods. He was like white noise. He was a subliminal message. He was obsessed. Literally the man had only two loves in life, his hat collection and thinking the world as they knew it was going to be obliterated by a massive weapon attack, and that the only people to survive would be people like him, who had the good sense to build a bomb shelter. Techs like Eli knew that if the most advanced weaponry of Scorpia was unleashed on itself, it would take more than a sunken concrete room and a few timber boards to escape the utter destruction, but gran’pa didn’t listen to this mumbo jumbo. Upon his deathbed, his last words to Eli were – Take my hat collection . . . and build a bomb shelter . . . promise me – before he groaned and was gone. Eli had taken the hat collection, but for many years he had resisted building a shelter. He thought he could escape it, but finally the haunting of the old man’s last words drove him to comply. He built a bomb shelter beneath a derelict house he bought for next to nothing in an industrial suburb called Tarpits. It was his shameful secret. Yet as he landed the Summer Holiday outside the ruined house, he wished he hadn’t made so much fun of his gran’pa.