Black Blood

by John Meaney

  “The engineers, yes.” Lexar was heading for the door. “You know how exchanges are wired, don't you?”

  “Um …”

  But Lexar was already throwing the toggle switch that caused the metal door to grind open. A trio of plump workers in dark-green coveralls—two bearded men and one woman—crossed the threshold carrying what looked like picnic boxes.

  “Not ready yet?” asked one of the men.

  “Please take a seat.” Lexar pointed to a bench set against the stone wall. “I'll be ten minutes, no more.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The three engineers sat down, and opened the boxes they carried. But Donal's attention was drawn to Lexar, who twisted the handle of his dark-blue trident, and held it extended. The fork vibrated, slowly at first, then with increasing frequency until the trident's end was a shimmering blur.

  “This won't take long,” said Lexar.

  Approaching Finross's supine corpse, he began to wave the pulsating trident over the dead man's skin. Where the trident passed, the flesh rose and fell in waves, like liquid. Lexar ran the device back and forth three times from head to toe, then switched it off.

  “—knows I don't like scarab-and-mayo,” one of the engineers was saying, peering inside his box. “Dunno why she makes it.”

  “Maybe that's why.”

  “Huh?”

  “Because she deliberately—”

  Overhead, the silver birds began to stir in their upside-down tree. Donal stared up at them, then noticed how Lexar had retreated from Finross's corpse. Taking the hint, Donal took several steps back.

  The engineers were paying no attention.

  “—chance of a trade?”

  “Depends. You like lizard?”

  “Yeah, a-course.”

  “Here ya go, then.”

  The trio were tucking into their sandwiches when the first of the birds dropped beak-first onto Finross's corpse, and got to work on the softened flesh. More birds descended, and then the whole flock was down, covering the body in a mass of shifting, shining forms. An insectile rustling filled the air.

  “They leave the nerves behind.” Lexar was almost shouting over the noise. “Once they've finished, the guys can use the spindles to wrap everything neatly.”

  He gestured toward a stack of white ceramic spindles standing on the floor.

  Wonderful.

  But Donal wasn't here to watch the processing of Finross's corpse, nor to form an opinion on how the Energy Authority treated executed prisoners. He pulled the all-time pad from his inside pocket, and checked. It remained blank. No more orders from Commissioner Vilnar.

  “Sorry,” Donal said. “But I'm not feeling very well. Which way's the bathroom?”

  Lexar's eyes blinked moistly, then one corner of his wide mouth pulled back, and his chin dipped minutely. To Donal, it was as obvious as if Lexar had roared with laughter.

  “Use the other door. Over there.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was a seven-sided hatchway that opened when Donal tugged down a small bone-shaped lever. He stepped through. A percussive wave of pressure washed over him as the hatch closed.

  So which way now?

  Donal continued past the entrance to the bathrooms, and found himself at a five-way junction of shadowy corridors. As he turned in a circle, hand outstretched, one of the corridors caused his palm to prickle. Donal headed that way. Perhaps ten feet in, the air began to shiver and fluoresce.

  Good thing I'm not alive.

  Then he was through the ward shield, heading deep inside the Complex.

  Faint sounds, minute pressure waves, and temperature changes: all of them allowed Donal to sense Energy Authority employees before they saw him. Hiding as necessary, he advanced in stages. It was slow progress, but he had no form of ID—or none that he wanted to show, because without a warrant, he should not be here.

  Although he couldn't sense wraiths—a good thing, for they would certainly report his presence—Donal found himself before a bank of open-door elevators. There was an external panel, and he pressed the button marked -30.

  While he waited, Donal poked his head inside one of the empty cold shafts and looked down, then up. There was nothing to stop a careless person from taking a final, suicidal step into nothingness. Below him, a disk that filled the width of the shaft was rising.

  Shit. That's fast.

  Donal pulled himself back just as the elevator shot past him. Solid steel—moving steel—now filled the doorway, and he realized the disk was merely the top surface of a gigantic column thrusting upward in the vertical shaft.

  A disk stopped in the next elevator to his right, and a bell softly dinged. Donal stepped onto the disk, and it began to descend. The downward acceleration was not quite enough to induce sickness. Then it slowed, and came to a soundless halt.

  Here, arched corridors led off in three directions: two with blank stone floors, one carpeted. Donal remembered the instructions on the all-time pad.

  … go alone to find the minus-30th floor There, go to Director Braunes office….

  He followed the strip of carpet, slowing as he reached an open door. There was no sound of breathing from inside. Donal scanned the office, found some stationery, and pulled out his own pen.

  Guess I could buy a new one now.

  It was scratched, a pressurized steel pen filled with jellysquid ink, as cops preferred. The ink let them write on brick walls as easily as paper, while the steel casing formed a useful weapon, held in the fist. Now Donal used it to write Director Braune on an internal-mail envelope, crossing out the previous addressee's name.

  Then he went back out into the corridor, walked past several occupied rooms, and stopped at a pentagonal ceramic doorway. A metal holder held a label reading: Mrs. Sally Pritchell, secretary to followed by a blank space.

  Donal pressed his palm against the door, and it slid sideways into the wall. In front of him was a small room, with a gray-haired woman at a desk. Beyond lay the entrance to Director Braune's office.

  “I've got this document.” Donal held up the envelope. “They said I had to leave it in the director's office. I know he's just resigned, but—”

  He stopped as the woman—Sally Pritchell, according to the door tag—sniffed, then dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief that was already sodden.

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “But he didn't. It wasn't…”

  “Oh. You mean, it was a sudden resignation.”

  “Yes. The board … Dr. Grayfell didn't… I shouldn't say anything.”

  “No.” Donal put the envelope on top of a black filing cabinet. “You're not feeling well. I don't want to suggest”—pitching his voice low to form an imperative—“you're sick and very upset, and you need to go home now, Sally. Go on.”

  They'd covered the theory of covert entrancement in detective training at the Police Academy—just enough to prevent being the victim—and he'd seen Marines use it for interrogation, as well as amusement in off-base bars. All it had taken for him to become expert was death, resurrection, and a new sense of voice control. He wasn't sure he liked the effect his words produced, as if they had been iron commands.

  “I… Yes. Going home. Now.”

  She was unsteady as she stood. Donal helped her, took her coat from a hook, and escorted her from the office. He led her to one of the occupied rooms, where three younger women looked up from their desks.

  “Sally's unwell,” he told them. “Could you call a taxi, please? I'm sending her home.”

  “Oh. Of course—”

  Donal left her among concerned colleagues. He closed the door on them, then loped back to Sally Pritchell's room and went inside.

  Neat work. Like she wasn't upset enough already.

  But feeling bad for the woman wasn't going to help. Donal moved fast, found the button for the inner door, pressed it, and stepped quickly into the director's office. Inside, Donal spotted a wall-safe standing open, its interior gleaming and empty.

  “Shit.�
��

  Beyond stood a wide black desk, and behind that, a wide strip of window looking out onto a system of immense shadowed caverns. Rows of reactor piles hummed and pulsed with necrofusion power. Donal turned away.

  Concentrate.

  Perhaps there was a second, hidden safe. He scanned the room—as rich as Director Cortindo's place in the Downtown Complex, but without the exotic relics adorning the walls and display cases—seeing nothing obvious. Then it occurred to him that if ex-director Braune had two safes, they'd almost certainly have different combinations.

  So he went to the obvious safe, and checked the positions of the wheels. The topmost symbols were 3, then 8, pentangle, 5, talon (a hooked, stylized symbol), 2, 9, 1. It nearly matched the memorized combination, and when Donal moved the second wheel to 7, the lock loosened with a click. The code, the same as Donal had received from Commissioner Vilnar, had already worked for someone else.

  “Thanatos damn it.”

  The commissioner's orders had been to empty the safe; they said nothing about the nature of its contents. What should he look for? Casting around the room, he saw nothing obvious. Some textbooks, annual financial reports bound in pterashrike hide, a handmade card saying Happy Birthday, Granddad, a wall calendar, several—

  He stopped. On the calendar, today's date, Hextember 35, was marked with a blood-red cross, whereas other days bore small, neat annotations in purple ink. Had Braune known he would be kicked out today? Assuming it had been today. Did the date matter?

  There was a phone on the desk, and Donal considered doing the obvious and making a call. But Commissioner Vilnar had used a private all-time pad rather than normal channels, keeping contact off the books.

  So what should I do now?

  He walked to the wide window, and stared out into the caverns. The air seemed to shiver with dark waves, filled with complex traveling webs of shadow, more obtrusive than in the Downtown Complex, where the diva died.

  Pressing close to the glass, looking down, he could see a long pierlike walkway jutting into space. The walkway ended in a wide heptagonal platform, on which a group of people in expensive business suits had congregated around a complicated console. They were far below; any detail was impossible to see, but they looked like they would be there for some time.

  He glanced back at the doorway. There were no voices outside, but eventually someone would come, someone in a less fragile state of mind than the former director's secretary.

  Whatever they're doing below, that's the event marked on the calendar.

  Donal had no idea where the intuition had come from, yet he felt certain. Turning to the window once more, he pressed the edges, looking for catches. Nothing. Then he touched a glass disk set into the ledge, and the window panel in front of him shivered then liquefied, shimmering like a soap bubble. He pushed his hand through. The membranous window felt slick on his skin, remaining intact except for the circle enclosing his wrist.

  “This is insane.”

  Donal took hold, rolled sideways onto the ledge, and through the liquid barrier. There was a faint pop. Then he was clinging to rock-face, and the window to Braune's office was solid once more.

  Suicidally insane.

  He was on an exposed buttress. Crimping his fingers—hurry—he traversed, using rough-edged holds—before someone sees—until he had rounded an outer corner. Then he continued to where the buttress met the greater cavern wall, so he could descend unseen.

  Counterpressure held him in place as he looked down at the vertical drop.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Leaning back, allowing gravitational torque to push his shoe-soles harder against the stone, he began his descent.

  Time was distorted. Donal felt only seconds had passed by the time he stopped climbing downward and simply hung in place, level with the walkway some twenty feet around the corner. Trembling, his fingers like failing hooks, he edged sideways along the stonework, stopping when he reached the corner.

  The walkway extended out for some distance, ending on a platform that currently held a tall, polished, dark-gray metal apparatus on wheels. The casing was studded with dials and connectors, the whole thing about the size of a truck. Several men and women were looking over the machinery.

  “What is this reading here?” came a female voice from the other side of the apparatus.

  “See, if you check the sum of these four outputs—”

  Everyone was looking at the equipment, and the walkway close to the rock-face was clear of people. Still, if anyone turned around …

  Move now.

  He used plenty of lean-back as he traversed the rock-face, too fast for safety. Nearing the walkway's safety rail, he would have preferred to slow right down, but a footfall near the tall casing warned him of someone's approach. He let go of both handholds, pushing hard with his foot—

  Death.

  —and caught the railing, grabbing tight. He swung forward, knees bending as his feet struck the walkway's side, then used the rebound to vault over the rail and land in a crouch.

  A woman rounded the corner of the big generator.

  “Oh!”

  “Excuse me.”

  Donal pretended to tighten his shoelace, then straightened up. He brushed his tie as he walked past her, heading for the wider platform, where everyone else had gathered. There was a steel console connected by cables to the larger apparatus. Gray-haired men in suits nodded as a younger man operated controls.

  “—guaranteed full compatibility,” the operator was saying. “As a backup to your own grid, you've then got one hundred percent grid coverage, regardless of demand surges.”

  “Very diplomatic,” said a large-bellied man wearing a golden skull-and-Ouroboros tiepin. “You make no mention of our recent brownouts.”

  No one looked at Donal as he drew near.

  “Let me address that.” A man with cropped white hair gave a cough. “If you'd like to talk to our R&D mages, Dr. Grayfell, perhaps we can help you strengthen your existing infrastructure.”

  “I thought you were trying to sell us alternative power sources.”

  “Naturally”—with a smile—“that's our primary offer and main concern. It's the technology that you're seeing here that is proven and ready to ship.”

  Observing the twenty or so men and women on the platform, Donal saw that they belonged to two groups, obviously part of a corporate negotiation. The reason no one noticed him, he realized, was that each group assumed Donal was a member of the other party. He took care to stand in a neutral position.

  The woman who'd nearly bumped into Donal was still looking at him. She was dressed in a dark-olive skirt suit, the kind of thing that Laura might have worn—

  Damn it.

  Donal turned his attention back to the senior businesspeople.

  “—amortize the equipment? Perhaps a lease-back arrangement on the pipeline plant?”

  “That's what we need to cover in the boardroom afterward.”

  “Fair enough. I look forward to seeing your figures.”

  It sounded civilized. But Donal had been in Silvex City, and seen a power center in operation. Did the local Energy Authority people know exactly how the Illurian system worked?

  For Death's sake, they work with bones.

  But that didn't mean the locals knew or would approve of the way things happened in Illurium. Here, each reactor was filled with the howling bones of two thousand people—but those people were dead before becoming fuel, and surely that made all the difference.

  “The conglomeration does not truly think or feel anything.” Malfax Cortindo had told Donal. And: “That's what I'll tell anyone who asks me officially. You understand me, Lieutenant?”

  At the time, Donal had thought he understood perfectly. Now he realized how little he had perceived, how resonating necroflux replayed a chaos of fragmented thoughts and feelings and emotions laid down in the bones. No wonder psychiatric problems were rife among Energy Authority workers.

  “—ti
me,” Grayfell was saying now, “to repair to the boardroom? I believe we have a decanter of Pavelian ’32 waiting, along with luncheon.”

  “That sounds most pleasant,” answered one of the Illurian delegation. “Do lead on.”

  As the senior people headed back along the walkway, the more junior people—and Donal—moved aside. They fell in behind their superiors. Donal trailed the group, aware that the woman who'd noticed him earlier was still staring. She was clutching a clipboard now. Perhaps it held a list of visitors’ names.

  Behind them, the metallic-gray generator stood on the platform at the walkway's end. The apparatus was the size of a truck, mounted on wheels, currently locked in place with necromagnetic strips. There was a series of massive clips across a vertical seam, and one large silver switch, pointing horizontally.

  Donal headed toward it, walking fast.

  “Excuse me?” The woman advanced. “Sir? Would you mind telling me your—?”

  “Sorry.” Donal pretended to be startled, to spin on one heel, and trip. “Oops.”

  As he fell, he reached out for the silver handle, caught it, then thrust to one side, wrenching hard.

  “Accident,” he added. “My apologies.”

  “What the Hades have you done?” said a large man, red-faced and far too portly for physical violence. “Are you insane?”

  “Sorry.” Donal backed away. “But what's that?”

  The casing clicked.

  Surprise.

  Some of the delegation stopped. The most senior, well inside the concave area that led to the inner corridors and offices, were the last to turn around. The Illurians’ expressions tightened. A soft whispering exhalation of air announced the breaching of some kind of seal.

  One by one, the big clips snapped open. Then coldness washed over everyone nearby as the casing split along its vertical seam. Pale-blue light shone from inside.

  And one side of the casing shifted on extruded pistons, pushed back ten, then twelve feet from the remaining container, revealing what was inside.

  “Oh, Thanatos,” said someone. “Oh, no.”

  “What the Hades are they doing?”

  Inside the hollow generator, in slender steel frames, sat packed rows of shaven-headed children with closed eyes. Cables networked their skulls together, passing into an apparatus that formed the container's floor. The children's chests moved in slow, shallow synchrony.