by Various
‘Because you might lead him to me,’ Sitrus said, the smile Linder had pictured so recently visible on his face as he stepped off the ladder into the gloom-shrouded tunnel. ‘You really are out of your depth here, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am!’ Linder snapped. ‘I’m a scribe, not some dreg from the underhive! I’m not used to this kind of thing.’
‘You seem to have more of a knack for it than you think,’ Sitrus said. ‘Which is why I took the risk of bringing you here.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I was chasing you,’ Linder said.
Sitrus smiled again. ‘It saved a lot of explanation. If I’d approached you in the open, you’d start asking questions, and we’d still be talking when Feris’s plodders turned up. But I had intended getting a lot closer to this little bolthole before I let you see me.’ He nodded appreciatively. ‘You’re full of surprises, Zale.’
‘Then I’m not the only one.’ Linder fell into step with his friend, strolling along the dank utility duct as though they were ambling through a garden together. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Keep my head down, and wait for Feris to die of old age.’ Sitrus smiled again. ‘I set up a nice new life for myself before I erased the old one. I’ve got money, and connections, and I can well afford a juvenat or two.’
‘Then why do you want to talk to me?’ Linder asked, as they descended a ramp into a vaulted brick gallery lined with humming power relays.
‘Because I trust you,’ Sitrus said, ‘and you were able to find Milena. I’d like you to pass on a message for me.’
‘Of course,’ Linder said. ‘She’s worried sick about you.’
‘Then you won’t mind putting her mind at rest. Just tell her I’m safe, and I’ve left the hive. Can you do that?’
‘Consider it done,’ Linder said. They were crossing a deep channel of lichen-encrusted brick, along which some thick tarry liquid flowed sluggishly into the distance, their footsteps ringing on the metal mesh bridge spanning it. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘I doubt it,’ Sitrus said, the half-contemptuous smile back on his face. ‘You’re already sticking your neck out more than you’re comfortable with.’
‘I’ll decide what I’m comfortable with,’ Linder snapped. For the last year he’d been living outside the shadow cast by his friend, and he’d forgotten how annoyingly superior he could sometimes seem.
‘Good for you.’ Sitrus stopped walking, and looked at him appraisingly in the light from a nearby glow-globe. They’d reached a nexus of tunnels, half a dozen radiating from the circular chamber they found themselves in. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. ‘There are plenty more like Milena, you know. Desperate, with nowhere to turn; and I can’t help them anymore. But if you’re willing to take the risk, you could.’
‘Me?’ For a moment Linder was too stunned even to speak; when he forced the syllable out, it sounded more like a strangulated gasp than an intelligible word.
Sitrus nodded. ‘You could give them their lives back, Zale.’ Then he shrugged. ‘Somebody’s life, anyway. It’s got to be better than the one they have now.’
‘Falsify records?’ Linder felt nauseous at the very idea. ‘No, I couldn’t.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you could.’ Sitrus gave him the look again, and a flare of resentment took Linder by surprise. It had been like that for as long as he could remember, Sitrus taking it for granted that he lacked the guts to follow where he led.
‘Suppose I was able to help,’ he said, surprising himself almost as much as Sitrus, judging by the unfamiliar expression of astonishment on his friend’s face. ‘How would I go about it?’
‘You’d have to go through me,’ Sitrus said. ‘At least to begin with. I’ve got the contacts in place, and the dispossessed trust me.’ He looked at Linder appraisingly again. ‘No offence, Zale, but these are damaged people, who don’t give their confidence easily. You’ll have to earn it.’
‘None taken,’ Linder said, before honesty compelled him to add, ‘I’m not promising to do it, Harl. But I will think about it.’
‘That’s all I can reasonably expect.’ Sitrus clapped him playfully on the back. ‘You’re a good man, Zale. I know you’ll make the right choice.’
‘I hope so.’ Linder coughed uncomfortably. ‘When I do decide, how do I let you know?’
‘Ask Milena to hang something red from the second-floor balcony. When I hear it’s there, I’ll arrange a meeting, and we can discuss the details.’
‘Something red. Right.’ Linder nodded.
‘Good.’ Sitrus turned away, then paused, and indicated one of the tunnel mouths facing them. ‘Head down that way for about three hundred metres, and you’ll find a green access hatch. It opens into the tertiary storage area of the scriptorium.’ Then he smiled again, the familiar mocking expression returning to his face. ‘So you would have had time for that caffeine you were thinking about after all.’
Then he was gone, only the fading echo of his footsteps remaining.
‘I’m a little disappointed,’ I said, strolling into Linder’s cubicle unannounced. ‘I thought we had an agreement.’
‘An agreement?’ he responded, setting aside the hardprint he’d been annotating, with a deliberation which made it plain my visit was less of a surprise than I’d hoped.
I nodded, taking up my former position against the door. I didn’t think he’d make a run for it, but there was no harm in closing off the option. ‘To inform me if you heard from Harl Sitrus. I could count on it, apparently.’
‘As you can see,’ he returned, ‘I’m rather busy. And I don’t recall agreeing to speak to you immediately.’
‘Fair enough,’ I conceded. ‘I should have emphasised the urgency of the matter. But you don’t deny you spoke to him this morning?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he returned levelly.
‘And the substance of the conversation?’
‘Was personal.’ The fractional hesitation was enough to betray that he was holding something back, but they always do at first. ‘He asked me to reassure Miss Dravere that he’s safe and well, which I agreed to do.’
‘How kind.’ I shifted the focus of the questions. ‘And did you discuss the charges against him?’
Linder nodded, reluctantly. ‘We did. It seems I owe you an apology.’
‘Accepted, of course,’ I assured him. ‘So he admitted it?’
‘He told me he’d falsified a few records. As you can imagine, it came as rather a shock.’
‘I imagine it did,’ I said, trying to sound sympathetic. ‘And was he any more specific than that?’
‘He said he’d been giving the identities of people killed in the war to destitute refugees. I can’t condone it, but he does seem to have been acting out of a misguided sense of altruism.’
‘Then it seems he’s been a little selective with his recollections,’ I replied, wishing there was somewhere else to sit. ‘Did he mention how we got on to his activities in the first place?’
Linder shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘That didn’t come up in the conversation,’ he admitted.
‘No,’ I said, ‘somehow I didn’t think it would. It was when a man named Werther Geist returned to Kannack a couple of months ago, after an absence of nearly three years. Geist’s quite wealthy as it happens, with interests all over Verghast, and the last anyone heard of him, he was visiting Vervunhive. So of course he was listed among the missing.’ I paused, groping automatically in my pocket for a packet of lho-sticks, before remembering I was definitely giving them up again. Probably a bad idea to light one up surrounded by a million tonnes of paper anyway. ‘The thing of it was, he left a couple of hours before the Ferrozoican attack, and ended up in Hiraldi, where he got mobilised along with a whole bunch of the local auxiliaries. And once the security situation eased, he got kicked back into civilian clothes
again. Are you with me so far?’
Linder nodded. ‘So when he returned to Kannack, he found another Geist already living in his house?’
‘Got it in one,’ I told him. ‘But the thing is, they could both prove they were the genuine Geist. In the end we had to run a genetic comparison to find out who the imposter was.’
‘Which I take it you did,’ Linder said, sounding genuinely interested.
I nodded. ‘The really interesting thing was who he turned out to be. He was a refugee, right enough. But from Ferrozoica.’
I watched Linder’s face crumble. He shook his head. ‘That can’t be right. Harl would never help one of them.’
‘But he did. I can show you the transcripts if you like.’ In the end I did, just to prove the point, but I could see at the time he believed me. ‘Once he realised we were going to turn the case over to the Inquisition, our suspect got positively voluble. Laid out the whole thing for us step by step. What Sitrus was doing, and how much he charged for the privilege.’
‘How much?’ Linder was getting angry again, but it didn’t seem directed at me this time.
‘Ten per cent of the assets the new identity had access to. Seems like a bargain to me,’ I said.
‘And how many ten per cents do you think he collected?’ Linder asked, his voice thickening.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I admitted. ‘I suspect his lady friend was one, but I can’t prove it.’
‘Then why haven’t you arrested her?’ Linder asked.
‘Because the Arbites isn’t the Inquisition,’ I explained. ‘We serve the law, and we operate within the letter of it at all times. Without evidence, I’ve no grounds to detain her. I’ve got a list of names as long as your arm who reappeared suddenly after being presumed dead, but I can’t move against any of them either.’
‘So you need Harl,’ Linder said.
‘I do.’ I nodded slowly. ‘And I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Thank you,’ Milena said. She was smiling, but there were tears on her face. ‘Just to know he’s all right...’
Linder shuffled his feet, uncomfortable with the display of emotion. ‘I’m sure you’ll see him again soon,’ he said awkwardly.
‘I don’t have a soon,’ Milena said, matter-of-factly.
‘I’m sorry?’ Linder felt his face twist in a frown of confusion.
‘I’m dying, Zale. For Throne’s sake, haven’t you worked it out? I was only a couple of kilometres from a nuclear explosion!’
‘The radiation,’ Linder said, with sudden understanding.
‘That’s right.’ Milena nodded. ‘I’m getting the best care money can buy, but all it can do in the end is manage the pain.’
‘How long?’ Linder asked, regretting the question at once. But Milena didn’t seem to mind.
‘Who knows?’ She shrugged. ‘None of us do really. But I definitely won’t see the end of the year.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Linder took her hand, hoping the gesture would convey what he couldn’t find the words for. She smiled wanly, and returned the pressure for a moment, before withdrawing it.
‘Thank you. Come to the funeral, if you can stand it. I’d like to think I’ll have a friend there now Harl’s gone.’
‘I will,’ Linder said. He probably hesitated after that, conscience, duty and friendship contending for the last time within him. Then he went on. ‘Do you have something red in the house?’
Sitrus hadn’t mentioned how he intended getting in touch again, so when a standard missive capsule dropped from the pneumatic tube over his desk, Linder’s first thought was that it was simply another piece of paperwork to deal with. Only when he unrolled the scrip inside did he discover otherwise.
Tunnels behind the scriptorium, he read. The message was unsigned, but the handwriting was unmistakably Sitrus’s. His heart hammering, he left the cubicle.
It took him several minutes to reach the green access hatch he remembered; when he did so it was ajar. Pulling it open enough to admit himself, he scrambled through, then drew it almost closed again behind him, leaving only a faint filament of light to sketch its position in the wall.
‘Harl?’ Only echoes answered him, chasing one another down the dimly lit passageways. Then he saw the fresh impression of an arrow, scored into the crumbling brickwork opposite the hatchway. It pointed in the opposite direction to the section he’d traversed before, but the corridor was broad and high enough to walk down unobstructed, so he followed the mute instruction without hesitation.
After a few moments it opened out into a wide, circular chamber, with passageways leading off from it at the cardinal points of the compass. It was high, with a ceiling of domed industrial brick some forty or fifty metres overhead, and a series of galleries circled the walls, connected by a pair of spiralling staircases which mirrored one another all the way up the shaft. Each gallery also gave on to a number of tunnel mouths, four or six generally, although a couple seemed to have as many as eight.
‘You took your time,’ Sitrus said, in what seemed no more than a normal conversational tone. Fooled by the acoustics, Linder glanced around, expecting to find his friend a few paces away; only when the words were followed by a chuckle of amusement did he look up, to find him leaning casually on the balustrade of a gallery three levels above.
‘I came as quickly as I could,’ Linder replied, without raising his voice either. The cavernous space lent it a faintly echoing timbre, but it carried clearly. He began to walk towards the nearest staircase. ‘Interesting place for a meeting.’
‘It works well,’ Sitrus said. ‘Plenty of exits if you didn’t come alone.’ He was strolling casually as he talked, keeping the width of the chamber between them, and scanning the tunnel mouth behind Linder with wary eyes.
‘Who would I bring?’ Linder asked.
‘Well, it did cross my mind you’d invite Feris,’ Sitrus said.
Linder began to climb the stairway. ‘He came to see me. Same old story, with a few fresh embellishments. I think he was hoping I’d turn you in.’
‘More than likely.’ Sitrus began to climb the steps on the other side, maintaining the distance between them. ‘So you thought about what I said.’
‘I did.’ Linder reached the first gallery, and began to circle it, tilting his head back to keep his friend in sight. ‘But I’m still a little unclear about something.’
‘And what might that be?’ Sitrus asked, a wary edge entering his voice.
‘Whether helping Milena was really the first time you’d falsified records. I checked her new idents, and the substitution was flawless.’
‘I’d massaged a few files before,’ Sitrus admitted, unabashed. ‘It’s easy once you know how. I’m surprised everyone doesn’t do it.’
Linder fought down his instinctive revulsion, keeping his voice as calm as he could, thanking the Emperor for the echoes which helped him to conceal his feelings. ‘And what files would those be? Your own personal ones?’ Which would explain Sitrus’s rapid rise to a position of influence within the Administratum.
‘Of course,’ Sitrus admitted. ‘You know how it is. You need every little edge you can get if you want to get on.’
‘And any others?’ Linder persisted.
‘A few. I smoothed a few career bumps for you, for instance.’
‘Me?’ This time Linder wasn’t quite able to conceal his shock, prompting another indulgent chuckle from above.
‘You surely didn’t believe you got where you are on merit, did you?’
‘It had crossed my mind,’ Linder said, refusing to rise to the bait. Sitrus was goading him, that was all, trying to assess his trustworthiness. ‘But if you helped, I won’t be resigning on principle.’
‘Good man,’ Sitrus said. ‘Anything else bothering you?’
‘Just one thing,’ Linder said, starting up the next staircase. ‘Werther
Geist. Did you know you were helping a Ferrozoican?’
Sitrus shrugged. ‘Omelettes and eggs, Zale. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do.’ Linder shook his head. ‘You know the worst part?’
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’ Sitrus was moving more quickly now, towards a tunnel mouth. It was now or never.
‘I wanted to believe you.’ Linder drew the little pistol Milena had given him. ‘However convincing Feris was, I kept telling myself that at least you meant well.’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then, shall I?’ The smile was back on Sitrus’s face. ‘I knew you’d be too spineless to go through with it. But I let myself hope a little too. So much we could have done together, Zale; so much money we could have made.’ He waved, mockingly. ‘Enjoy your files; it’s all you were ever really fit for.’
‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ Linder shouted, seeing his former friend about to flee. Footsteps were hurrying along the tunnel behind him, and with a surge of relief he realised I’d got his message after all.
‘Of course you will,’ Sitrus said mockingly, turning to leave.
Linder never remembered firing the gun in his hand; just a loud report, which deafened him for a moment, and a jolt as though someone had punched him in the arm. To this day I’m convinced he never intended to hit his former friend, just startle him, but the tech-priest’s blessing must have been a strong one; because, when he looked again, Sitrus was staggering, an expression of stunned disbelief on his face.
‘Harl!’ Linder ran for the stairs, as Sitrus took a couple of steps towards the nearest tunnel mouth, and collapsed to the floor. By the time I joined them, Sitrus’s face was grey, and he was fighting for breath.
‘Hell of a time to grow a backbone, Zale,’ he said, the sardonic smile flickering on his face for the last time.
Linder turned an anguished face in my direction. ‘Call a medicae!’ he implored.
‘On the way,’ I said calmly, although if the voices in my comm-bead were right about their location, they’d find nothing but a corpse when they arrived. I knelt on the grubby brickwork, next to Sitrus. ‘How many other Ferrozoicans did you give new identities to? You know every damn one of them will be tainted by Chaos. Do you want to face the Emperor with that on your conscience?’