Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  As if on cue the Spinel stepped closer to Saurebaras.

  “There is no need for that—” she began, pushing past the guard. Dumortier followed her back into the tunnel of sheets.

  “It won’t be necessary if you cooperate.”

  Saurebaras shifted her weight from one leg to the other.

  “Pleo Tanza was overcome by the effects of mild fan venom and injuries sustained during the sparring. I took her to the infirmary. She lay on a cot, thrashing about.” Saurebaras snapped her head and shoulders from side to side in demonstration. “And she was crying out for Cerussa.”

  “Who?”

  “Her twin sister. And the crystal nightingale.” The randomness of the second detail threw Dumortier for a moment. When he looked blank at the reference, Saurebaras sighed and hummed a few bars in a soft contralto. “From the song. Quite a popular one from Pre-Downturn.”

  “I wasn’t on Chatoyance back then.”

  “The lyric ends with lovers kissing in a corner of an abandoned T-Car station.”

  Music was a time machine for Dumortier, although one with imprecise effects. He recognised the song from the snippet, so evocative it was of the bygone carefree years before the bloat stage of Chatoyance. It had been too abstract for his taste. Specks of bamboo flute, dobro guitar and the titular birdsong dispersed through samples of ambient noises of empty Chatoyance stations at night, supported by an unhurried mid-tempo beat. Apt for listeners to project their own meanings onto, and he had no doubt that most of them did, back in the day. He dismissed the memory and returned to the conversation. “Was she discharged after treatment?”

  “Check with the Polyteknical infirmary.” Saurebaras tugged on one of the tunnel’s support cords as if to test it.

  “I did,” replied Dumortier. “There is no record for the discharge of Tyro Pleo Tanza.”

  “Then she died. I’ve been to the infirmary often. It’s more like a holding area for a morgue.”

  “No record of her death. Unlikely she gave you and two Spinels the slip?” It occurred to Dumortier that she was skirting around some dangerous issue. Who or what was she protecting? “In fact, your negligence in failing to follow up with her and her being at large incriminates you. This is still an ongoing accident investigation.”

  “Isn’t that easier in one of the reinforced station cells?”

  Dumortier blinked. “Kindly cooperate with Constabulary, madame. Don’t make me remind you of your… professional history. It won’t automatically waive your right to silence and counsel, but it won’t be easy on you.”

  “What, for failing to report an accident within the statutory six hours?” Saurebaras said with a small laugh.She made her way out of the tunnel and back into the bright light of the hall.

  “It puzzles me as to how a senior and experienced instructor suddenly loses control over a sparring session.”

  Saurebaras shrugged melodramatically. “Read the report and view the footage.”

  “I have.”

  “I’ll answer to Polyteknical.”

  “Injuries occur—murder, even—but not this. Where is Tyro Pleo Tanza?”

  “I took her to the infirmary. Exhaustion. And she had sustained some injuries.”

  “There is no record of her discharge. Or admittance.”

  As if on cue the Spinel stepped closer to Saurebaras. “For obstructing an investigation I could throw you into a quintuple-reinforced holding cell without—”

  “Laboradoresence,” mumbled Saurebaras.

  Dumortier’s experience told him to expect a fight about now. If Saurebaras resisted—and it would be three against one—there would be thirty seconds or a minute of a struggle until he placed the restraints on her.

  He blocked her on route to the double doors, and she responded with a sudden wave of her arm as though to dismiss him, then spun around 180 degrees and planted a kick in his chest. Gasping more out of surprise than pain, he fell on the floor and clutched at his heart.

  So much for experience.

  He saw his shock reflected in the Spinel guards’ faces.

  “That was a controlled kick,” said Saurebaras. “A goodwill gesture. Now get out of my way.”

  The Spinel charged at her. Saurebaras held one end of her fla-tessen shawl and cracked it like a bullwhip, making the other end wrap itself around the guard’s neck like a python. She reeled in the guard like a dog on a leash, who was struggling to pull the scarf off.

  “Listen to me, Dumortier.”

  He reached for his splinter heart, although this wasn’t a good time or place to discharge it: too many variables, and all of them with lethal or incapacitating outcomes. The second Spinel was already brandishing her standard issue flanged club. “Let her go first.”

  Saurebaras immediately obeyed, much to Dumortier’s surprise. The shawl relaxed its grip, although it remained around the Spinel’s neck.

  “Allow me to make your investigation easier. Gia’s so-called accident was no accident. Have you asked yourself why you were assigned to an accident investigation?”

  Dumortier didn’t respond as he slowly climbed to his feet.

  “And involving me, who nearly killed you three years ago?”

  “Go on, then. Why?”

  “You assume Tier Dwellers love their children.”

  “I don’t have time for non sequiturs.”

  “Could you entertain the possibility that the Aronts actually did not love their only child?”

  “I can,” he replied, to keep Saurebaras talking. “But how is it relevant here?”

  “Matriarch Aront paid me a visit before her daughter’s death.”

  “Checking on Gia’s academic or artistic progress?”

  “She doesn’t pay anyone a visit—she deems you worthy of what valuable time she has to spare. And the Matriarch also gifted me with this.” Saurebaras reached into the fold of her skirt, took out a small pale object and held it out: a flower made of dog claws.

  Blood rushing to Dumortier’s ears drowned out the far-off birdsong from the garden. The words ‘conspiracy to murder’ filled his mind. To receive the Aront’s unique calling card was to be marked for death.

  Dumortier felt for the cicada stud set into his collarbone and the muted electro-pulses of the device told him it was still in recording mode. The gesture did not go unnoticed by the Spinels, or by Saurebaras.

  “Her mother wanted Gia out of the way.”

  “That’s a very serious accusation.”He worked one of the studs off his sleeve and tossed it into the piste, immediately activating the screen. If he was going to get seriously injured or die here, at least he’d have footage.

  Saurebaras chose that moment to become shimmering chaos. The shawl unraveled with a fibrous snap as it separated the Spinel’s vertebrae. The red armour clattered as she tumbled in a limp pile, and the helmet skittered across the floor to stop at Dumortier’s feet.

  Saurebaras held her skirt out to one side and curtseyed at Dumortier as though for applause. Her fla-tessen fan slipped from the skirt’s folds, opening before it landed on the floor, a matte black wedge that began to spin on its own. It veered and shot towards the other Spinel and embedded in her calf, white spikes penetrating the armour plating.

  Saurebaras kept her head raised and her gaze on the screen. Her hand trembled as it held onto her skirt. Dumortier recognised from her rapidly blinking eyes and lips pressed tight that she was in a kind of trance but under increasing strain.

  “I want to thank you in advance, Dumortier, for helping me create a little spectacle. Your presence today sets another stage for me.”

  Saurebaras gathered her shawl, sprang up and headed towards the doors. Dumortier noticed her characteristic unwavering glide was now unsteady, but didn’t place too much hope in it. The injured Spinel was taking no chances, remotely shutting the hall doors.

  He reached into his coat and felt for the holster. Time to deploy the splinter heart.

  “No guns permitted in Polyteknical and in it
s surroundings,” the Spinel reminded Dumortier. Her voice wavered when she laid eyes on the weapon glinting under the hall lights. It was a more gun-shape than gun, a melding of barrel, muzzle and grip wrought by organic processes.

  “I’ll worry about regulations later. This isn’t a gun in the usual sense,” he replied in all seriousness as he checked the sights. Dumortier had discharged his splinter heart many times before and knew there were to be no clean angles. Via processes he never pretended to understand, the weapon inflicted subtle yet extensive damage on flesh and bone. Its glossy membranous cartridges burst open like seed pods from Hell, releasing tiny flechettes with large payoff.

  He took aim and felt the recoil jolting his arm. The splinter heart shot out a cluster of fine grey composite shards—lab-grown to pierce flesh and keep going through bone upon impact. Too late: Saurebaras executed a running leap and the shards missed her. They tumbled to the floor like metallic hail and she slipped through the narrowing gap between the doors.

  “Don’t touch it,” he told the Spinel, who was trying to pull off the fan. He whipped a forensic sac over the fan and prised it off. Blood seeped out of the wound. Despite the sac’s hermetic seal, he still felt the fan releasing more spikes under the translucent coating, and threw it onto the floor.

  The Spinel had made it to the door, grabbed both handles and wrenched them open. Dumortier activated the other stud and fastened it to his collarbone, calling for any backup patrol teams, even walkarounds on their beat. He would need a distraction, to buy some time before they arrived. The corridor better be empty now, he prayed as he stepped out of the fla-tessen hall.

  To his chagrin a group of students and staff was gathering around the malachite pillar. A glimpse of billowing shawl and pale hands caught his attention; Saurebaras was perched like a raven, low on the balustrade overlooking the garden. She fluttered one hand, then the other as she picked her way along the railing.

  He found her movements bizarre. It was almost ugly how random and chaotic they were. But they were enchanting, almost hypnotic, and he couldn’t look away. Dumortier was compelled to see her routine to its end, together with the other students and staff.

  They think she’s putting on a performance. He had to dispel the notion now.It wouldn’t matter what the crowd thought Saurebaras was doing if she decided to use them as a shield. As he manoeuvred towards her, Dumortier set the splinter heart to fire single shots, cursing as the slide bit into the skin between his forefinger and thumb. “All of you move! Stay down!” he yelled at the students.

  The command was unnecessary: the throng was parting at the sight of the approaching Spinel, with blood trickling down her leg and mace at the ready. He kept the splinter heart trained on Saurebaras, raising discordant screams from the crowd. The students nearest to him raised their hands and sleeves to protect their implants. Three Polyteknical staff tried to keep order and marshal the students away from the pillar and along the corridor.

  “She finally snaps and they send one Constabulary officer?” the staff member nearest to Dumortier asked, lowering her bejeweled white mask to reveal intricate meshwork embedded into the skin around her eyes, their golden irises rotating as they focused on him. In brutal contrast, a deep scar ran across one of her cheeks.

  So, the rumours weren’t true—the masks were removable. He focused on her lower face and forehead, the untouched segments of her humanity.

  “I warned the Central Education Committee of Saurebaras’s potential recidivism,” the staff member continued. “In typical fashion, they just said ‘no personal complaints were received by them, but they will pass mine on to the relevant body—’”

  “All of your students are at risk. I can’t guarantee their safety if they remain here,” Dumortier interrupted her.

  “My charges. I don’t just see them as students,” she corrected. “No excuses, how refreshing.”

  “And all of your implants.” Dumortier tried another tack as he prepared to take another shot. Saurebaras should be weakening by now. Calculating quickly, he went for higher ground and vaulted on top of the agate geode, lining up his shot.

  The Spinel was about to the swing the mace at Saurebaras, still moving erratically on the balcony rail. Her shawl split into four strands at its other end: one struck the guard’s head like a flail, knocking off her helmet. The Spinel’s head jerked back as Dumortier’s splinter heart shards caught in her throat, and she collapsed onto the floor.

  “Listen, Dumortier!” He thought he detected the strain in Saurebaras’s voice—not of exertion, but of urgency.

  Before he could take another shot, Saurebaras looked back and hurled a small black object at him. It flew towards him and knocked the splinter heart out of his grip, falling into the fountain below. His hand went numb, then started hurting all the way up to his elbow. Blood dropped from his fingers. He examined his hand and discovered five perforations in his palm. The fla-tessen caltrop had sunk its spikes into the skin and flesh before retracting.

  The end of the shawl wrapped itself around his wrist. Dumortier tumbled headfirst over the balustrade, but retained enough presence of mind to brace himself for the fall. With a splash he landed in the uppermost tier of the fountain and was about to right himself when Saurebaras gave the fla-tessen shawl another yank. He fell forward again, hitting the water of the next tier, and Saurebaras dragged him down the entire length of the fountain until he landed on his side, soaking wet, in the grass. Something gave way in his hip with a palpable crunch, and suddenly he could not feel his legs through the agony. It was worse than getting shot.

  His sodden coat weighed him down and he felt water seeping into the grass beneath him. His ear stud crackled, but it still picked up Saurebaras running to his side. She was welcome to finish him off; his body was too damned broken and heavy to do any fighting back. She tugged on the shawl, but Dumortier grasped it tenaciously. Weakened by its recent use, it tore off at his wrist, and he tightened his fist around the scrap of evidence.

  Renegade instructor and runaway student. Despite the pain, ideas and connections were already forming in Dumortier’s mind, slowly at first but definitely coalescing into a whole. Saurebaras had been waiting for a chance to act, for a breach in the dyke she had played a role in fortifying over the years.

  Hold off on the tyro, he recalled Katyal’s order.

  Invariably the frustration swelled up again, almost blocking out the fire from his hip. Saurebaras was untouchable because the Aronts still were.

  His ear stud crackled into life. Miraculously it was still working after his ordeal.

  “Nightingale,” muttered Dumortier to the garden, like a curse. Despite the recent commotion and onlookers milling around the edges, the Garden of Contemplation’s serenity remained intact. No one came to help him—although he did not blame them, after what they had just witnessed. It felt like he was dying.

  When the paramedics arrived and loaded him onto a stretcher, they heard him humming the snatch of song over and over again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE PENDANT OF Europan sea jade was obviously cursed. When the next potential customer insisted on proof of provenance, Setona decided she would tell them about the girl turning up in the fountain and ending up in her shop.

  Setona pressed her hand to her chest, where her real heart used to be during her modrani days, and took a very deep breath. She drew on a career’s worth of modrani experience in remaining poised under pressure:

  Focus on immediate details.

  At this moment they were not reassuring: streaks of dried blood around the girl’s lips, dyed hair shorn off at a weird angle. Her eyes would be very striking if they weren’t glazed over like an addict’s.

  Make a short list of them.

  Eyes, blood, hair, lips….

  Repeat this list, like a mantra.

  Eyesbloodhairlips… eyesbloodhairlips…

  The relaxation technique ceased to be effective when a small crowd began lining the edges of the piazza to w
atch her and Marsh. She flashed them her best wild-eyed smile; the Crocodile, she had called it. Used whenever a product launch got too frenzied, it contained both a threat and an invitation to stick around. Her gamble worked, at least for now. Unnerved by the triptych of incongruous figures arranged before the fountain, they gradually dispersed.

  “Don’t bring her inside my—” Setona began. Too late: the Cabuchoner had picked the girl up and set off before she finished speaking. He had other concerns on his mind, or he could afford kindness. Setona resented and admired that flexibility in him, but for now, she had other worries. An accident or murder victim would turn her shop into a crime scene. What if the girl lashed out and injured her or Marsh, because of the drugs still in her system? During these past years Setona had worked so hard to remain forgotten.

  Along with the rest of her peers, Setona had had a brilliant Act I; unlike them, she had eschewed a second one in talent management, or in outright rejection of the industry. If this move had earned her a reputation for being unambitious or directionless, she could live with her choice. She believed in the old modrani warning against post-career hubris: “Never let your ego empty your bank accounts.”

  Retail Sector 12 on Chatoyance had been perfect for her business. She had found its exuberance charming, enhanced by the piazza and the fountain. This animation had not curtailed her initial dread in opening her small business: the welling anxiety in the first month, the premature elation of the first quarter of sales, the torture of casual browsers who eventually decided not to come in, and the grim sinking feeling that she had made a mistake. Her ego had not emptied her bank accounts (which were assuredly full for years to come), but had sapped her spirit.

  But old habits and nostalgia still wouldn’t let her go. Setona had set up an undersea fantasy in a large tank in the window display. Neon-hued fish darted back and forth over a jagged bed of sand and coral fragments. The fish would be flash-frozen for storage at Shineshift and the water drained off. Marsh was more than welcome to eat the remaining sand with the coral. She grimaced at her choice of costume she had laid out on the platform earlier that morning: a shimmering mermaid’s tail made from the latest air-textiles, a wig of waist-length lilac hair, and a pair of scallop shells.