Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  CONSTABULARY FREQUENCIES NEVER failed to surprise Dumortier. Half the time he was surprised they were transmitting at all, and the other half he was surprised he could receive them.

  But din, static and chatter were companions to him. Beware of sudden silences. Loud sounds like explosions are more startling and effective if they’re preceded by silence.

  He stood in the middle of DryWare Market, trying to work out when the silence occurred before the trichome bomb had gone off. Had the perpetrators let the tension build, waiting for trading to reach its peak? Or was it fast and brutish? They could have played it either way. It depended on what they wanted to achieve: chaos or distraction.

  The bomb cleanup crew were finishing their rounds. There wasn’t much else to do after the casualties had been cleared—fourteen of them. Two had lost eyes but the rest were mostly minor injuries. No fatalities. Trichome bombs were more about noise and effect than injury. An old-fashioned nail bomb packed with new organic components, but only harmful to exposed skin.

  He examined the pitted section of wall facing him. The blast pattern radiated up and out from ground level in a wide fan shape, and just by studying it he could almost hear the bomb go off. The needle-shaped white urtic had now fallen to the ground and faded to a dull transparency. He granted the bomber full credit for style.

  A simple accident during a fla-tessen training session; if only the outcome of this case could be so parochial. He wanted to believe that if it became complicated enough, it’d be taken out of his hands. Now he was nursing some lukewarm algae coffee and a dull headache, along with an ache from his mending hip.

  His supervisor at Khrysobe Spaceport would have told him, “Dumortier, yours is a stubbornness I can’t dismiss.”

  Yet he had done so, along with Dumortier.

  The Cabuchoner—the cargo squirrel—had come to DryWare, according to the surveillance network along the Canal That Quenches All Thirst. He had been spotted taking the footpath directly to the southwest sector. The surveillance network was often overlooked as clunky and old-fashioned: merely a few canal police officers in plainclothes, positioned along the footpaths and banks.

  ‘Merely’ was not how Dumortier would describe them. Their low-key methods were old-fashioned, but like the filters used to treat canal water, the officers funnelled and caught unwanted substances via nothing more elaborate than mechanical efficiency.

  But how had they missed Trooper Devinez? A filter cannot filter itself, Dumortier had reasoned after his initial enquiries had gone nowhere.

  He forced down the rest of the algae coffee and pocketed the vial, not wishing to contaminate the scene. A mirror-faced cleanup bot, a heavy-duty analogue to Desk Sergeant’s model, raised an arm studded with yellow armour plates to give the other officers the all-clear signal.

  Dumortier figured the moment of silence occurred in the vicinity of the cargo squirrel, the obvious outsider. DryWare had its share of intergang skirmishes before, but a trichome bomb was downright vulgar to all sides. He trusted them to play with as much fairness as gangs could muster for each other, because navigating rifts was part of their existence.

  But no such treatment for the Cabuchoner. A fissure is a line of breakage which occurs as a result of surface tension: his presence here broke that tension.

  Dumortier walked away from the blast site and past piles of abandoned wares, now recreating John CaMarr-Schist’s morning foray into the market. Being an art thief meant a curator’s eye; junk would not interest him. Dumortier did not put it past him to have stolen something from Jean-Ling Setona and be trying to resell it in DryWare.

  “The boy from off-Chatoyance was looking for an evaluator,” called out a trader.

  Know your witness type. The main trick with self-volunteering eye-witnesses was to pretend to be occupied by something happening in the distance—or at least look past their faces, if indoors. Engage directly and they decide you’ve agreed to accept their information in exchange for something else. Dumortier noticed the man’s ill-fitting red leather jacket and knew he wanted a new garment: preferably Dumortier’s coat.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He had something special, and he was dumb enough to come here with it. He got desperate, went into the old Arcades.” The trader wiped his hand on a patch of dried blood under his chin, then pointed at a sealed-up archway in the wall in front of Dumortier. “Not sure if he came out in one piece.”

  “So what did he have on him?”

  The man shrugged and worked his jaw like words were lodged under his tongue. “I told you enough. Constabulary ought to compensate me for losing a day’s trading. The bomb was no problem, we can deal with that sort of thing ourselves. It’s you indigos showing up with your bots and armoured cars that killed business, for today and tomorrow.”

  Dumortier nodded and, after a second of consideration, took out a roll of uta from his pocket. “Thank you, and take this. You can’t have my coat.”

  The trader whistled in delight: he had not expected hard cash. He grabbed the roll and returned to the remains of DryWare, pace quickening. Clearly his day was not a total loss.

  The sealed-up archway was nondescript enough. Dumortier heard wind blowing from behind the hoarding and knocked twice on it. Hollow sounds, followed by furtive movements like footsteps pacing back and forth. Who were these evaluators hiding from, conducting business from inside a failed project? Probably nothing more business savvy than drug pushers or squatters.

  He lifted one corner of the hoarding and peered inside. Much as he had expected, although he’d thought the Korbuhauss Incorporated project had never gone past the planning stage. He switched on his recording stud and stepped inside. The hoarding snapped shut behind him.

  Dumortier gripped his shrapnel heart but did not take it out of its holster. His enhanced hearing picked up another rush of air, but it was not wind. Two incoming objects. He sidestepped and they hit the hoarding with a pair of thuds. He lifted his gaze and saw stars—but not in the idiomatic sense. Two white, pearlescent five-pointed star-shaped weapons, stuck in the hoarding at face height.

  “Is that all?” yelled Dumortier, drawing his shrapnel heart. The dimness in the Arcades concealed as well as it obscured.

  A woman stepped out of the shadows, and he kept the shrapnel heart trained on her. The familiarity of her confounded him; the bejewelled white mask covering her eyes, the golden irises.

  “Leave,” she said with none of the verbose officiousness she had used outside the fla-tessen hall in Polyteknical.

  “You attacked first.”

  Keep her talking: the recording stud was still on.

  “I did not,” she replied. “The stars are made to attack on their own.”

  Sudden tapping on the hoarding behind him. Without looking around, Dumortier put his hand on it as though to quell it. It was really to calm himself: the last thing he needed was the attention of people outside.

  The woman had vanished, retreating farther into the Arcades.

  The stars waved their free arms at him, with the nearest one straining to touch his hand like the predatory sea creatures they resembled. What he had mistaken for tapping were the stars trying to wrench themselves out of the hoarding, making it shake with their attempts. To hell with checking the shrapnel heart’s vicinity settings and trying to be discreet. With a mixture of fear and revulsion he fired at them.

  The compacted salt darts shattered the hoarding, which collapsed under its own weight, revealing the original archway. Dumortier waited for the fumes to clear before he stepped through. He hoped there were large enough fragments of those stars to analyse, as he called for an available forensic technician to come with extra forensic sacs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PLEO GRIPPED THE rusted stair railing so hard a bolt came loose. She felt like she was flying apart or close to collapse. She shut her eyes, opened them, saw the hooded figure still at the bottom of the stairs, and then shut them again.

  A d
raft entered the atrium. The glass prisms quivered and chimed in the chandeliers still hanging from the ceiling. She could bring one of them crashing down onto the figure. But no, putting it out of action wouldn’t change the past. Cerussa was dead, that was irrevocable. The hooded figure couldn’t be a Charon; they were confined to the canals.

  This thing had invaded her daylight and laid siege to the waking realm.

  This eidolon. It was an eidolon.

  That gradual recognition calmed her somewhat, but did not help her deal with its presence.

  Everyone knew the rumours. Tier Dwellers used eidolons, the animated likenesses of dead people, to strike fear into the hearts of their victims. Destroy one and they send another. And another. Usually, if the Aronts want to kill you, they deliver one of those dog claw flowers. She, a child of miners, was apparently not worth the warning.

  She was getting a glimpse of her role in their plans. A symptom of a need that can find no satisfaction via normal outlets. Set up a fla-tessen accident and frame her for Gia’s murder, because Gia knew too much about the lie that was her existence.

  But Pleo had an advantage over them—with no reputation to safeguard, she did not have to move in secret.

  She felt this part of their plan lacked detail. A strand in their web which would compromise the whole. If it came loose, the Aronts had assumed it was of little consequence; they would have found another victim to frame for Gia’s murder.

  Yet Pleo was proving to be of more than a little consequence. To drive her insane or to suicide, the eidolon sent by the Aronts would have to bear a better resemblance to Cerussa, not wear shapeless hooded garments.

  She had to stop recoiling from its presence, go down the stairs and meet it on its terms. In her mind’s eye she drew back its hood and demanded answers.

  The figure moved a step forward as soon she thought that. She backed away from the railing, but the figure did not advance up the stairs. Pleo watched and waited. The sun light from the ceiling dimmed and, for a second, cast a shadow over the figure.

  Pleo averted her gaze and scanned the atrium again. The shadow disappeared as a cloud passed in front of Gachala but another shadow had replaced it. It flitted across the wall of panelscreens, not cast by anything in the atrium she could see. The shadow stayed at the edge of her vision, elusive.

  Thoughtforms, Saurebaras had told her in the multipurpose hall. ...you will never possess grace or fluidity. But you are quite, quiteformidable.

  Pleo tried to recall fla-tessen techniques for deep breathing and improving concentration, but they had no effect on the shadow being. She walked up several stairs to stand under the skylight, in the partially remembered prayer ritual to Gachala.

  “Let the light from The Emerald Sun and Shield pierce the darkness of doubt, loss, despair and so on, within you.”

  The figure moved again, but Pleo saw something resolve and shimmer into focus behind it. Like gazing into the back of a metal spoon, Pleo saw the shadow was now humanoid, a distorted version of herself. She felt no shock or disgust, only a dispassionate acceptance. Like a projector had been turned off, her image went to shadow again.

  So here was the trick: visualise light beaming through her body from the head down, see the thoughtform. Look away and it turned to shadow. Repeat as necessary.

  “Peel back the hood,” ordered Pleo. She knew she didn’t have to speak, but it felt right to do so.

  As if tugged by an invisible string, the eidolon’s hood fell back. Pleo steeled herself to confront a skull or the death mask face of Cerussa. Instead, a metal mesh covered the face. The hair had been shaved, and the skin of its scalp was grey and dry.

  This wasn’t the same body that went after Pleo in Temple Plaza. Something about its stance nagged at her. Piqued and no longer scared, she went down the stairs to take a closer look at it.

  “Who did this to you?” No response, but Pleo was not expecting one. “The Aronts? The other Dwellers?” Then it hit her, stark and blinding as though a rock had smashed through the skylight. “Those vultures have been taking Nosebleeds, bodies from the canals. That’s what eidolons are.”

  Pleo circled the figure and on the nape of its neck was a familiar mark. It had been wine-coloured when she noticed it back in Constabulary’s main station. Now it was blue on pale grey with decomposition.

  She reached out and touched her index finger to the birthmark, and then extended her forcep. Some layers of skin stuck to the tip, giving lie to the possibility that Trooper Devinez was still alive.

  Pleo sounded like a stranger to herself, worn down so much that she was speaking at half-speed. “I killed you, too, officer.” She put the hood back over the head as a mark of respect and rested her hand on the shoulder. “I know you’d tell me that it wasn’t my fault, but you got dragged into this all because I couldn’t shut up. I’m so sorry.”

  What had been Trooper Devinez stirred under her hand. Pleo put an arm around the waist and tried to lift her. She was heavier than Cerussa.

  “You need Constabulary,” said Pleo after quick reconsideration. Carrying another body to Leroi Minor Canal was out of the question without the protection of anonymity. “They’d know what to do for you. I can’t help, but I’ll wait and make sure they collect you.”

  A light blinked red on the reception counter. She had missed it on her way in. Emergency direct Constabulary line. All calls are guaranteed anonymous, said the scratched and peeling label. Pleo was surprised it still worked after all these years. They would send a Walkabout or a junior officer on patrol; someone who’d recognise her but be too flabbergasted to think or act properly. And she could offload the imitation synthamber cube onto them as well, then run off. She flipped the toggle and heard analogue crackles and pops as if the system was waking up after sleeping for a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE PARTY WAS an affront to good taste, even more than they usually were. A stylised bust of Iganzia Madrugal carved from pallasite watched over her husband’s guests from a pedestal at the entrance. A light fixture of large delicate golden hoops hung from the ceiling. The walls and floors of the party annexe on the Madrugal Tier had been temporarily covered with nacre filler to give the impression the guests were enclosed in a giant oyster. Light diffused off the smooth surfaces but the floor was slippery.

  In full swing, the party proclaimed life had to carry on regardless of tragedy. And there was only one tragedy on everyone’s lips.

  “A terrible thing to happen. Losing an only child.”

  “She wasn’t their daughter.”

  “Adopted?”

  “Much worse—a clone!”

  “Only rumours,” Madrugal tsked. He was the model of graciousness and expected some back from his guests. “Dismissed domestic staff spread many rumours when they’re disgruntled.”

  Madrugal’s party took its guests away from formalities and their cosseted lives and into a place with a different register. Registering a welcome sensation of lassitude, Saurebaras overheard the discussions: a defence of the public parks on Cabuchon against the alleged superior beauty of the vertical gardens on Steris; exchanges of opinions on the merits of reopening the Archives. These details swirled around her, making her temporarily forget about her task at hand.

  She studied the guests and so far, was convinced she was intruding on an alien biosphere. Who put this glittering assembly in charge? Talk of politics was absent.She recognised some former members of the Cabuchon Corund.

  Under the weight of so much embellishment and excess, the high ceiling of the party annexe had sagged over time. Striations and pockmarks scattered across it where past indoor fireworks had left their marks. Repairs had been carried out—the sort of work that could be done discreetly—but not enough.

  The ceiling’s condition made Saurebaras suddenly conscious of the energy she had expended in resisting Tier Dweller influences since she arrived on the tier. She could give up hiding and give in to exhaustion, become the resident fla-tessen dancer h
ere. Madrugal would be more than welcoming.

  She was perched on the steps to a viewing gallery. She wore a sleeveless black dress mosaiced with tiny white stars to match her fla-tessen caltrop, and a spare red shawl. Her hair was held back with a jewelled lattice of long hairpins. Saurebaras decided to nod back if any guests greeted her. So far there were more nervous glances than hellos.

  “Don’t be intimidated,” someone joked about her presence. Cue a smattering of nervous laughs. Saurebaras stood up, and even that much movement sent a group scurrying for cover behind a row of long tables.

  At least Madrugal couldn’t say she didn’t try to be social. She went to prepare for her dance in the gallery. All awareness had to be set aside when she abandoned her entire self to Flow.

  The gallery overlooked Chatoyance, the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ’Cinth and the surrounding canal network. Saurebaras checked her appearance in the windows. The jewels in her hair coalesced with the lights in the distance. She was satisfied she looked quite beautiful and formidable tonight, like a Tagmat warship waiting in dry dock.

  Formidable. She’d last said the word to Tyro Pleo Tanza. So far Saurebaras had heard nothing about her, which was a relief. No news was good news.

  She peered out of the gallery. A dance floor had been set up in the centre of the annexe. Once again she checked the pins in her hair were secure. After all, she was going to leap from the top of the stairs and through the hoops of the light fixture.

  Choreography was like trying on a costume, you had to shift around to make it fit your body. There were two ways of going about recycling an old dance routine: the first was step by step, just as it was. Don’t let several glasses of Catru Estate wine be your substitute for preparation.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we’re all privileged…”

  The second way was to make it suit the present you.

  Stating the obvious. Saurebaras tuned out the rest of Madrugal’s speech and introduction.