Curse of the Purple Pearl

by Adrian Speed

“In the city of Los Angeles in the early twenty-first century where it is warm and sunny almost every day of the year is it not the case that some men and women often wear swimming clothes at all times?” asked Sir Reginald. “Surf-board shorts and bikini-atoll swimming pieces?”

  “Well, I've never been to LA, but...” I struggled for words. “I guess in some areas, I mean...down by the beach. At least, Hollywood would have us believe that's what LA is like.”

  “And yet as little as one hundred years before it would have caused a scandal,” Sir Reginald drained his teacup. “I remember times when even being able to see the shape of a woman's leg was the height of depravity.” Sir Reginald rested his teacup on the armrest of the bench. “Which was utter hypocrisy because—”

  “The point is...” I muttered while the man on the other side of the plaza took his drink and turned round. He noticed our stares and gave us a wave. “At the very least it shouldn't be skin coloured.”

  “On that my dear, you have my complete agreement.” Sir Reginald shuddered and turned away, focusing his gaze on the distant monorail trains. “You know, I have been thinking.” Apparently without noticing Sir Reginald had slipped into Latin.

  “Er, what about?” I said, also in Latin, struggling to follow.

  “That smell of lard, on the legionary,” Sir Reginald said slowly, as if the thoughts he was trying to put into words were too delicate to grasp tightly. “Lard was sometimes used as a base for Roman face make-up.”

  “As a base? You mean, they would, like, grind up powder and mix it with lard?”

  “Yes,” he said, continuing his thoughts in English, bumped there by my clumsy Latin. “All manner of chemicals could be mixed with it, charcoal, ochre, white lead, cinnabar.”

  “Urgh.”

  “Other recipes called for horse manure, some recipes called for worse,” Sir Reginald shrugged and squinted off into the distance, almost as if he could see the answer out there in the city. “Lead and lard.”

  “Well we've already proved it wasn't lead poisoning.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Sir Reginald snapped back to reality and turned to me. “But it was the guard on the door who smelt of lard – a trace of lard.”

  I put the pieces together. “Such as the small amount that might be left by a kiss?”

  “Exactly,” Sir Reginald clapped his hands. “We couldn't find any gold or extra silver on him because he had been bribed with something both infinitely more valuable and completely worthless. The attention of a pretty woman.”

  “Well, he could have just sneaked away from his post to—”

  “No, no, this is the thing, this is the very thing,” Sir Reginald slapped the bench making it ring. “Roman make-up smells ghastly because it's made of lard or horse manure or even worse. And so to cover it up a fine Roman lady coats herself in perfume. You smelt Lucilla, did you not? She reeked of flowers.”

  “Yes, OK...”

  “So, why would a woman wear make-up but not perfume? So that she could be beautiful but not recognisable by her scent,” Sir Reginald wagged a finger. “Oh, to be sure, horse manure and lard and so on are very identifiable scents, but they are common. When one smells horse manure or lard one does not immediately think 'Aha! Clearly a woman has been here!' do they? And the smell of the make-up would only be noticeable if someone got close, close enough to kiss, while perfume's purpose from the moment of creation is to linger. The only good reason for that legionary to have smelt of lard is for him to have been bribed with a kiss from a woman he let into the paymaster's vault. There!” Sir Reginald slapped the bench again with excitement, knocking his teacup to the floor. “I have it!” He leapt to his feet, almost sailing off the building in the low gravity.

  “So that narrows it down to Lucilla or Bruttia...” I said. “And my money's on Bruttia. But it still doesn't suggest how they killed him.”

  “No,” Sir Reginald's elation faded almost as quickly as it had come. He sank back down to the bench. “No you're right. We still don't know how they killed him. But it does allow us to focus. It had to be one of them.”

  “Bruttia.”

  “Quite possible,” Sir Reginald said. “Strong motive, no alibi.” He gave me an awkward glance. “Thick as a French brick, of course.”

  “I don't think anyone can be as stupid as she is,” I finished my lunaccino. “Not without eating lead paint.”

  “Well, they do plaster it to their faces,” Sir Reginald shrugged. “But you're right, there is still more to think about. It doesn't explain that statue of Zeus. It doesn't explain the thumbprint on his papers. It doesn't explain why the ring would go missing.”

  “It doesn't explain how he died.”

  “Yes, that is a bother.”

  “So you don't have it.”

  “Almost,” Sir Reginald held out his hand as if reaching for a glass just out of reach and closed it into a fist. “But it escaped. Soon, though, I am sure.”

  “Well we have all the time in the world,” I said. A robot arrived to sweep up the broken pieces of Sir Reginald's teacup and I fed it my coffee mug as well. It trundled away without a word.

  “No, my dear,” Sir Reginald said. “Not all the time in the world. But, perhaps, all the time we need.” He coughed. “How are things going with Dr Foster?”

  “Er,” I looked away. “They're going well. Just fine.”

  “He says you need another few weeks.”

  “I...yeah. Probably.”

  “Well I have at least that long then.”

  *****

  The clock ticked. Three million people lived in Lucon, with more than three times as many computers and twelve times as many robots. Everything had digital clocks built in. I was stuck in the one room, in the one building, in the entire city, on the entire moon, with an analogue, clockwork clock. Every tick echoed around the room to make the silence seem even deeper than before.

  I stared out of the window of Dr Foster's office. Night had fallen on the moon. It wouldn't be daylight again for two weeks. The city was illuminated with LED lights. An entire cavern of stars. I could feel the doctor's eyes on me. I glanced at the clock. It had been fourteen minutes.

  “Where did you get the clock?” I broke the silence at last.

  “My father gave it to me,” Dr Foster leapt at the chance to get me talking. He had the patience of a saint. “It's a 1906 carriage clock. My great-grandfather brought it with him when he left earth. Back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the Fosters were the finest clock makers in Ontario.”

  “I didn't know you were Canadian,” I turned my head to him. It was hard to tell one of his eyes was artificial, but if you looked close you could see the camera lens, and hear the tiny motor as it refocused.

  “Well, I'm from Lucon,” Dr Foster smiled. “But I've always wanted to visit the motherland. Get fresh maple syrup from the forests, see a moose in the wild, visit Stephen Harper's grave. Maybe dance on it.”

  “I used to melt up fresh maple syrup in a pan at Christmas,” I said. “If you pour it on fresh snow, when it's good and cold up in Montreal, it turns into candy. Kind of like toffee.”

  “Really? I didn't know that,” Dr Foster wrote down a note. “I've always wanted to see snow. We don't have any weather in Lucon. My Canadian ancestry itches for a bit of a chill.”

  “If you saw a real Canadian winter you wouldn't think like that,” I smiled condescendingly. “When you've had to wear five layers just to keep out the wind you'd change your tune.”

  “Well, it's a little warmer in Montreal these days.”

  “That's probably true,” my voice trailed away, then I stood up to stare out of the window at the dome above us. I fell silent for a while. The clock ticked a reminder of every damn second that passed.

  “I...” I began. I could feel Dr Foster straining forwards.

  “I started learning Kendo because I thought I needed to learn some self-defence.” I said it so fast the words blurred together. “And because it was cool, and b
ecause the university had a dojo. I never thought – I mean – in class we used wooden swords. We wore armour and protective masks. I always thought it would be useful in a fight but I never thought I would ever have to use it!” It all stumbled out in a stream. “If I met the wrong person on a dark London street, maybe. It gave me a lot of confidence, but I never thought I'd ever have a sword in my hand.”

  Dr Foster just let it all come out.

  “Those men were going to kill me. I didn't have a choice if I wanted to live.” I shuddered. “But I still wish I hadn't had to see it. No-one should ever have to see that, and know...they did it.”

  The clock measured the death of several more seconds.

  “I've seen things that made me want to throw up. Done things I could never believe I would do, would never want to do.” I settled back into the chair as my legs gave out under me. “And yet they were the only thing I could do to stay alive.” I fixed my eye on the doctor's good eye. “Is it better to die and keep your morals intact, or to kill to stay alive?”

  “Only you can answer that,” Dr Foster said. “I'm here to ensure you come to terms with whatever you decide.”

  “I never wanted to kill anyone. Ever.” I looked up and stared at the ceiling panels. “I...I used to believe in Gandhi's non-violent resistance. I used to believe that no-one had the right to take the life of another. Am I a coward for valuing my life so much I abandon that belief the moment someone puts a sword in my hand and a sword to my throat?”

  “If you could go back in time, and do it over again,” Dr Foster said, unaware he was talking to a time traveller, “would you do it differently?”

  I stared at the ceiling for a long time. Images flashed behind my eyes, all the ways it could have gone. Things they could have said. The way those men had viewed Sir Reginald, the hate behind their eyes for that little man in his funny hat. That unjustified hate would have killed him.

  “No. And I hate myself for it.”

  “Well, that's what we need to work on then.”

  An hour later I stepped out from Dr Foster's office onto an avenue high above the city. The doctor's offices were on level twenty-five, half-way from the city floor to the sky-dome. The monorail shunted between the towers, and I could see some of Lucon's greatest buildings: Lucon University and Botanical Gardens, the Colonial Commission headquarters, and Lunar Central Plaza.

  And the people. All around me LED lights twinkled in ladies’ hair, while flashy silk suits from earth adorned every businessman. The poorest wore plates of metal, plentiful on Luna, while the rich wore as many layers of fabric from earth as they could.

  An unusual movement in the crowd caught my eye. Dr Harper was gliding through the crowd moving easily in the low gravity of the moon. She drew up outside Dr Foster's office and doffed her bowler hat.

  “How is your shoulder Hannah?” she asked as she arrived. She rested one foreleg on the glass door.

  “Oh, very well,” I said and demonstrated by slamming a fist into it. “Not even tender.”

  “And your sessions with Dr Foster?” Dr Harper's voice sounded like polite enquiry, but I wasn't sure, I couldn't recognise expressions in the spider's face.

  “Fine.”

  “Good, I like him,” Dr Harper said.

  “You're a patient of his?” my brow furrowed.

  “Well I'm here aren't I?” Dr Harper laughed, her mandibles chattering. “He helped me through an identity crisis a few years ago and it felt prudent to visit him every few months thereafter.”

  “You had an identity crisis?” I almost wanted to laugh. “Wasn't it, er, obvious?”

  “I have a spider's body but a human mind,” Dr Harper's expression was unreadable, unless, possibly, you were a tarantula. “I felt...torn between being a spider and being a person.” She clicked her teeth together. “Dr Foster helped me realise I would be a person no matter what, and now I do what feels natural without worrying about the labels others give us.” Dr Harper nodded sharply. “I mustn't keep the doctor waiting. Good day Hannah.” She raised her hat again and disappeared inside leaving me alone to head off to meet Sir Reginald.

  *****

  Sir Reginald stood outside the Level 25 entrance to the Colonial Commission twirling his cane while he talked to a tall, thin gentleman in his early forties. The man smoked a long, thin cigar, and a tiny robot hovered around his head eating up the smoke to protect innocent lungs from the toxins.

  “Hannah! Hannah my dear!” Sir Reginald called, catching a glimpse of me across the crowds.

  “Hello,” I said as I approached.

  “Allow me to introduce my good friend Ibrahim El Siddig,” Sir Reginald indicated the man next to him. “Mr Siddig is the Lunar Administrator of the North American and European Union Joint Colonial Commission, and I am afraid he insists on referring to it as ColCom.”

  “Enchanté, madame,” Ibrahim kissed my hand. By his accent it was clear he had once been French-speaking but spent far too long in English-speaking areas.

  “It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Siddig,” I said, laughing at the greeting considered old fashioned even by my day, let alone the twenty-third century.

  “Do call me Ibrahim,” he insisted, flashing a winning smile. It was so genuine I felt a little flustered.

  “Now then, Sir Reginald,” Ibrahim leant back and fixed Sir Reginald with a bright eye. “A little birdie tells me you are looking for information on a certain pearl.”

  “I certainly am,” Sir Reginald said. “Commend your security services for finding out, because I kept quite quiet about that.”

  “Oh, Sir Reginald, a man such as yourself will always come to the attention of my security staff. Especially when he visits every jeweller in the city and never buys anything.”

  “Well then, I am caught,” Sir Reginald held out his hands for mock hand cuffs. “Clap me in irons.”

  “Perhaps one day,” Ibrahim grinned. “But today I think you should know that the pearl you seek is here, on Luna.”

  “The Purple Pearl?” I spluttered. “A pearl two inches across?” I held out my fingers. “Purple as a king's cloak?”

  “Certainly,” Ibrahim smiled. “In the British-Luna Museum in NovLon. If you like I can take you there.”

  “Then lead on!”

  Chapter XIV

  The train to NovLon was larger than earth's trains. Unconstrained by weight or air resistance it was more ship than train, and Sir Reginald insisted they enjoy the lounge car, although this was possibly only so he could also enjoy a brandy. Sir Reginald and I stood at the bar while Ibrahim nursed a pineapple juice.

  “You have a new cane, Sir Reginald,” I remarked as he rested on it. He lifted up an exact copy of his old one, but I knew it was new because it lacked the medieval sword notches.

  “Oh, yes, I do. While you were recovering I paid a visit to my cane maker in 1870 and had a new one made. Can I interest you in another drink? This brandy is a rather fine 2254.”

  “Oh, no, please,” I held up a hand. “It'll set my head spinning.”

  As the train drew into NovLon I instantly knew it was a different kind of city from Lucon. For one thing, the sign posts were in Russian script with English underneath. Even the sign announcing NovLon station was not what I expected.

  “Novgorod-London?”

  “Thanks to a diplomatic spat about something trifling the British declined to join ColCom,” Ibrahim said as they left the train, “and instead joined the Russian lunar programme, taking all their damn tech with them.”

  “Wait. Britain, Britain, land of chip fat and xenophobia, has important space technology?” I laughed.

  “Ion drives,” Ibrahim glared jealously at the city. “Thanks to Hamid Fazeli the British Aerospace Systems found a way to make them viable in space planes. They're cheap, fast and reliable. For every colonist we can afford to get up to Lucon, the Russians can send three.”

  “And yet your control of the Mombasa Lunar Link forces the Russo-British Coalition to use Western Au
stralia for their own link, reducing the quantity of goods they can send to the colony by half,” Sir Reginald tapped his cane against the ground. “For every advantage there is a disadvantage.”

  “If the British had compromised, the Russians wouldn't have been able to form a colony, we'd have the ion-ships landing on the William V Space Port instead of the Gagarin Memorial Space Port,” Ibrahim glowered. The sound of Russian voices combined with pointing at him made him change his tune. He pulled himself upright, put on a false smile and led the way. “Come, to the British Museum!”

  NovLon was a shallower biosphere than Lucon, but wider. Stepping out under the dome you could almost believe you were under open sky, with the earth rising above them. Green spaces were everywhere, and almost forgotten scents came wafting back to me: the smell of grass, the allure of roses in bloom, the sparkling clean scent of pine needles. Trees grew to three times their natural size, twisting into unearthly shapes around the moon-crete buildings. Insects, rare in Lucon, thronged NovLon for good and bad. It was also, I noticed with a shiver, about five degrees colder than Lucon. Americans and Europeans were used to more warmth than the Russians and British.

  By the sound of the languages we passed through at least two thirds of the inhabitants were Russian and about a third were English speakers. Not only English accents though; South African, Australian, British Indian. Any English speakers that weren't part of a ColCom nation or didn't have a lunar programme of their own were welcome here.

  There were fewer robots as well. Humans served behind the bar at coffee stands and at ticket barriers in the station, and the taxis waiting outside had humans behind the wheel, even with drive-assist safety engines.

  “Never take the public transport by the station,” Ibrahim warned them. “It's not free like in Lucon, and they'll charge you an extra five lunas just because they saw you're from out of town.”

  “There.” Ibrahim pointed to the centre of the city once they were underway on the monorail. “That's where we're headed. Zorya Square.” A large neo-classical building came into view. It would not have looked out of place in the Roman period, and was cut from the Lunar bedrock.