String City

by Graham Edwards

  “That’s a steaming crock, Tethys,” said Rhea. She was bigger than both her brothers put together and spat out words like cannon shells. “What’s on the camera is horseshit. It was the electrics set things off, I tell you. They’ve been shorting for months. If I was running this dump I’d have fixed them up by now.” She glowered at Hyperion.

  “Keep out of it, sister!” snapped Oceanus.

  “It’s the wiring!” Rhea retorted. “Cut and dried!”

  “I’ll cut and dry you, you little squirt!” snarled Tethys.

  “I’d like to see you try!”

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped between them. It was like walking the alley between a bunch of battling skyscrapers.

  “Say, folks,” I said, “it looks like you’ve already got some leads for me to follow. Relax. Let me see what I can dig up.”

  Four horned heads descended to my level, twisting space and forcing perspective.

  “You think you got the answers, little man?” said Rhea.

  “It’s not about what I think, ma’am. It’s about what I do.”

  She sneered. Before I could go on to deliver my standard speech about seeking truth in a world built of lies, Hyperion stepped in.

  “What I say goes, and I say the gumshoe’s hired,” he said, “His fee comes out of my personal allowance. Now, let’s give our private investigator some space.”

  Another pause, during which four pairs of Titan eyes narrowed and four sets of Titan breaths were drawn. I fought the suction until, without warning, they lost interest and left the room. All except Hyperion.

  “You have a sack of guts, boy,” he growled. “Do not let me down.”

  9

  I WISHED I carried better equipment in my coat than just a Sherlock glass. But it was too late to go back to the office for proper forensics. When a Titan puts you in the yoke, he keeps the reins tight. Besides, I was nervous about making the return trip, given the chaotic state of the strings.

  “You know the dimensions better than most,” I said to Hyperion as I studied the safe door up close. “Have you noticed anything weird going on out, you know, out in the strings?”

  “Mostly the strings get out of the way for us,” he rumbled. His huge face creased. “Lately though... yah, moving through the dimensions is like moving through treacle.”

  “I don’t know about treacle,” I said. “It’s more like swallowing swords. What’s happening? It’s like the whole cosmos is coming apart.”

  Hyperion shrugged. “Bad times coming.” He waved a colossal hand at the rubble. “Maybe this is the start of it.”

  “You believe what people are saying? About the end of the world?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  I picked what looked like a grain of salt off the edge of the safe door and pulled out the Sherlock glass. Through the lens, the salt grain stopped looked less like a salt crystal, more like something out of a factory. A very tiny factory. Its jagged surfaces were etched with little swirls; on one side I swore there was a serial number. I dialed up the magnification, but I was damned if I could get it to focus.

  “What have you found?” said Hyperion.

  “Don’t know. I never saw anything like it. It could be a designer drug, only it goes all quantum round the edges. The closer I look, the more blurry it gets.” I dropped the grain in an evidence pouch. “I’ve got kit at the office might pin it down. Meantime, let’s take a look at that camera footage.”

  Back in the security suite, Hyperion adjusted the chair so I could sit at the surveillance desk. It took a lot of adjustment. I wound back the tape, found the segment I was looking for and pressed PLAY. The monitors flickered, then flashed up multiple views of the casino from earlier that day: the big gaming floor; the back office where the books got cooked; even the rest room cubicles.

  One screen was blank. No picture, no static. Nothing. The label under the screen read BASEMENT. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled up.

  “What’s this?” I said, tapping the black screen.

  “Loose wiring.”

  “Enough to cause an explosion?”

  “Do not believe everything Rhea says.”

  I scanned the rest of the screens while the video played. Folk came and went, shooting craps, playing blackjack and Roentgen Roulette. I was surprised how few people there were. During most of the hours before the explosion, the casino had been barely a quarter full.

  “Where did all the punters go?”

  Hyperion shifted uncomfortably. “The place warms up after dark.”

  “Since when? As long as the doors are open, the craps are flying. I’ve never seen Tartarus so dead.”

  The Titan seemed about to argue. Then his massive shoulders slumped. “This city—it is not what it used to be. Nothing is. Bad times coming, like I said.”

  I decided not to mention the boom in the private investigation sector.

  When the tape reached the moment of the explosion, sixty-three of the surveillance screens lit up like the day of creation. The camera trained on the basement stayed dead black. Bright fire erupted through the casino. The cameras shook and showed smoke, dust and punters running for the doors. At the emergency exits, a line of security golems stood ready to frisk them.

  “So that was the bomb,” I said, freezing the tape.

  “I can see why you are a detective.”

  I nudged the tape back then crawled it forward again, frame by frame. Debris flew in slow motion, disappearing off one screen to appear on the next. People fled like bad animation. Dust settled.

  I wound back again, inched the tape a third time. Froze it as a shadowy figure loomed, briefly, from the chaos. A tall figure, hooded, face hidden in shadow. It was there for just one frame, on just one camera. Then it was gone.

  “Is this the character your sister was talking about?”

  “Looks like a glitch, right?” Hyperion sounded eager.

  I looked again. This time it didn’t look like a person at all, just a shadow in the smoke. I punched out a hard copy. On paper, it looked like a Rorschach blot.

  “Tethys has an overactive imagination,” said Hyperion. “Time to stop chasing shadows. We have the security golem chained up in the store. I want you to interview it. Then we can put this whole thing to rest.”

  Getting hired by a Titan is careless. Defying his orders is plain dumb. But I never claimed to be careful, or smart. Just curious.

  “Don’t take offense,” I said, “but you’re kind of cramping my style.”

  Hyperion’s face clouded over. It was like a lunar eclipse.

  “What I mean,” I went on quickly, “is this: you brought me here to conduct a fair, impartial investigation, right?”

  “Right,” the Titan said with measured menace.

  “Okay. One reason you want me to do that is to keep the peace and stop your family tearing itself to pieces arguing over who set off the bomb. Seems like Oceanus buys the golem theory—Rhea and Tethys not so much.”

  Silence from the Titan. I took a deep breath.

  “But the main reason I’m here is to prove that you’re right and your sisters are wrong. That way, you get to keep your hand on the tiller and your sibs in their place. Am I wrong?”

  Thunderstorms crackled on Hyperion’s brow. “Your point?”

  “My point is this: how does it look if we get too cosy, you and me? If this is going to work, you’ve got to make it look like I’m a free agent. Otherwise your brother and sisters will just figure I’m your stooge and you’ll be back where you started.”

  Another silence, this time much longer. “How long do you need?”

  I’d left the doppelganger with just two hours on the clock. I’d already been here for nearly half an hour. “Thirty minutes?”

  “Don’t push your luck.” His extended forefinger hit me like a freight train. “You got five minutes to sniff around on your own, then you tell my sisters you found evidence to prove it was the golem. After that, you’re out of here.”

&nbs
p; When he’d gone, I took a minute to catch my breath. It’s not every day you challenge a Titan and live. I checked my watch. Five minutes was nothing. Still, worlds have turned in less time. At least I had a hunch about the best place to start.

  10

  I’D EXPECTED THE basement of the Tartarus Club to be dingy—something like my cellar, only Titan-sized. Instead it was kind of beautiful, with fluted columns, fancy drapes. Mostly columns. You’re supporting a floor walked by Titans, you need a lot of columns.

  There were pool tables too, hundreds of them, all different sizes. The smallest would have served most airports as a runway. I remembered how Hyperion used to run Tartarus as a pool hall. Made good money, so he’d told me. Then the neighbors started complaining. Turned out Titan pool balls are so big they mess with the tides. So he retired the tables, reinvented the place as a casino and never looked back. Until now.

  I walked between the tables, disorientated. I wondered how I’d know when I’d reached the part of the cellar that was underneath the safe.

  It turned out to be easy, on account of the big hole in the ceiling. That and the gigantic corpse lying underneath it in a pile of shattered oak and crumpled blue baize.

  I pulled a flashlight from my coat, shone it up through the hole. The hole went right through the floor above and into the bottom of the safe. As I’d suspected, it had been blown from beneath. But why hadn’t the Titans thought of looking down here?

  I moved the flashlight beam around. Inside the safe were thousands of shelves stacked with charcoal and smeared with gold. Burned notes and melted coins. Whoever blew the safe wasn’t after the money.

  Wind gusted down from the hole. It smelled like hot desert sand. Strange. As I stood there it died away.

  I turned my attention to the corpse. He was a giant, twice my size. Lying flat on his back in the ruins of the pool table, he wore a leather apron, torn open to reveal a big hole in his chest. Most of his insides were on the outside. His gaping eye stared up through the hole in the ceiling.

  His one eye.

  The dead guy was a cyclops.

  I clambered through the wreckage, checked the body. The apron was more than just leather—it was meshed with chain-link. Must have been one hell of a bang to mess up the poor sap like this. The rest of his clothes had been shredded in the blast. There was something, though: tucked under his shoulder I found a scrap of fabric, like burlap only heavier. It was charred almost black, but I could just make out letters printed on it:

  SCAT

  It meant nothing to me. I dropped it my pocket for later.

  In the cyclops’s apron pocket, half-covered in gore, I found a business card for an outfit called Single Vision Forge. The address was some industrial unit on the east side, a real shabby part of town.

  On the back it said: Brontes. His name, I guessed.

  The card was slippery with blood. When I turned it over again, it dropped from my fingers. I picked it up, and that was when the gigantic hand descended on my shoulders. I looked up into a pair of hurricane-sized eyes.

  “Time is up,” thundered Hyperion. Then he spoke into a walkie-talkie the size of an electricity substation. “The investigation is over. String up the clayboy.”

  11

  BY THE TIME we got back to the security suite the lynching was well under way.

  “Pull it tight!” shouted Rhea. “If we have to go through this charade, let’s do it properly.”

  “What d’you think I’m doing?” said Oceanus.

  “You’re a big galoot!” said Tethys. “Give it here!”

  The three Titans were fighting over one end of a steel chain slung around a ceiling beam. The other end of the chain was wrapped round the neck of the golem. The golem’s feet were waggling, six feet off the floor.

  I stood in the doorway, drowned in Hyperion’s shadow.

  “Looks like they started without us,” rumbled the Titan crime lord.

  “Only because you told them to,” I said. “Did you know about the dead cyclops in the cellar?”

  Hyperion glared at me. “You didn’t find a cyclops. You found golem clay. Precisely the evidence we needed.”

  “What? It wasn’t clay I found down there, and you know it.”

  I was about to argue further when Hyperion pinched my head between his finger and thumb. “Do you want me to squeeze?”

  I ducked free and called to Tethys: “What about that hooded figure you saw on the surveillance screen?”

  She waggled the chain and shrugged. “Maybe it really was a glitch in the system. Like Hyperion said, you can see the Messiah in a potato if you look hard enough.”

  Desperate, I turned my attention to Rhea. “You said it was the electrics.”

  “Hyperion pointed out you can’t lynch faulty wiring,” she replied.

  I didn’t bother challenging Oceanus, whose eyes were awash with an ocean of bloodlust.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, turning back to Hyperion. “Why bring me all this way just to...?”

  “Just to what, little man?”

  I watched helpless as the golem’s neck turned to paste. I curled my fists. It may just have been an automaton, but it was an innocent automaton.

  “You know you can’t lynch a golem?” I said suddenly.

  Tethys blinked. “Why not?”

  “No spine. Also no windpipe. Not much anatomy at all, truth be told. No, there’s only one way to carry out a golem execution.”

  Rhea bared her teeth. They looked like icebergs, only I’d never seen icebergs filed to points before. “And what’s that, gumshoe?”

  What else does a guy do in a casino except gamble?

  “I’ll tell you. But first let me interview the poor sap,” I said. “Clay in the cellar is just circumstantial. You all want concrete proof, right?”

  They took the golem down and used the chain to tie it to a chair. The chain bit deep into the soft clay round its gut. Golems don’t feel pain, but this one sure looked sore.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  The golem didn’t reply, just sat sullen and quiet. I’d given it time to mould its neck back to something resembling normal. It still looked lop-sided. I asked the question again, but the golem kept its mouth shut. Behind it, the three Titans cracked their knuckles, making sonic booms. Still the golem said nothing. Finally, Oceanus reached forward and clipped it on the ear.

  “Talk, clayboy,” he hissed. “Or I starts making mud pies.”

  The golem mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “Ain’t got no name. I’s a golem. I’s got a number.”

  “Okay. What’s your number?”

  “Nine-eight-one-two-slash-seventeen-twelve.”

  “Mind if I call you ‘Slash’?”

  The golem didn’t respond.

  I was considering my next question when the golem started pulling chunks of clay off its forearms. It slapped them on its chest and moulded them into a startling pair of pecs. It swapped its thighs for its calves. Then it fell still again.

  “What was all that about?” I said. Again, no answer.

  “I told you it was acting up,” said Rhea. “Didn’t I tell you? Last week it broke off all its fingers and stuffed them up its...”

  “All to pieces!” shouted the golem. “All of it! Smash it up, all to pieces!”

  Rhea gave me an “I told you so” smile.

  “Smash what up?” I said. “What do you want in pieces, Slash?”

  The golem had fallen silent again. It lolled forward, ticking over.

  “S’obvious,” said Oceanus. “It wants to ice Tartarus. Like I says all along—it’s the clayboy done it. Let’s string ’im up again!”

  “I’m not so sure.” I went over to the golem, prodded the chunks of clay he’d been moving around.

  “What do you mean?” said Hyperion.

  “Blowing a vault—that takes imagination. Not much, but some. Golems—they’re not known for blue-sky thin
king.”

  I plucked a bead of clay off the golem’s leg, rolled it between my fingers. There were some golems that claimed to have souls. Hell, I’d met one of them once—called itself Byron. But most were still just machines, slaves to their programming.

  I pressed the clay back where it belonged.

  “You know how a golem works?” I said, addressing all four Titans. They exchanged uncertain glances. “No? Okay, I’ll tell you. Buried in this poor sucker’s chest is a roll of parchment covered in Hebrew binary code. That’s its operating system. Quite a thing, that code, given the Hebrew number system has no zeroes. The programmers get round that with fractals, which means the code’s full of all these tiny holes. The holes in the code mean they can...”

  “This going someplace?” said Oceanus. “Only I really wants to mash something.”

  “Cut to the chase, gumshoe,” said Hyperion.

  Tethys and Rhea said nothing, which was somehow scarier.

  “My point is,” I said, “this golem isn’t a crook. It’s just got a virus.”

  “A what?” said Oceanus.

  “A virus. All those fractal holes in the binary code? Sometimes those holes get infected—fill up with stuff that shouldn’t be there. Like when you catch a cold and your sinuses fill up with fluid. It’s just the operating system that’s infected, but to the golem it feels like its whole body’s out of whack, like nothing fits together. So it starts taking itself apart, rearranging its limbs, to try and get back into shape.”

  “And that fixes it?” said Rhea.

  “No. Nothing works. Eventually the golem tears itself to pieces. Literally. That’s why your golem’s been acting up. It’s not bad. Just sick. I’ve seen this a lot lately. The whole municipal workforce is affected—garbage collectors, street sweepers, the whole shebang. It’s like an epidemic. No cure.”

  “Bad times,” said Hyperion, in a voice surprisingly quiet for a Titan.

  After a pause, Oceanus said, “Can we hang it now?”

  “But I don’t believe Slash—I mean the golem—had anything to do with the heist,” I said.

  “Says you,” said Oceanus.

  “It’s my professional opinion.”