Slab City Blues: The Collected Stories

  I gestured for her to stand aside and used my smart’s flashlight mode to illuminate the gap leading to the shaft. There were periodic gaps like this throughout the Pipe network wherever it intersected the ventilation system, designed to bleed off the excess pressure. Despite this I knew the airspeed in the shaft was still in the region of fifty-four metres per second: terminal velocity.

  I shrugged off my coat and handed it to her. “Hold this please.”

  “What..?”

  I took a short run up and launched myself through the door and the gap beyond, arms and legs spreading to catch the wind. There was a short but unnerving plunge then I was back level with the carriage door, waving at Janet’s stunned face. “Did this when I was a kid,” I shouted, even though I doubted she could hear a word.

  The muscle memory came back quickly and it wasn’t long before I was zooming around the shaft as I had when I was twelve years old and too stupid to know any better. There were some faint illumination strips in the walls to accommodate the occasional visit from a human work crew and I soon found what I was looking for.

  “Maintenance platform,” I said, a little breathless, having made the tricky return to the carriage. It was an acquired skill and I was rusty, but I managed the dive and grab manoeuvre without any undue consequences courtesy of the channel of dead air between the gap and the carriage. “About twenty metres down.”

  “That was dumb,” she said with precisely enunciated reproach.

  “More like an expression of my borderline risk perception personality disorder.” I pulled on my coat. “That’s what the Department shrink would say, anyway. You can close the doors now.”

  *

  The Atmospherics Executive supervisor for Yang Five was a pinch-faced functionary with a nasal voice and an avid aversion to undertaking any task not on his spreadsheet of alloted responsibilities.

  “Can’t let you in there,” he stated without equivocation. “Any human inspection requires a duly authorised risk assessment.”

  “Criminal Investigations Act, section forty-eight,” I quoted. “Exigent circumstances. Look it up, Jed.”

  He actually did, pulling out his work-issue smart and reading every word with pointed deliberation. “Sub-section eight requires Inspector Grade authority,” he said, a note of triumph in his nasal twang. “The vampire’s only a Special Investigator and you don’t have any status at all.”

  “Listen, you officious little prick…”

  Janet stepped between us and met the supervisor’s eyes. He stepped back a little in alarm then stopped, his face becoming an expressionless mask, eyes wide and locked on her face.

  “Yang Five access platform,” she said in a tone I hadn’t heard before, just above a murmur, slightly sibilant, and completely compelling.

  The supervisor gave a slow nod then tapped at his holo screen. “Cleared for access,” he said in a thin whisper.

  “Thank you. Security cam footage for this sector. Upload it to my smart.”

  He nodded again, fingers dancing automatically on the holo-board.

  “Get yourself a hot chocolate,” Janet told him. “You really need to relax a little.”

  He stood still for a second, as if reluctant to look away, then blinked and left the control room.

  “Not just seeing in the dark,” I said. “Can you turn into a bat too?”

  “It’s a subliminal modulation to the vocal chords,” she explained, “plus an ingrained facility for hypnosis. All part of the genetic template. Still takes practice though, and it doesn’t always work.”

  “Just on uptight petty functionaries and slab-thugs demanding money with menaces.”

  She screwed her eyebrows into an oddly lopsided expression and dropped into an archaic English accent, “Only works on the weak minded.”

  I was non-plussed. “Huh?”

  Her eyes widened and she shook her head in wonder. “Wow, you really didn’t have any classical education at all, did you?”

  *

  The maintenance platform yielded no evidence beyond confirmation that our quarry had an exceptional skill-set.

  “Somehow gets the Pipe carriage to halt at precisely the right place,” I yelled. Although the maintenance platform was shielded from the howling up-draft the noise still meant we had to shout. “And gets the doors to open, glides on in near-total darkness, grabs and subdues DeMarco under the nose of his bodyguards, then free-falls down here with him to make good his escape.” I gazed up at the shaft in reluctant admiration. “I pulled some serious commando shit during the war, but this is way out of my league.”

  “Not sure that’s how it went,” Janet yelled back. She held up her smart to display a high-res holo-shot. “Security cam from the access corridor, five minutes after DeMarco’s abduction.”

  It was only a shadow, playing along the corridor wall. Hugging the blind-spots, trying not to be seen, easy if you knew how. “Freeze it,” I told her.

  The silhouette was clear and unambiguous; a male, middling height, chunky but not overweight, alone. “There’ll be a basic forensic imaging app in your directory,” I said. “Cross ref with DeMarco’s biometrics.”

  The result flashed up almost immediately. Match - probability 96%.

  “He wasn’t abducted,” Janet said. “He jumped.”

  Chapter 5

  I sat in silence for most of the Pipe ride back to Yang Eighteen. Janet wanted to change before going to Sherry’s and seemed content to let me brood, flicking through the case file with keen-eyed concentration. I didn’t like the realisation about DeMarco, it answered a lot of questions but raised a thousand more. He jumped. Then what? Trundle happily off to get sliced and diced and stuffed in a barrel. The most bizarre suicide in history. More wrongness hurting my bourbon-starved head.

  “Work logs say Karnikhov was alone for his entire shift,” Janet said. “No record of his re-entry to the alloted airlock, or any other airlock on the Slab.”

  “The cam footage on DeMarco’s Pipe carriage was wiped without any trace of an unauthorised incursion to the system,” I said. “I guess whoever’s doing this can hack override codes and alter data records at will.”

  “That may be the scariest thing I’ve heard yet.”

  I thought about Freak, the only individual I knew capable of doing what our quarry could do. Who’s doing this Freak? A brother? A cousin? And do you really want them caught?

  “Any trace of a neural immersion band in Karnikhov’s stuff?” I asked. “In his work locker maybe.”

  She checked and shook her head. “If he had one, it’s gone. I checked the friends and acquaintances statements too, no mention of him owning one.”

  I nodded and lapsed back into silence, mentally churning the details, looking for something that gelled, something to fix on, finding only yet more steaming piles of wrong.

  “So,” said Janet. “How many of your friends will be there tonight?”

  “All two of them. Not nervous are you?”

  “Not as much as you, I think.”

  I grunted. “We need to buy wine.”

  *

  We met Joe at the entrance to Sherry’s apartment block, impressively filling a new suit with square-shouldered tallness, shaking hands with Janet who managed to be even more eye-catching in a long black strapless gown. I was starting to feel more than a little shabby.

  “How’s the Chief?” I asked Joe, the doors sliding open as Sherry buzzed us in. Joe had been transferred to the Chief’s security detail after my enforced sabbatical. I’d kept our contact to a minimum since, knowing that too close an association with me wouldn’t help his long term career prospects.

  “Spends a lot of time meeting people he seems to hate,” Joe said. “Said to say hi though.”

  “Nice of him.” Not nice enough to fix my suspension, the ungrateful old fuck.

  Janet was looking at Joe with her now familiar predatory inquisitiveness. “We haven’t met have we Joe?” she asked. “It’s just your face is really…”

/>   “We’re here!” I broke in, knocking on Sherry’s door and hoping she didn’t take too long to answer.

  The young woman who came to the door was all petite blondeness with a broad welcoming smile and as cut-glass a Yin-side accent as I’d ever heard. “Hiyar! You must be Alex.”

  “You must be Sam.” We shook hands. A Yin-sider. My reverse-snobbery was revving up. She never told me she’d shacked up with a Yin-sider.

  “It’s a Beaujolais something or other.” I handed her the wine bottle.

  “Great, thanks muchly. Joe!” She embraced him on extreme tip-toe. “Nice suit!”

  “The Department forked up some clothing expenses,” he said. “How’s things at the clinic?”

  “Busy as ever. The kids miss you, though.”

  “I’ll drop by next weekend. Promise.”

  “You better.” She punched him playfully on the bicep. It was as high as she could reach.

  “Erm, this is Janet,” I said, catching sight of her expectant glare.

  “Wow! I mean hi,” Sam’s voice went up an octave or two. “Love your dress!”

  “Thank you.” Janet smiled back. “Something smells nice,” she prompted when the blonde girl continued to stare.

  “Oh, do come in. Please.” She bustled us into the living room. “Sherry’s been trapped in the kitchen for hours. They’re here!” she called.

  “I can hear them,” Sherry called back. “Ply them with drinks, this is taking ages.”

  She poured wine for Joe, not, I noted, from the bottle I’d brought, and ginger ale for me and Janet.

  “Clinic?” I asked Joe.

  “Sam works at a paediatric clinic,” he said. “It’s on my way to work.”

  “Came in with donations every other day for a month,” Sam said and took a hefty gulp of wine. “Helps out with the physio sometimes too.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Joe was the kind of individual who could make a Nobel prize-winning Olympic athlete oncologist feel inadequate.

  “Impressive,” Janet said. She had that look again. “So what did you do before the force, Joe?”

  “Poverty and unemployment,” I said. “Just like the rest of us.”

  Sam shifted a little and took another gulp of wine. I supposed she had reason to feel uncomfortable around poor folks. “Joe’s the reason Sherry and I met,” she said. “I called round to his place a few months ago and she was there on some work thing.”

  I looked at Joe who was artfully admiring a print on the wall. “Few months ago?” I asked. “June maybe?”

  “That’s right!” Sam gave a sheepish shrug. “Got the date highlighted on my smart actually, fourteenth June. I’m a girly romantic at heart.”

  Fourteenth June. The day before my formal suspension. “Having a little chat?” I asked Joe. “What about I wonder?”

  “I thought he might be able to get through to you.” Sherry appeared in the kitchen doorway, red evening dress matching her hair. “Since you were so intent on fucking up every aspect of your life and career.”

  She moved to Sam’s side, giving her a hug of reassurance. “Dinner’s in the garbage disposal. I’ve ordered in. It’ll be half an hour.”

  “DeMarco jumped,” I said. “No-one took him off the Pipe.”

  “Shop talk’s off limits tonight, Alex.”

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” Sam said. “I find it all fascinating actually. If a little grisly.”

  “Even so.” Sherry squeezed her hand. “I could do with a night off.”

  The dinner delivery consisted of a banquet of Chinese food and a blood-rare steak for Janet.

  “You’re not drinking,” Sherry observed from across the table.

  “No,” I said, hoping she didn’t notice the slight tremble of the chopsticks in my hand. “I’m not.”

  She nodded. “That’s good.”

  “For the hearing you mean? No alcohol in the tox test looks good on the report.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.” It was only a faint catch in her voice but it said a lot. My hearing was a formality, she already knew the outcome. Suddenly I wanted a glass of bourbon more than I ever wanted anything. I was half-reaching for the wine bottle when the hard presence of the Python in my belt reminded me I still had a task in hand, if not a job to go back to.

  “So, you’re a medic, Sam?” Janet was asking.

  “Therapist,” she replied. “Immersion assisted recovery.”

  It was a new one on me. “How’s that work?”

  “It’s all about designing an environment in which they feel secure, but also challenging enough to stimulate an active response. Some of these kids,” she shook her head, “they’ve really been through a lot, you know. Sometimes they can barely communicate.”

  “Guess you know a lot about immersion hardware.”

  “Well, I have a Bsc in Simulative Engineering.”

  “Ever hear of a neural immersion transmitter?”

  “Sure, it’s the next big thing for the industry. Recordable shared experiences. Never used one though, they’re not out yet. Anyway, it would be more useful for entertainment than therapy in my opinion.”

  “How so?” Janet asked. “I mean, if someone has a nice happy memory, wouldn’t sharing it with someone else make them happy too?”

  “Memory is highly subjective. One person’s perfect day is another’s nightmare.”

  “But some things are universal, surely. Pleasure, pain, fear, love.”

  “As a matter of fact, no, they aren’t. We all take pleasure in different things, find some things more painful than others. And then there are people with serious mental health problems where everything you’d consider to be normal flies out the window.”

  “Sadism,” I said, thinking about DeMarco, and all the others over the years.

  “Exactly. There are people who will find pleasure in the most awful things. And if you give them the ability to replay it endlessly, even market it…” She shrugged. “It opens up a whole world of unpleasant possibilities.”

  “He was wearing it,” I said to Janet.

  “When he killed DeMarco?”

  “No, DeMarco was wearing it when he was killed. That’s why he kept it. The ultimate souvenir.”

  Sherry pinged a fingernail against her wine glass. “Shop talk.”

  The evening wrapped up a couple of hours later, conversation having ranged from the upcoming CAOS Presidential primaries - the consensus was Lorenzo would finally bow out this term (I couldn’t give a shit) - the latest high-brow 2D drama, an updating of Macbeth with Slab gangsters - Joe loved it, Sam thought it over-scripted (I couldn’t give a shit) - and at what point did a splice become so un-human like they actually stopped being human (this one I could actually get interested in).

  “But there has to be a point,” Sam was saying, “a tipping point, when the physical becomes so divorced from the norm that the concept of humanity has to come into question.” She glanced at Janet, mouthing “No offence.”

  “Think, feel, fuck, feed,” I said. “The things we all do that can’t be spliced out.”

  “But sooner or later they will be,” Sam insisted. “Then what?”

  “Ex-humanus,” Janet mused. “Post-human. Something new, and, as the only Splice at the table, I’d like to think, not necessarily threatening.”

  “I’d go along with that,” Joe rumbled.

  I thought about Freak, still growing, bigger and no doubt smarter every day. But confined to a hab and dependent on the largess of the beings s/he had evolved beyond. “Or they could be gods,” I said. “Looking to us for worship.” Like the genius-grade nutbag we’re hunting, I didn’t say. Singing a murderous hymn to gods long dead.

  Sam said goodnight with hugs and wine tinged kisses. Sherry surprised me with an embrace, the first I could recall. “We’ll go over your findings tomorrow,” she told me.

  “Should I just resign?” I asked. “Better than getting fired, right?”

  “Nothing’s decided…”

  “Come on, I
’m sober remember.”

  She looked down, jaw tense with frustration. “You had to do it in front of the whole dockyard workforce.”

  “He knew where Mr Mac was…”

  “And turned up with his throat cut two days after his lawyer lodges a complaint. Doesn’t look good does it?”

  “Mr Mac probably thought he was doing me a favour. If the little fucker had coughed up the info, he’d be alive right now.”

  “This isn’t a frontier town anymore, Alex. The gunslinging days are over.”

  I had plenty of maverick-cop comebacks ready, but they all died in my throat at the sight of her sorrow. “I know you did your best,” I said. “Thanks for that.”

  She forced a smile. “It’s what friends do.”

  *

  We said goodnight to Joe at the Pipe interchange, Janet’s feline scrutiny following his tall form all the way to the Red Line entrance. “Was he famous once?” she asked.

  “Joe? Nah. I’m way more of a celebrity than he’ll ever be.”

  We shared a Pipe to Yang Eighteen and she accepted my offer to walk her home without another reminder that she could protect herself.

  “She was nice, Sam. Didn’t you think?”

  “For a Yin-sider, I guess.”

  “Can’t help where she was born, or her accent.”

  “I know, just… Sherry’s been single the whole time I’ve known her. Now this, and everything else.”

  “Change is inevitable. Stasis is impossible in a dynamic society…” She stopped abruptly, coming to a halt. “Oh my god! That was Tyger Joe!”

  “What? No it wasn’t,” I said, way too quickly.

  “It totally was!” She clapped her hands together, jumping in girlish excitement. “You’re best friends with Tyger Joe. Despliced and living a second life as a Slab City Demon.” She prodded a finger into my chest. “Right? Right?”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Hah! So how’d he end up here?” She circled me with a broad grin. “I remember when MEC announced his death. Seemed oddly downplayed. The biggest name in splice-fight history dies in a shuttle crash and the funeral barely makes it onto the news feeds. Ah!” She stopped, snapping her fingers. “He ran away. He ran away, came here to get despliced and you helped him. You rescued Tyger Joe from an evil corporation.” Faster than I could catch she pressed against me, planting a full kiss on my lips, drawing back with a giggle. “Like you weren’t cool enough already.” She took my hand and tugged me towards her place at a half-run, still dazed from an overdose of unaccustomed female proximity.