There it was: justification. Geronamid had not admitted the Polity intended intervention here, but the hint stood as wide as a barn door.
The allosaur swung back to Salind. ‘It is well to remember that if not Soper, then certainly someone in the Tronad ordered the assassination attempt on me. Not because they thought it might succeed, but because the attempt in itself would bring home to the ruling council here on Banjer just how vulnerable they are and so stiffen their resolve to keep the Polity out.’
The Tronad was the main power here, not the Council?
Salind said, ‘But you are sending Garp for destruction.’
Geronamid paced away and swung round with his snout poised over the reif. ‘Garp is not there,’ he said, then swung his snout towards the blank Golem. ‘Garp is there.’
Salind turned to study the Golem. While behind him it had plugged a thick optic cable into a socket in the side of its chest. Now its stance was different. It held out its skeletal grey hands to stare at them, then it gazed across at Geronamid.
‘Garp was running fully in his augmentation because viable brain tissue was being destroyed by his praist addiction. He is now a hundred per cent uploaded to this Golem,’ said Geronamid.
Salind could feel his stomach turning over and over. His fortune was made. What a story! He had enough already to get his contract picked up by one of the Earth networks. Hell, he could even get investment for his own network. He watched as Geronamid swung its head back towards the reif.
‘The reif will go for incineration as per the Council’s request,’ the AI said.
‘About time,’ said Garp the Golem.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me. Obviously I was wrong about this Garp character and his relationship to you. I’m not afraid of admitting to error. You’ll have heard that my story has been withdrawn from the net?’ Salind kept smiling as he studied the apartment. Soper was obviously a woman of baroque tastes. The place was full of preruncible furnishings and frankly strange decorations. He brought his attention finally back to the woman herself.
Deleen Soper bore the appearance of a sixteen-yearold girl – a sure sign she’d been using some of the less sophisticated rejuvenation treatments. She sported short-cropped blonde hair over elfin features and wore jeans and a check shirt. Her whole persona seemed that of a pretty farmgirl from some half-forgotten age. Salind knew her to be a hundred and forty-three years old, and responsible for the deaths of hundreds directly, and tens of thousands indirectly through the drug praist. He kept on smiling.
‘Leave us, Turk,’ she said, and gave an airy wave of her hand.
The butler character who had accompanied Salind from the front door all the way up the spiralling stairs of the building gave a wooden nod and departed. Salind guessed that the man’s duties probably included more than butlering – he looked as if he could crush rocks in his armpits.
‘Please, take a seat Mr Salind,’ she said.
‘My pleasure.’
Salind sat and watched her walk to an antique drinks cabinet and fill two small cups from a silver teapot.
‘Tea?’
He nodded. Now was as good a time as any to try the stuff. She placed the drinks on an occasional table and sat in the armchair opposite.
‘Please, conduct your interview,’ she said.
Salind picked up the warm cup and sipped the drink. It tasted bitter and salty, then left an aftertaste of avocados. Like most of the preferred drinks of humankind it was an acquired taste.
‘What was your relationship with Inspector Garp?’ he asked as he placed his cup back down on the table. ‘I’d like to hear your side of things.’
‘It is a shame you did not think of that before you released your first story.’
Her expression, for a moment, had gone flat and characterless.
‘Again, I apologize…’
Soper switched on a smile and began to talk. ‘We had, for a brief time, a liaison. I finished it because it became evident he expected more from the relationship than I was prepared to give.’
‘Like what exactly?’
Soper waved her hand at her surroundings. ‘I am a wealthy woman. My family has made a fortune from our bangroves. Garp wanted some of that and I was not prepared to give. I do not like fortune hunters. When he realized my position he then started to make accusations.’
‘He accused you of dealing in praist and being connected to the Tronad.’
Soper leant forward. ‘Ridiculous of course. Why should I deal in praist? I have no need of the money.’
‘His contention was that your family has always dealt in praist, that you made a fortune from it which you are now investing in legitimate businesses.’
‘I thought you were here to listen to my side?’
That flat and dead look again.
‘I’m sorry. Do go on.’
‘My family have owned bangroves for centuries and our fortune grew from them.’ She gestured to the drink before Salind, who took up the cup and drank again. This time the mouthful he took seemed more satisfying.
Soper continued, ‘Praist is a drug dealt in by a small minority of the criminal element of Banjer. We have always been leaders here and the holders of moral …’
As she went on Salind accessed Argus.
Praist statistics please.
Fifteen per cent of the population are praist users. That is approximately eighty million people. It is at the root of seventy-three per cent of all crimes committed here and ninety-two per cent of all suicides. It is speculated that terminal praist users will be the first to vote for Polity subsumption because of advanced Polity medical technologies. There is no cure for praist addiction here, and most users – those who do not commit suicide – are killed before the drug kills them. In the last year of addiction – addiction lasts eight solstan years – the user becomes psychotic.
More than tens of thousands, then.
As the interview drew to a close Salind felt it less and less difficult to keep smiling. He found himself starting to see that maybe Garp had not told him all of the truth. Deleen Soper did not seem quite so monstrous face-to face.
‘I understand,’ he said to Soper’s latest contention. ‘A cop in his position could manipulate anything. Coming from the Polity we tend to forget how much power such a police force can wield.’
‘There, you see?’
Soper sat back and sipped her drink. Salind sipped his own. It had been topped up twice. Perhaps it was going to his head.
‘What do you think of my collection?’ Soper asked him.
‘I think it’s wonderful, Deleen.’
Soper stood. ‘But you haven’t seen it all.’
As he also stood, Salind felt a dizziness wash through him. He blinked and seemed to see rainbow haloes around various objects in the room. Soper conducted him around the apartment. She told him about the grandfather clock replicated about an original pendulum, and showed him carvings from banoak coral that would not have looked out of place in a Pharaoh’s tomb. She showed him lurid paintings and boasted their value. Then she finally came to her most prized possession.
The drowning jar had been the favoured punishment for criminals in the early years of the Theocracy. Criminals were sealed inside to drown in the preservative the jar contained. This one was a fat urn-shape standing four feet high. The man still inside the jar, she told him, was the predecessor of the Banjer reifs, but from the wrong side of the law. She giggled and he laughed with her – surprised at how easily the laughter came. The man, with his bulbous eyes and protruding tongue, shifted and scratched at the inside of the jar. He looked like the reporter who had stood behind Merril in the arrivals lounge. Next, the butler was opening the street door for Salind, and he then walked under a sky that was a sheet of skin flayed from the back of a giant. He stood on a bridge and gripped the rail, his mouth dry and bitter and terror rising up inside him. The drowned man was coming to drag him back to the jar and there to pull him down into a clammy embrace. And now
Geronamid stood over him with treels oozing out of holes in its allosaur body. Salind started screaming, and didn’t stop until a hydrocar pulled up and Geoff leapt out to press a pressure hypodermic against his neck. Then he blacked out. It took him a day to recover from the praist-based hallucinogen. And of course there was no proof that Deleen Soper had administered the drug.
Salind woke instantly and with crawling horror suffusing him. It was the middle of the night so Argus must have woken him with a betawave stim. He still wanted coffee though. He still had a hangover from the drug and still occasionally heard fingernails scratching against glass.
‘What is it? You know I’ve had a tiring day,’ he said, sitting upright on the futon.
Geoff is on his way round to pick you up. His message is: ‘Remember the hack-and-slash job?’There is also an untraced message: ‘Cremation complete, will join you shortly.’
‘Yes,’ Salind hissed, standing and heading for the hotel minibar. He took out an Instacup, pulled the tab on it, and by the time he had dressed the beverage was hot. Taking it with him he quickly left his hotel. Standing on the pavement under a leaden sky backlit by green moonlight, he sipped coffee until the hydrocar pulled up.
‘Give me bad news or good news, but give me news,’ he said as he got in beside Geoff.
‘It’s news, whether it’s bad or good is something for you to decide,’ said the staffer. ‘Oh, here, I have something for you.’
Salind took the small container Geoff handed him, clicked out a pill and swallowed it with a mouthful of coffee. He tossed the empty cup out of the window.
‘Tell me.’
‘We’re going to the Groves. Our trusty police force have found Merril Torson.’
‘How?…’
‘Oh the usual way when the Tronad wants to make a point.’
They had nailed her to a banoak. The treels were in her clothing, peeking from holes in her arms and stomach. A knot of intestines hung from one such hole. Floodlights, and the red and green flashing lights on the squad cars, cast the scene in a lurid glow. The uniformed cops stood by their cars drinking tea from small flasks while awaiting senior officers.
‘She was a hack,’ said Salind. ‘But this is excessive punishment.’
‘The Tronad don’t know the meaning of the word excess,’ said Geoff, as they both stepped out onto the gravel.
‘So this is how they hit people?’ Salind gazed slowly from side to side, making sure Argus was getting everything here and transmitting it.
‘This was how traitors were killed by the underground before the civil war, and it’s now how the Tronad kill people when they want to make a point. The holes were made by whoever nailed her there. The treels have to be pushed inside before they try to feed. They just keep grinding away and pushing through in search of banoak flesh. She probably died when one of them hit an artery. It can take anything from ten minutes to an hour.’
‘You’re very well informed.’
‘We all are here. This is what happens to you if you go piss-off the Tronad. This is why very few people will turn out to vote next Moonday.’
They moved away from the car and closer to the crucified reporter. Salind felt sorry for Merril and a little sad, but nothing more than that. She wouldn’t have suffered. Were they so primitive here they didn’t realize she could have shut off the pain with her aug?
‘Alright there. Keep back,’ said one of the uniformed cops as he strolled over.
Salind turned to him. ‘What’s happened here, officer?’
‘You got eyes ain’t you?’
‘A murder I take it. I think you should be aware that I know the victim.’
‘Who don’t? We know whose toes she stepped on,’ said the cop, turning to inspect the corpse.
‘So we can be expecting an arrest soon then?’ said Salind.
The cop snorted then glanced over as another car pulled up. ‘Yeah, there’ll be an arrest. Some other toestepper’ll get shat on. And here comes the biggest shitter of ‘em all.’
Salind also watched as Callus and two of his thugs climbed from the car. Behind the car a van pulled up. He supposed that this must be Banjer’s equivalent of a medical examiner or some such. He started to move in their direction, but Geoff caught hold of his shoulder.
‘Not a good idea. Best to just watch,’ he said.
‘I only want to ask a reasonable question or two,’ said Salind.
‘Don’t,’ said Geoff. ‘Callus is never in his best mood when he’s clearing up after Soper. It won’t just be a slap next time. It’ll be a stiletto in your back followed by polite enquiries after your health for the benefit of your aug recording.’
Salind desisted. He turned to the uniformed cop. ‘You realize her augmentation will have recorded everything she saw?’
The cop glanced at him and shook his head. ‘That won’t be much then.’
The man walked back to join his companions. On closer inspection Salind saw Merril’s eyes had been gouged out. A treel worked its way out of one socket. Salind took out his pill container, clicked out a pill, and swallowed it dry.
From the van, two overalled figures bearing a stretcher approached the banoak. They conducted no forensic examination of the area, no careful search for evidence. After they deposited the stretcher on the ground, one of them took a crowbar from his belt and levered out the nails pinning the corpse to the tree. When it slid to the ground the two rolled it in a plastic sheet then passed a heating unit over this wrapping to shrink and seal it. As they carried the neat parcel back to the van Salind could still see treels moving about inside. While they loaded into the van he noted Callus spot him and start walking over with his thugs and two uniformed policemen in tow.
‘We better be leaving,’ said Geoff.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Salind.
‘I’ve warned you. That’s all I can do.’
‘Fine,’ said Salind, but he did step back to put himself up against the car.
Callus came up before him and his two thugs moved round to either side of the inspector. They stood with their hands clasped before them. Salind had seen that pose before from other people who served the same purpose on other worlds – immediate testicle protection.
‘Well, well, Mr Salind, what do you have to say for yourself?’
Salind was momentarily distracted from replying, for another car had pulled up. The third plain-clothes cop who stepped out seemed familiar. Someone in the Tronad probably – someone about whom Salind had read a file. Was this one of Soper’s associates? He looked the part – a shaven-headed thug with slightly more muscle than necessary.
‘Sorry … what?’
Callus went on, ‘I suppose it was professional jealousy that made you do it.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Geoff.
Callus glanced at him. ‘I imagine your accomplice will be able to tell us.’
‘You have got to be kidding,’ said Salind.
‘I’ll need your aug for evidence of course.’
Now the two thugs moved up on either side of Salind.
‘My aug is internal and backs up to the Tarjen AI every four minutes. It doesn’t retain a recording itself, but that backed-up information will prove I was nothing to do with this.’
Shit, get me some help out here. This fucker is going to kill me.
Message received: the legal department is onto it right now.
I don’t need the legal department! I need Polity monitors!
Polity monitors do not have jurisdiction here.
Callus smiled. ‘Here on Banjer we are aware how it is possible to interfere with computer-stored information.’
‘Argus is encryption-sealed! Nothing less than a major AI could interfere with it! And it’s internal – you haven’t got the facilities here to remove it!’
Callus gave the nod to his two thugs. ‘Mr Gem Salind, in the name of the Banjer Council I arrest you for the murder of Merril Torson, and with the powers vested in me by said Council, seize all evidential mat
erial. Please do not resist arrest.’
A fist like the bony end of a ham crashed into the side of Salind’s head. He slid along the car and the second thug hook-punched him twice in the gut.
‘I said “Please do not resist arrest” Mr Salind.’
Hazily he realized just what they intended. He would either die whilst resisting arrest or when they attempted to remove Argus. Case closed.
For a little fat guy Geoff could move very fast. He had jumped up on the bonnet of the car and slammed his recorder down on the second attacker’s head before Salind thought to react. Salind punched the one on his right then fervently wished he’d used his boot. That hamfist came down again and the next thing he knew he was lying dazedly on the floor watching Geoff, his face covered with blood, being held by the scruff of the neck and having his head repeatedly pounded against the car’s wing.
‘That’s enough!’ someone bellowed.
Salind tried to stand as his attacker loomed over him. He saw the shaven-headed one moving up behind. Shavehead took hold of the thug by the shoulder and just threw him. The man hit the car then the ground, bounced and lay still. The second thug released Geoff in time to walk into a backhander that lifted him clean over the car. Salind staggered groggily to his feet. He glanced back and saw the two uniformed officers standing dumbfounded. Callus was on his knees holding his wrist. He looked up as Shavehead came up beside Salind, and real fear twisted his features. Scrabbling inside his coat he produced a nasty-looking pulse-gun.
‘You gonna do it to me, Mikey?’ asked Shavehead.
Callus did. The pulse-gun flashed. There came a thud and burst of smoke from Shavehead’s chest.
‘I just love this body.’ Shavehead strode forward and drove his fist down into Callus’s face.
Salind felt that familiar churning in his stomach: one hell of a story and now he knew the punchline, so to speak. One of the uniformed officers drew his own weapon – a similar pulse-gun to Callus’s.
‘Drake, put that away will you,’ said Shavehead.