ZAEL PLACED HIS hand on the reader plate.
There was a pause as the system considered the findings.
‘Hoffman, Arap Behj,’ said the clerk. ‘Fourteen years old, registered to the scholam in Formal H.’
The alarms suddenly cut off. The silence was shocking. ‘System re-enabled,’ the clerk said. There was a series of whines as the security gates and cages began to retract into their wall slots.
‘I told you it was a mistake,’ the guard said.
CARL THONIUS HEARD the alarms shut down. ‘Well,’ he whispered. ‘I do love it when a plan comes together.’
He had run down a wide flight of steps into the deserted inner rotunda, and along a hallway to the arch doorway of one of the Informium’s seven thousand clericulums. It was empty. The clerks had evacuated at the sound of the alarm. The rows of abandoned cogitator desks winked and flashed. The optic scanners at the doorway simply accepted his permit as he went inside.
He sat down at the first desk. The system was still running, open. In their hurry to evacuate, as Carl had predicted, none of the clerks had shut down their cogitators. No user codes to break, no passkeys.
Carl punched up some data gates, and the screen showed entry to the main banks. Then he opened his document case and took out the compact codifier concealed inside. Carl connected it to the desk’s out-ports, and the little machine began to murmur and sigh.
Carl cracked his knuckles and prepared to type. ‘Any minute now…’ he said.
Simultaneously, red warning lights lit up on every desk. A box appeared on the valve screens announcing a system overheat. The sabotage Kara and Nayl had performed on the rooftop radiator vanes was finally registering.
The Informium’s vast data system was programmed to hibernate if an overheat was experienced. It was automatic. The databases shut themselves down, and subsystems also disengaged, to try and compensate for the problem. The first routines to close off were the activity records. Which meant that any operation conducted during hibernation would not be logged. When the system came back up, there would be no trace at all of any tampering or adjustment.
Carl delicately loaded the graft program from his codifier. It sank into the Informium’s oceanic mass of data and vanished. Literally without trace.
But it would stay there, and through it, Carl would be able to access any material he needed.
‘We’re done,’ he voxed. ‘Extract yourselves.’
‘THANK YOU. SORRY for your trouble,’ Kys told the guards as she led Zael away across the entry and out into the night. They nodded goodbye.
The rain had eased a little. Zael was stripping off the second plastek palm, the one he’d worn under the first.
A transport pulled out of a side street opposite and drew up at the kerb. The cabin door popped open. At the wheel, Zeph Mathuin nodded to them.
‘Good job, kid,’ he said. ‘Get in.’
KARA AND NAYL slithered down the metal roof. They had removed the insulation felts so the vanes could resume their normal function.
‘Wanna try batting out?’ Nayl voxed.
‘Not in this wind. We’ll go over the wall on the fasteners.’
Nayl pulled out the climb anchors and fixed them to the inside lip of the roof balustrade. He handed a line to Kara.
‘One sec,’ she said. ‘Carl? We’re about to drop the east facade on fast gear. What’s the situation? Everyone out?’
‘Just me inside still, and I’ll be out in a sec. Off you go—’ ‘Understood.’
Kara turned to Nayl. ‘Let’s drop,’ she said.
They took their lines in their hands, double-tugged to make sure the anchors were locked, and walked backwards over the lip of the wall. Then they kicked free.
As they fell down the wet stone face of the Informium, the miniature winding gears took up and carefully moderated their plunge.
THE ALARM WAS over. The guards in the north portico of the Informium were thanking the visitors for their compliance and sending them on their way.
‘Every one’s accounted for,’ one of the guards called to the chief clerk.
‘All the visitors?’
‘All of them, every one.’
‘Good job,’ the clerk replied. ‘I’m scanning only one anomaly. Docent Wiggar did not check in or out during the lock down.’
‘Where’s Wiggar?’ the guard yelled out, his voice echoing across the marble space.
‘Here, sir! Right here!’ the docent cried, running forward.
‘System says you didn’t check in or out,’ the guard said.
‘But I did, sir,’ the docent replied. ‘As soon as the alarms went off, I went through the barrier to my assembly point.’
‘With that?’ the guard said, pointing.
The docent looked down. The ribbon pinned to his robe-front was pale yellow.
‘Oh crap!’ the docent said.
‘Lock down! Lock down!’ the guard yelled out, turning. ‘We have an intruder!’
The alarms began to bay again. The cages came down.
The Informium depository, for the second time in the same night, locked up tight.
FIVE
CARL THONIUS HEARD the alarms shrilling. He sat up straight. ‘Oh, no,’ he whispered to himself. ‘No, no, no, no…’ He began to unclip the codifier from the desk ports and put it away.
+Carl?+
‘Everything’s fine. It’s fine.’
+It’s not. This isn’t part of the plan.+
‘These things happen. I can deal with it.’
+The building’s on lock-down. You need help.+
‘No!’ he snapped. ‘Honestly, sir. I’m on this. I can handle it.’ Carl closed the document case and realised his right hand was shaking. The tremors were intense, and he could only stifle them by grabbing his right hand with his left.
+Carl?+
‘I can do this!’
Carl got up. Then he punched himself in the mouth. It was easier than he’d imagined. His right arm hadn’t seemed like part of him since Flint. It was like someone else hitting him. It wasn’t shaking any more.
He took off his permit and tossed it into the waste-basket. Then he went out into the corridor, purposefully dribbling the blood from his split lips down his front.
Three guards ran up.
‘That way! He went that way! He hit me!’ Carl cried.
‘Get into cover, sir!’ the guard leader yelled, and they ran on.
I HAD A good remote view of Carl Thonius now. He was heading back towards the north entry. I could feel how much he wanted to do this, how much he wanted to prove himself. But his plan had just gone up in smoke. I didn’t blame him. The unexpected came with the job.
+Carl. Stop it. Your plan’s broken. You need my help.+
‘I can do this!’ he repeated.
+No. You can’t. You’ve done a great job tonight, but I’m taking charge now. Do exactly what I tell you.+
The original version of the plan would have seen Carl sneak out the way he’d got in, but the cover had been blown on his stolen permit. Now we had to go with my version, the worst case version.
All right, not the worst case version. That involved Zeph and his rotator cannon. All the same, Carl was very unhappy as I told him what I wanted him to do.
‘I don’t like this,’ he whispered.
+Neither do I. It’ll be a strain. Keep walking.+
The atrium was seething with security officers. The moment Carl passed the optic scanners at the gate, he’d be detected.
+Wait.+
A few guards passed through the barrier and began to spread out into the building, joining the search. We let a couple go by, Carl huddled back in a doorway, until one came along that was roughly his build and height.
+This one.+
Carl came out of cover behind the man, and felled him with a neat folded talon punch to the back of the neck.
+I could have done that.+
‘Well, it wasn’t beyond me.’
+But you
bruise like a ploin.+
Carl laughed mirthlessly and dragged the guard into a side office.
‘Do I have to wear his awful clothes?’
+No. There’s no time. Just let me see his face.+
Carl rolled the man so he was staring up at him, and I wore Carl’s eyes for moment to get a clear view.
+All right. Are you ready?+
‘Just do it.’
I reached out with my mind and gently began to kneed the muscles of Carl’s face. He whimpered in discomfort. I slackened some, tightened others, caused flesh to swell and droop, pinched eyelids. His face was like clay.
It hurt him a lot.
‘Are you done?’ he slurred, his lips ill-fitting.
+Just about. It’ll do. You’ve got about five minutes before it starts to relax.+
‘Throne, it hurts!’
+Move, Carl!+
He started back towards the gates, limping, coming into plain view and pushing past the banks of optical scanners.
Several guards turned and trained their weapons on him.
‘Hold it, you… Jagson?’
‘Bastard got me!’ Carl slurred. ‘Bastard got me and took my kit!’
The guards started to scramble towards the gate. ‘Be advised,’ one yelled into his link. ‘Intruder may be disguised as staff security and using Jagson’s permit!’
Two of the men vaulted the gate in their hurry.
Carl limped on past them, ignored.
Almost.
‘So why are you wearing his clothes?’ another guard asked.
‘Bastard left me bare-ass naked,’ Carl growled, fighting to stop his unnaturally slackened lips from drooling.
‘You okay?’
‘Just need some air. Hit my head hard…’
Carl limped on. The exit arch of the portico seemed so far away.
+Keep going.+
Another fifty metres. Another forty. Moving as fast as he dared without drawing attention to himself.
Ten metres.
‘Hey! Hey!’
Carl stopped and turned slowly. ‘What?’
‘You want me to get a medicae to check you out, Jagson?’
‘No thanks. Just let me catch my breath. I’ll be fine.’
Another few steps. The smell of the rain. The night air.
Carl was out.
A FEW AT a time, they came back to me in the ruined stack hideaway. Patience and Zael first, followed by Zeph, who’d taken a few extra minutes to conceal his transport in a lockup storage hut.
+You did well.+
Patience nodded, and went into the mouldering bedroom to strip off her ragged clothes and put on something a little more Patience Kys.
‘You too, Zael,’ I said, switching to transponder. The boy wasn’t listening. He was trying to peer around the door into the room where Patience was changing.
Wystan Frauka put down his slate, leaned forward, and gently turned the boy’s head to face me.
‘Adults only, kiddo,’ he said.
Zael scowled, partly because his view had been deprived, mostly because Frauka had leaned back on the sofa and, under the show of reading his slate, taken a good, connoisseur’s eyeful himself.
A kineblade whacked into the seat back beside Frauka’s neck and quivered.
‘Hey, just checking you were okay, Patti,’ Frauka said, A second kineblade thumped in beside the first. ‘Not a Patti. Right,’ said Frauka, unruffled, and turned back to his read and his latest smoke. The kineblades pulled themselves out and hovered back into the bedroom.
‘You did well, Zael,’ I repeated.
‘Did I?’
‘How did you feel it went?’
‘Okay?’ he shrugged.
‘You played your part.’
Yeah, like Mr Thonius said. With the faked-up hand prints. Is this what it’s like?’
‘What?’
‘Being part of an inquisitor’s warband?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘There wasn’t much… war.’
‘Then thank the Emperor for that,’ I told him. ‘Go get yourself some refreshment.’
Zael wandered away and found the bags of salt rind and the swoter loaves we’d bought the night before.
Zeph came in, damp with rain.
‘Any problems?’ I asked him.
He shook his head.
‘Were you followed?’
He looked at me as if to question the temerity of such a suggestion.
‘Watch the stairwell, please.’
Zeph took out his handgun, armed it, and went back out into the dim hallway.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Nayl and Kara arrived. They came in and began to strip off their packs.
‘Well done,’ I said.
‘Is Carl out?’ asked Kara.
‘He’s on his way.’
‘I heard there was a problem,’ Nayl said.
‘Everything’s fine. Carl got what we wanted.’
Frauka tossed him a lit lho-stick and Nayl caught it in his teeth. ‘Sweet,’ Nayl said.
CARL THONIUS ARRIVED last. I heard some banter on the stairs, Zeph pretending he didn’t recognise Carl and threatening to whale on him.
There was a heated exchange.
‘That awful man’s a complete frigwit,’ Carl said when he came in. Truth was, he didn’t look like Carl Thonius. Nor did he look like the guard whose visage I had moulded. The slackening had begun, the stroke-like collapse of muscle tension as the effect faded. Carl looked dreadful, and though the process was passing, it was painful as it wore off.
‘Holy Throne,’ said Patience.
‘Just don’t look at me,’ Carl said, and wandered into the bedroom.
+You did well, Carl. Really well.+
‘Whatever.’
ALONE IN THE bedroom, Carl sat down on a creaking chair in front of the dressing mirror and gazed at his face. Tears welled in his eyes as he tugged at the misshapen muscles and tissue with his fingertips.
He knew the suffering would end soon, and he’d get his face back. He tried to take his hands away, but the right hand stayed there, pinching and pulling at the flesh of his face.
He had to grip his right wrist with his left hand to drag it away.
He wanted to feel better. He’d fouled up. He’d been given a chance and he’d spoiled it. He wanted to feel better. There was a way. The way was in his coat pocket.
He knew he couldn’t do that here. Not in such an intimate billet.
But the craving…
‘Carl?’ Patience peered in around the door. ‘You okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. Facial transfiguration by psionic manipulation is a complex process, painful, and may take many hours to relax. Four to five hours is the norm, after the initial slackening, though some tics and discomforts may be felt as long as forty-eight hours later.’
‘The stuff you know,’ she smiled.
Carl stared at himself in the dirty mirror. ‘I don’t know who I am any more, Kys,’ he said.
‘Oh, that’s just the face thing,’ she said, and pushed the door shut after her.
‘Not what I meant,’ he said at his reflection. ‘Not what I meant at all.’
SIX
IT WAS A chilly morning, but at least they had been spared rain. The sky over Formal A in the heart of Petropolis lowered like grey smoke. When Deputy Magistratum Dersk Rickens got out of his matt-black transporter in the wide flagstone plaza of Templum Square, the first thing he noticed was the knot of onlookers gathered around the main doors of the grand templum, and the two uniformed officers keeping them out.
Rickens approached. He walked with a steel-shod cane, the legacy of an old line-of-duty injury. He observed the crowd. Mostly worshippers, the sick or the elderly, their sores plastered with faith paper, waiting to get into the grand templum to receive their daily blessings and the food provided by the almoners. But there were temple clerics too, young men in robes of scarlet and purple. They looked upset. Why weren’t they being let inside?
r /> The grand templum was an ancient, towering place, though it was dwarfed by the enormous Administry towers around it. It was just one of the tens of thousands of Ecclesiarchy temples and chapels in the wide city, but it was held in particular regard because of its location. It stood at what was popularly regarded as the precise geographical centre point of Petropolis, which made it the axis of all city life and faith. It was here that the primary religious services were held, here that the chief ministers and men of office observed the feast days and holy days, here that the nobility and the highborn were baptised, married and seen to their rest. It was here that the Lord Governors Subsector were inaugurated.
With a nod to the uniforms, Rickens went through the crowd and into the templum. He loved it in here: the delicious cool, the tobacco darkness, the coloured windows, the sense of boundless space. The domed vault was so high that the images of the God-Emperor and his primarchs painted up there were only half-visible in the candlelight.
Rickens advanced down the nave, his cane tapping against the marble tiles. He was just a tiny speck in that immensity. When his wife had passed away, he’d come here a lot, to sit and mourn in the tranquillity.
Junior Marshal Plyton suddenly appeared at a door in the west end and hurried down to him the moment she saw him.
‘Morning, sir. Sorry to call you in.’
‘Something you can’t handle?’
‘Something I think you should, sir.’
Maud Plyton was a dark-haired woman in her early twenties, her slightly thickset frame curiously at odds with her delicate features. The functional duty uniform and harness she wore were not flattering to her build.
Rickens thought highly of her. She was a sharp-witted and extremely capable officer. It worried him that she thought this was something she couldn’t deal with herself.
‘Particulars?’ he asked as they started to walk towards the west end.
‘A senior cleric of the templum, Archdeacon Aulsman, has died.’
‘In here?’
‘No, sir. In the old sacristy, actually, but I thought we should close the entire place until we’ve checked over everything.’
‘And what’s the answer to the question?’ Rickens said. Plyton smiled. Rickens was the head of the Department of Special Crimes, the smallest and most underfunded of the hive’s Magistratum divisions. Their remit was essentially to investigate anything that did not fit into the procedural scope of the other departments. They got the odd, the weird, the nonsensical and, most often, the downright boring wastes of time nobody else wanted to be bothered with.