tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65355360768466360752024-03-08T00:14:40.445-08:00Dark UnderbellyJames Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-37423116617050385062008-07-15T16:25:00.000-07:002008-07-15T16:29:59.890-07:00Chapter twenty-four: 'Skyfall'<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/07/chapter-twenty-three-it-was-code-named.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />It was late evening when I got to Police Headquarters, but Calvin was still there, just like he'd promised. He and another detective were sitting on opposite sides of a desk, going over printouts and eating bread pizza takeout from a street vendor.<br /><br />"If I'd known you guys were hungry, I'd have offered to get you something," I said as I made my entrance.<br /><br />Both of them looked up. With his mouth half-full, Calvin said, "That's okay, this is good stuff. The guy who makes it says he bakes his own bread, grows his own tomatoes, that sort of thing."<br /><br />"Yeah, right," I told him and stuck out my hand to the guy on the other side of the desk. "I'm Ed Honlin," I said. "I don't think we've met."<br /><br />He made that shifting of weight that people do when they abbreviate rising, and put out his hand to shake mine. His hand was faintly oily, and I'm sure that I picked up a trace of garlic and basil for my effort to be friendly, but that was okay.<br /><br />"I'm Tol Sedik," he informed me. "Want any?" He gestured at the remaining food.<br /><br />"No," I said. "I just ate." He shrugged and went back to his papers, or pretended to. But he'd shown a flash of recognition when I had stated my name, and I was now in at least part of his attention range.<br /><br />"Long day?" I asked Calvin.<br /><br />"Long enough," he replied. "We're up to our armpits in some excise tax scams, at least that's what I think. There are a couple of wholesalers who keep getting robbed just before tax inventory."<br /><br />"And you think that it's bogus." It wasn't a question.<br /><br />"Got it in one," he said. He paused for just a second, then said. "You got a package waiting. A couple of them actually. One's a data file that I've downloaded to my personal comm unit. Look under 'Skyfall.' The other is a bona fide they-actually-sent-it-down-the-pipe package from Anchorage. It seems to have a voice lock on it." He reached into his top desk pouch and pulled out his comm unit and a small package, just as advertised. He handed them to me.<br /><br />"Can I take them into the other office?" I asked.<br /><br />"Yeah," he said, not really disappointed at not seeing the mystery missives. "Please do. You'd just interfere with our concentration here. What little of it we have left, I mean."<br /><br />"Thanks," I said.<br /><br />I very briefly debated giving Billy Greenleaf a call to let him know that the police were probably onto his partners in the tax scam racket, but what the hell? I didn't owe him any favors that month. Besides, there was no use in giving anyone ideas that I could be a pipeline. Playing both ends against the middle can leave you as the one in the middle.<br /><br />So I padded into the next office and zipped the door behind me. I could hear Calvin and Tol get back to their important mastication of both food and clues.<br /><br />I unlocked the "Skyfall" file with my access code, and was unsurprised to find list of names, each with a personal file subfolder. I scanned it briefly, but none of the names leaped out at me. Opening one of the files at random gave me more information than I ever wanted on one Michael Rosloff, biochemical technician, formerly of Hoffla Labs, Luna, now a fermentation engineer for Bavia Brewing Co., Sky City, Venus.<br /><br />Big deal. Maybe there was something to find in the crew of immigrants, but it would take some study. Fortunately, there were only about thirty names on the list, all people who had worked at Luna or orbital biochem research facilities who had immigrated to Venus within the past ten years. Also fortunately, I had nowhere in particular that I needed to be that night.<br /><br />The package was something else again. What had Landau sent to me?<br /><br />"Okay, so what the hell are you?" I asked the box.<br /><br />I'd given it enough phonemes, I suppose, and it opened for me, a series of seams coming apart that reminded me of Cheryl's method of disrobing a couple of nights previously. It isn't a secure lock mechanism; you can fool it with a recording, after all. It's usually used for things like birthday presents and such like.<br /><br />Inside, there was a card, and a note. The card had my ugly face holoed into it, and official-looking type surrounding it, with three different kinds of coding strips on the back. The card said, <span style="font-style: italic;">Skyhook Public Investigator</span>, and in parenthesis <span style="font-style: italic;">(Health and Security)</span>.<br /><br />There was a note. It was from Landau:<br /><br />"Mr. Honlin,<br /><br />"I understand your reluctance to perform any official duties for me. However, it occurs to me that there might be circumstances when you need the cover of at least minimal authority. Hence, this card. Use it or not, as you see fit. There is also a debit account for it; that also is yours if you so choose.<br /><br />"Thanks again for your work to date. If you see them, give my regards to Mr. Reed and Ms. Carlyle.<br /><br />"Sincerely,<br /><br />"Grant Landau"<br /><br />The note had a scratch stripe on it. I brushed my fingertip across it and the note proved itself to be flash paper. Theatrical. I hoped that Landau was as amused by it as I wasn't.<br /><br />There was a tap at the door skin and I said, "Yeah, what is it?"<br /><br />It was Calvin. He handed me something wrapped in chamois cloth. It was heavy.<br /><br />"I almost forgot," he said. "This was released from evidence yesterday. You're the man, so you get to keep it."<br /><br />I unwrapped it enough to verify that it was the gun. A shell casing dropped from the bundle, but I caught it with my other hand before it fell to the floor.<br /><br />"Two spent shells," he said. "Two live ones still remaining. I expect that the shells are worth something, too."<br /><br />I nodded and held up the spent casing. "These were used to kill a man," I said. "I wonder what a collector would pay for them?"<br /><br />He grinned. "I hadn't thought of that," he said. "But you're right; that probably ups the ante considerable."<br /><br />I shrugged. "Or maybe not. Who knows from rich people?"<br /><br />He gave me a look, but didn't say whatever he was thinking. "Well," he said. "Let me know how it turns out."<br /><br />"You'll find out anyway," I told him, though I'm not sure what I meant by it.<br /><br />_________________________<br /><br />I went over the list of names in the Skyfall file, one after another, hoping to find someone who looked to have been sufficiently inside to be able to shed some light on what the hell sort of thing had killed Lucy Dahl. When a disease that looks that much like another -- previous and artificial -- disease shows up, the first thing you wonder is if somebody got cute.<br /><br />There were thirty-two names on the list, and most of them were nobodies. I'd asked for janitors, and I got four of those. Also six kitchen employees, and a plumber. The rest were mostly lab technicians. People who rise high in the scientific community are not prone to emigrate to a world where brewing accounts for a large fraction of the microbiology.<br /><br />Of the thirty-two names, five were dead. I couldn't tell if they'd been included by mistake, or because Landau had thought that maybe their deaths had been related to this business. It didn't matter really. I looked through the dead files and there was nothing much to them. Two had died en route to Venus. That's not all that unusual; a sunsail voyage is long and stressful. Two others had been old; the last one had died in an accident, falling down a long access ramp in gravity that was four times what he was used to. It's a wonder more Lunar transplants don't go that way.<br /><br />I had five names that looked like they might really know something and I went through their files, one by one. I was resolved to just make a cold call on one or two of them, to maybe ask a few background questions and see how they reacted.<br /><br />Something kept nagging at me, though, and I couldn't put my finger on it. After a while, I just leaned back and let my mind drift. Slowly, the nagging began to settle on the dead files, on one in particular, in fact. The name of the guy was Quittel, Jorgen Quittel, which is not a common name. So why did it seem familiar?<br /><br />I'd only been over one other list of names in the previous few weeks, and that was the list of General Delivery drops for Carnival. People without personal comm units still need to get messages sometimes, so there are semi-private services that take their mail. Some of them will accept object deliveries also, but that usually costs more, since it's harder to store bulk than comm files.<br /><br />Carnival had two such services, little hole-in-the-wall shops where you paid a fee and collected anything that had come in for you since the last time you'd read your mail. Both would provide hard copy, and both had the usual encoded safeguards on the mail, which meant that only Skyhook or the police could eavesdrop. The really paranoid used secondary codes, some of them not worth the effort to break.<br /><br />About half of the inhabitants of Carnival used the General Delivery shops, about six hundred, all told. I'd gone over the list a few times, as part of my general strategy of familiarizing myself with the landscape, and I'd looked up several personal files of citizens I'd encountered there. You can never tell when a little background edge will come in handy.<br /><br />I called up the main General Delivery list once more, and scanned down to the Qs, all five of them: Quach, Quan, Quintana, Quinn -- and Quittel, first name Daniel.<br /><br />Okay, that was quite a coincidence. So I jumped down a couple levels of detail in Jorgen Quittel's personal file, and there it was, one brother, born on the same date: Daniel Quittel.<br /><br />They were fraternal twins. Fraternal twins are pretty rare on Luna; the parents have to have a double birth permit. Identical twins aren't even allowed to come to term except as part of some experimental project, and then they are rarely born to the same woman; one of the fetuses will be transferred to a different mother to carry to term. That wasn't the case here, so my first wild thought--that the wrong brother had been reported dead--couldn't be correct.<br /><br />I put in another search to the main database in Skyhook for the file on Daniel Quittel. It only took a couple of seconds, and I briefly wondered just how high a level my new access code was. Brushing the thought aside, I began to read about Daniel Quittel.<br /><br />Like his brother, he'd gone into medicine, but unlike Jorgen, Daniel had opted for clinical psychology. Graduate of Copernicus, middle of his class, so he was less of a star performer than his brother. He wound up in Luna City Psychiatric, the largest such institution on Luna. He had been an ordinary counselor and dispenser of psychotropic drugs. Three years previously, he'd left his job and shipped to Venus, on the very same sunship that had carried his brother, the same voyage upon which Jorgen had died.<br /><br />All of which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. If Jorgen had somehow been affected by our mystery virus, and if Daniel had given him an anti-psychotic . . .<br /><br />Jorgen's death certificate had been issued by the ship's physician, and it gave the cause of death as congestive heart failure. Whether or not that could have been mistaken for anaphylaxis, I couldn't say; there might have been some covering up in any case. Whatever else, it suddenly seemed like a good idea to give a try at finding Daniel Quittel, c/o General Delivery, Carnival Cluster.James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-39618534098922892722008-07-13T18:17:00.000-07:002008-07-15T16:33:48.491-07:00Chapter twenty-three: It was code named 'Monaco'<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/07/chapter-twenty-two-like-harnessing.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />You've heard people talk about what it's like on Luna. There are plenty of people to talk about it, God knows. Half the population of Venus is no more than second generation immigrants, so you've heard plenty of stories. But even the immigrants forget what it's like, and it's not really something that can be explained. Life on Luna is tight, stingy. That's what it feels like, a constant tightness in your throat, a constant grasping at little things. Lunars live in cramped quarters, not because there's no room, but because Luna can't afford the water to humidify the air. A two-liter shower is a luxury. A large part of a man's estate can consist of the water in his corpse.<br /><br />It all has to do with water, and the fact that Luna has none to speak of, really none at all. Most other things are plentiful. There's so much electric power that some of the solar fields are kept covered, and no more are being built. Electronics, photonic devices, anything that can be made out of silicon, oxygen, or aluminum, no problem. There's even supplies of iron from the meteor mines. But no water.<br /><br />It's been better since Comet Alpha was captured, of course. They've eased some of the population restrictions; it's a lot easier to get a birth license nowadays. The biomes are being expanded and the air in the public corridors has enough humidity so that you don't need a mask to ward off scratch throat. But they're drawing Alpha down slowly; they're afraid of destabilizing the ecology or the economy, and it's easy to see why they're afraid.<br /><br />It was especially easy for a cop to understand. We were all too aware of just how much violence hid beneath the surface, how much hidden evil can breed in the depths.<br /><br />I was a cop, a member of the Luna City Police Department when I started out. My family has a history of police and security service; it's an upper class occupation on Luna. Most Luna City mayors are former policemen, and more than a few of the Pan Luna Board of Governors, and members of the Special Cabinet. Position counts for more than money on a world where the most important commodity is under strict administrative control. It takes maybe two metric tons of water to support a human being, and over ninety percent of that is sequestered in the biomes or leased to the farm syndicates. The Lunar Congress passes the laws on birth and death, but the Board of Governors controls the water that keeps you alive.<br /><br />All the while, sitting directly overhead, is a world with kilometer deep oceans of water. On Luna, it's a crime to even talk about trying to return to Earth. Not that some people don't talk about it anyway, of course.<br /><br />About ten years ago, I left the Luna City PD for a posting on the Cabinet Guard. The Guard is the most elite security force on Luna, descended straight from Colonel Maximilian's personal police force. The Guard is entrusted with protecting the Governors, the Congress, and the Special Cabinet. We were also responsible for oversight of all engineering projects, to make sure that nobody tried radio or video transmissions, or any other sort of communication with Earth. Earth's planetary defenses are still on red alert after over a century, and the last thing we wanted was for somebody to provoke an insane machine intelligence with a few thousand nuclear missiles still at its disposal.<br /><br />So the Guard is a science police and a thought police. It's a nasty job, when you think about it, but when you think about the alternatives, well, those are nasty too.<br /><br />I was with the Guard for a year and a half before I resigned my commission.<br /><br />My resignation was a setup, an act meant to establish me as a deep cover agent. They picked me because I fit a profile and because I tested very high on certain talents. I had acting ability, as it turned out. I looked to be very good at immersing myself in a role. Little did I know.<br /><br />Only a couple of the highest ranking Guards knew about the operation. It was code named 'Monaco;' I've heard of a few others with similar names since then. The setup looked legitimate. I developed 'personality conflicts' with my Captain, and my requests for transfer kept being delayed. The personality conflicts were real enough. Basil and I couldn't stand each other. Finally there was a snafu that I took the heat for, and I quit.<br /><br />I immigrated to Korolev, on the far side of the Moon, and joined the police force there. Korolev is a mining city, with a fair amount of iron-based manufacturing and a small engineering college besides. Overall, it's pretty much out of the mainstream and doesn't get a lot of oversight. So it was quite a comedown for me, something of a scandal for the family. But because it's so out of the way, you get more in the way of fringe politics in Korolev. Maybe that's why it was the headquarters for the Whisper Society.<br /><br />The Whisper Society was ostensibly an affinity group for those interested in Earth History. That's not illegal, just discouraged. So it draws people of a certain type, and some of those people wind up joining the inner circle, which is also a front. It's wheels within wheels, you get the idea. The first secret level is where they talk about contacting Earth again. Behind that are several illegal activities like drugs, booklegging, and unlicensed prostitution, ostensibly to raise money for the cause. Luna can be like that, just as I said. Beneath the surface, the skin crawls.<br /><br />I'd been in the Whisper Society for about a year when I married Angie. To make a long story short, we'd met on a case, fell in love and got married. It seemed like a good idea at the time.<br /><br />I was pretty heavily into my role at that point, and Angie was ideal for me. She was beautiful, smart, and a higher level Society member than I was. She often went to meetings that I wasn't allowed into. It was all very romantic, pillow talk about forbidden subjects, fantasizing about what it would be like when we returned to Earth. She used to joke about making love in the ocean.<br /><br />I can't really talk about what she meant to me. Words are useless. But she meant a lot. I loved her, you see.<br /><br />Being in deep cover meant that I had specific orders to behave at all times as if I were just who I seemed to be. I was to wait for my pullout signal, then I'd return to Luna City for debriefing, and that would be it. No constant communication with the Guard to put the operation at risk, and less chance of a blown cover getting me killed, or worse, used as a disinformation feed. That would be worse from the Guard's point of view, of course.<br /><br />But the Guard had other types of operatives trying to penetrate the Whisper Society. I discovered that the day I came home to find a couple of Society members waiting for me. Joshua Norman and John Cleary were their names.<br /><br />Norman and Cleary are dead now. I'll get to that later.<br /><br />Anyway, when I asked them where Angie was, they ordered me to accompany them. We left Korolev main dome and went to a Society safehouse in what used to be the 'bubble burbs,' the vacation residence dome of some millionaire before the Plague. The Society had purchased it, through some front or another, and it was supposedly used for hard copy record storage. In reality, they'd turned it into an interrogation site. A torture chamber, in other words. On the way out, Joshua and John told me that my wife was an agent for the Special Cabinet Guard.<br /><br />I didn't know what to think, but of course I got scared. Was this some kind of a test? Had Angie been planted by the Guard to keep tabs on me, or was it a coincidence that we'd gotten married?<br /><br />Of course what scared me the most was wondering if my cover had been blown as well, or if it was about to get blown by Angie talking. What was going to happen to me next, in other words.<br /><br />But I stayed in character. I found that I'd gotten furious at Angie. How dare she hold out on me, betray me like that! How dare she put me at risk? And who else was in on this?<br /><br />That was what all three of us wanted to know, and the method of asking the questions involved a great deal of pain for Angie.<br /><br />It was pain that I helped inflict. In order to prove my loyalty to the Whisper Society, I was expected to take part in the torture of my own wife. That scared me as well. I was afraid that I couldn't do it. I was also afraid that I could.<br /><br />There was another man waiting for us at the safehouse; his name was Hills, Leo F. Hills. The four of us took turns on Angie, peeling her layer by layer, physically and mentally. By the time she started to talk, her voice was barely audible; she'd screamed her voice to a croak. We learned that she was a monitor operative, keeping track of other agents, and judging how close they were to the optimum time for pullout, judging how reliable were the agents who were not in deep cover, the ones who would report regularly, judging which agents were in danger of going double and feeding disinformation back to the Guard.<br /><br />We pulled a lot of names out of Angie. She was lying about most of them, of course, attempting to cover up the real spies by naming loyal society members. But Angie had apparently been exposed by some agent that the Society had in the Guard itself, so we had a separate list to check against. The list we had was mostly code names though, with only a few of them identified.<br /><br />My own name wasn't on the list, but my code name was. Whenever we asked her who 'Treeline' was, my gut would tighten, because I kept expecting her to say, 'Ed Honlin is Treeline.'<br /><br />But she never said that. Even after she broke completely, mind mostly gone, when she was just babbling, naming names, places, dates, she said nothing about me.<br /><br />Except that she loved me.<br /><br />And it was my hands that broke her. By the end, I was doing most of the work, the other three either didn't have the stomach for it, or they just wanted me to do it. There is a rapport that develops between people under intense circumstances, and I can't imagine a rapport more profound than that of pain and the giver of pain. Just before she died, I saw Angie wake for one last time, a look of awful clarity in her eyes. She looked up at me with more love than I've ever seen on the face of another human being.<br /><br />"Sorry, love," she told me. "Better luck next life," and then she died.<br /><br />That night was the last time I felt anything for quite a while. My performance had apparently cleared me of suspicion. In fact, it was decided that I had an important place in the Whisper Society, and I became the personal bodyguard of Jeffrey Tamir, one of the members of the Society's innermost cell. My responsibilities included insuring his personal protection, finding listening devices -- and interrogation. Mr. Tamir liked to be present during interrogations, especially those involving young women. Most of the young women lived.<br /><br />In all of it, I played my part. I was following my orders, you see.<br /><br />That went on for two years, and during that two years, I heard a lot. Enough to develop some strong theories about the ultimate purpose of the Whisper Society.<br /><br />Then one night I had a visitation. I can't tell you by who or what, but let's call it a ghost. It was not my expected trigger, but the nature of the visitation was such that it was clear that my orders now were to make my report to the Guard.<br /><br />So I sat down and recorded everything I knew, put a high level cipher to it, and submitted the report. I can't get very specific about the method of submission, either.<br /><br />At that point, I was supposed to withdraw and return to Luna City for a full debrief. But I didn't. I didn't have enough information to satisfy myself, and besides, I had reason to believe that the Guard had been penetrated.<br /><br />So I snatched Tamir. I went to his residence, told him that it was urgent he come with me, then hit him with a shock stick and hauled him to a safehouse, the same one where we'd killed Angie. I peeled Tamir as thoroughly as anyone I'd ever done, and when I'd finished, I went and got a couple of others for confirmation. A few of them died before they told me much. I was feeling rushed by this time.<br /><br />What I found was this: The Whisper Society was just the tip of it. There was a set of interlocking secret organizations that had banded together for the purpose of a full scale revolution on Luna. Ultimately, they planned to launch an all out attack on the Earth's automatic defense system and to then reestablish contact with Earth.<br /><br />Of course, if they failed, the machines that ran Earth Defense might well decide to nuke every population cluster on Luna.<br /><br />Even if they never got that far, the plan included a preliminary wave of over one hundred assassinations of high LunaGov officials and a paramilitary takeover of all communication, transportation, and water distribution facilities. Most of the assassins were already in place and the timetable put the execution of the plan at only a few weeks away.<br /><br />I used Tamir's emergency codes to call a meeting of the inner circle of the Whisper Society in Korolev. They were surprised and suspicious, of course, and about half of them didn't show. But quite a few did.<br /><br />I blew the air seals on the meeting hall. There were maybe twenty-five people inside. They all died.<br /><br />Then I started my sweep. Or may you could call it a spree. I had three uniforms, Luna City Police, Cabinet Guard, and Korolev Police. I swapped them back and forth as I hit my list of names, first in Korolev, then in Mendeleev, Maunder, Copernicus, and Theophilus. Most of them I killed quickly, but I made special trips for Joshua, John, and Leo G. They died more slowly than the others, and a lot more painfully.<br /><br />I can't tell you how good it felt to kill them, how very, very sweet it was to watch them die.<br /><br />They could have stopped me at any time, I think. The Guard, I mean. By the time the first few reports reached them, they'd had time to look over my report and they must have realized what I was doing. They could have stopped me.<br /><br />They didn't though. Somebody threw up a news blackout, too, because there wasn't a trace of the story on any of the news channels, not even the mail nets. I was just a ghost, killing people who didn't die, just ceased to exist. I don't know what the Guard did with the families of those I killed. Protective custody, maybe. Or maybe they killed them, too.<br /><br />I was on my mission for about a week. I don't think I slept even once during that time. I don't even remember when they brought me down. I can't sort out which of my memories was the last one before the hospital.<br /><br />They tried to put me together again, afterwards. I'll give them that. I got plenty of counseling, and they went as far with the memory wipes as they dared. Memory wiping is a funny business. You can delete ordinary memories, but when a memory has an emotional charge to it, the process doesn't so much expunge the memory as it blunts the affect and strips away the emotion. I can remember some of the things I did, but not the why or how it felt. What was I thinking at the time? I don't know. What was I feeling? That is lost to me.<br /><br />I did crack my file while I was hospitalized. It had a line about a "trauma that has become centralized." I did some research to find out that a "trauma that has become centralized" is jargon for saying that the memory of some event had become so important to me that to remove it would destroy my mind and personality.<br /><br />I don't have to guess at what the event was, do I? "Sorry, love. Better luck next life." I've never felt so close to another human being as I did when I was torturing Angie to death. And she loved me so much that she died protecting me.<br /><br />Did I mention that one of the Society members was a coroner? He faked Angie's death certificate. He also did an autopsy on her after she died. It was to check for electronic implants. They didn't find any, but they did discover that she had been pregnant. Something else I learned from Mr. Tamir, and it's the reason why he didn't live quite as long as some of the others.<br /><br />I'd killed Angie to protect myself and my mission. Every time I hurt or killed someone while I was undercover, I was following orders to not jeopardize the mission.<br /><br />But when I sent in my report, I do remember a feeling of overwhelming relief. I can do anything now, I thought to myself. After what I've been through, no one will blame me for anything I do.<br /><br />Blame me? If anything, they helped me do it. They switched off law enforcement and let me run wild. Doing a job for them. A necessary and bloody job. Maybe it was necessary. It certainly was bloody.<br /><br />So I went out and executed maybe a hundred people, all told. No, scratch that. I murdered a hundred people. Many of them were guilty of a conspiracy to kill even more people than I killed. Some of those I murdered probably didn't deserve to die. Some may not have known what they were a part of. But I was heading off a war. You don't pay that much attention to who you kill in a war.<br /><br />It cracked the Whisper Society and several other of Luna's criminal sects. I single-handedly thwarted an assassination plot on dozens of highly ranked government officials. There were a lot of very important people who were very grateful for what I'd done, even if only a very select few knew exactly <span style="font-style: italic;">how </span>I'd done it.<br /><br />Some of my doctors wanted me confined permanently. Some of the Guard wanted me liquidated, I expect, while some others wanted me to return to duty. Instead, I asked for a one-way trip to Venus. They wiped my records cleaner than they could wipe my memory, and sent me on my way.<br /><br />So here I am, free floating amid the clouds, with the light above and the dark and storms below.<br /><br />Freedom is a slippery thing, you know? Most people think of it in terms of the restrictions they live under. Few realize that their own incapacities are more restrictive than any law. The greatest bar to murder, rape, or any other sort of evil is that most people aren't very good at them. Most people couldn't kill someone they loved if their lives depended on it.<br /><br />But I can. I know I can. I've done it.<br /><br />I can still love, I think. I'm reasonably sure that I've felt the emotion in the past couple of years. I still care for people, some of them, anyway. I'm not a total basket case. I insist on that much. I'm not completely dead inside.<br /><br />I do believe that I love you.<br /><br />Sometimes lovers say things. They say things like, "If you loved me, you'd stay," or "If you loved me you'd do what I need or want." There are a thousand things that lovers say to each other to test the bonds between them. I can't help anyone out in that department. And I do appreciate that you haven't asked me for proof of my love. I can't begin to tell you how much that has meant to me.<br /><br />Because I loved her more than I'll ever love anyone else…I hope. I hope I never again love anyone that much, because the final test of love is nothing that anyone should ever have to face.<br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/07/chapter-twenty-four-skyfall.html"><br />Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-49799349753090745662008-07-08T13:15:00.000-07:002008-07-08T13:17:21.934-07:00Chapter twenty-two: Like harnessing lightning<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-twenty-one-i-guess-that-youre.html">Last Chapter</a><br /><br />The next morning, from a public comm in the hotel lounge, I called Calvin Lee to tell him that he could close down the investigation into the death of Molly Laird. I didn't need the Police Department stipend, and there was no reason I couldn't continue any investigation on my own hook. Besides, until the case was officially closed, they couldn't release the antique pistol from the evidence lockers. I figured that the time had come to sell the damn thing and turn the money over to Marjori as soon as she became Anna's legal guardian.<br /><br />Calvin also told me that I had a file waiting for me at Police Headquarters. I guessed that it was the list of names that Landau had promised me. Calvin said that he didn't know where it came from, since it carried a high level code. I told him I'd come in and get it as soon as I could get away.<br /><br />I felt better after the call, and Lewis commented on it. "You're looking a little better," he told me as I ordered juice and porridge for breakfast. "Last night Joey told me that he was worried about you."<br /><br />"I get worried sometimes, myself," I told him. "One can tilt at windmills only for so long."<br /><br />"'So saddle up my Rosinante, and sing a song of madness due,'" he quoted from a popular musical of the last century.<br /><br />"'And when I've had my fill of love, I'll end my quest and marry you,'" I finished.<br /><br />"I think that the production number starts about now," he observed. "All the poor hung-over gentlemen are now supposed to throw off their gloom, jump onto the tables and begin to gyrate."<br /><br />I surveyed the room. "Right," I told him. "And we should all be so clever in the morning."<br /><br />He shrugged. "So how are things going in Carnival?" He knew that I was spending a lot of time there, but I hadn't told him much besides the fact that I was looking for someone.<br /><br />I shrugged back at him. "I broke a guy's foot yesterday," I said. "Other than that, nothing much happened. I was looking at the sideshows."<br /><br />"They have a couple of casinos there, too, but the games are rigged."<br /><br />"So what else is new?" I said.<br /><br />I ate my breakfast, caught a couple of news summaries, then watched a live feed on the megastorm. It was indeed winding down; there had been no fatalities on this one, unlike the previous ones. One analyst attributed the good showing to the long lead time. It seems that there was some old research satellite out past Anchorage that some guy had managed to reactivate into a remote sensing station, and he'd made a prediction on the storm a full month before it happened. So everyone was expecting it. Hats off to the rebirth of meteorology, I suppose.<br /><br />By that time it was clock noon, so I went over to Marjori Low's.<br /><br />She greeted me at the door with a hug and a kiss. "How was your evening?" I asked her.<br /><br />"Passable," she said. "You know how I hate society functions. But it was for charity, and Leo made it bearable. We went out for drinks afterwards."<br /><br />She led me into the sunken living room but we remained standing, a little awkwardly, two people unsure as to exactly what to next say to each other.<br /><br />"Would you please bring us a couple of fruit punches, James?" she said to one of the servants. He nodded, bowed and left the room.<br /><br />"How is the adoption petition going?" I asked her.<br /><br />"Smoothly," she said. "It's maybe a little slow. Leo says that it is unusual for a widow with grown children to try to adopt a young child. He was tactful enough not to mention the age factor."<br /><br />"Leo is a good man," I told her, just as we got our drinks. Still, we both remained standing as the butler left the room.<br /><br />"Yes," she said. She hesitated, then said, "Last night he asked me to marry him."<br /><br />I took a long swallow of the fruit punch and put the glass down on a table. "I can see how that would make sense," I said carefully. "It would probably help the adoption."<br /><br />She said, "Leo said that, too. He also said that children should have a father while they are growing up."<br /><br />I nodded. "I'd make a lousy father figure. About as poor a role model as one could find."<br /><br />She closed her eyes tightly, as if she were in pain. I stepped closer to her and she embraced me, small choking sounds coming from her throat as she seemed to be fighting back tears.<br /><br />"I told myself that I wouldn't screw this up," she said. "That I wouldn't make demands, that I wouldn't ask things of you that you didn't want to do. But I'm so afraid of losing you."<br /><br />I wiped a tear away from her eye and held her face between my hands. "Do you love him?" I asked her. She nodded, then shook her head.<br /><br />"How the hell do I know?" she asked me. "What is love anyway? I loved Henry, loved him dearly, and I was so lost and angry when he died. Then I loved you, but it's not the same as it was with Henry. Now maybe I love Leo, and again it's not the same. He'd make a wonderful husband and father, and I don't think he's even that concerned with being compared to you."<br /><br />She closed her eyes again and another tear leaked through. "As if anyone could compare with you," she said.<br /><br />I snorted at that, and she said, "It's true, though. You're not like anyone else. Part of me is very proud of that, proud of my time with you, proud of the looks that people give us when we're together. First they think one thing, then they think something else, then they learn a bit more and they finally realize that they don't know what to think. I like that. I like shocking people. I like not being easy to figure out. Is that so bad?"<br /><br />"No," I told her. "There's no harm to it, and it's not so bad at all."<br /><br />"But now I'm greedy," she said. "I want both the excitement, and I want security, too. Pure contradiction. Like harnessing lightning. You can do it, but it won't be lightning anymore, just electricity."<br /><br />I felt that I owed her something, owed her because she had come along when I needed someone like her, owed her because she thought so much more highly of me than I thought of myself. I wanted everything to be different from the way it was, for me to be different from the way I was. I wanted to be able to fight for love the way any normal man will fight for it, even at the cost of losing. Maybe I'd have even preferred to lose. Maybe I even wanted to experience normal loss, and normal heartbreak. Anything but what I really had.<br /><br />Instead, I told her, "Please sit down. I have something that I need to tell you."James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-30775324462979228992008-06-28T18:10:00.000-07:002008-07-08T13:18:22.602-07:00Chapter twenty-one: I guess that you're this much of a shit to everybody<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-twenty-in-any-other-than-direct.html">Last Chapter</a><br /><br />I left Carnival after that; I was beginning to distrust my own actions.<br /><br />I am not completely lacking in the ability to discern the implications and effects of my own behavior, though I have a number of blind spots, some of which I do not know. But after enough examples of pounding my own head into a wall, I do begin to notice.<br /><br />I'd let the fights of the night before rattle me, and I'd made enemies to no good purpose. I'd been rude to Cheryl, and more violent than I needed to be when gaining admission to see Caine, the slash fighter. Just now, I'd broken Al's foot just because he pissed me off. If I kept this up, I could kiss off any hope of making progress in getting information out of Carnival. Word would get around that I was dangerous to talk to; I'd hurt somebody who didn't deserve it, or I'd get into a fight with someone a lot luckier that I am, and I'd take some serious damage myself. The odds were getting longer, and I was the one doubling up my bets.<br /><br />I was afraid to go to the City for a late night prowl. I was genuinely afraid that I would kill somebody.<br /><br />The problem was that I had no idea of why I was behaving like this. Was I just getting impatient? Was I feeling guilty about giving Molly Laird or her daughter short shrift, while I chased some phantom image on somebody else's radar screen?<br /><br />Hell, if I really wanted to confuse myself, all I had to do was think about Marjori, and wonder what she was doing that night, and whether she was enjoying it, or if I had fled from Cheryl Chiba's company because I wondered what it would be like to tangle in the barbed wire.<br /><br />Joey was still on duty when I docked at the hotel. He said, "Hi, Mr. Honlin. You're back early tonight."<br /><br />"Sometimes the best you can do is to know when to quit, Joey," I told him.<br /><br />He smiled at me. "You're just tired, Ed. You'll feel better in the morning."<br /><br />I blinked at that. I think that was the first time he'd ever called me "Ed."<br /><br />"When you put it like that, I have to believe you," I said, and his smile broadened into a grin. "Tell Fumio to give you a raise." Then I went inside to my room.<br /><br />As I think I've said before, there isn't much in my room. I live in one of the upper lift bloons in Fumio's hotel, and I get charged by the kilo of occupancy. I have a couple of changes of clothing, some light bedding, and an inflatable chair that Calvin once brought over. If I want some light, I use a chembulb, they're good for a couple of hours; if I want food or drink, the cafe downstairs is open ninety-six hours a cycle.<br /><br />I didn't need any extra light in my room that night. In addition to the dim twilight that leaked through the City to its dark shadow below, the megastorm down south was still churning the planet, and it had destabilized some of the strata farther to the north. We were getting more than our normal share of storms down below, in other words, and the flickering illumination was enough to light my room. Occasionally, there would be a flash brighter than a chembulb; most often the entire hotel was bathed in what the old astronomers had called "The Ashen Light of Venus," visible either during true night or in the shadows of the City.<br /><br />I tried to calm myself by sitting seiza, searching for my center by watching after my breath as it settled down the path of my spine. My body seemed willing, but my thoughts refused to do anything but masquerade as chittering geese.<br /><br />About twenty minutes into it, my door comm buzzed. I ignored it for the first few times, but the buzzing kept up, and eventually I rose and went to the door. The flap fell away as I unzipped it. Cheryl stood outside.<br /><br />She smiled at me and said, "You couldn't have known that it was me out here, so I guess that you're this much of a shit to everybody. That makes me feel better, I guess. Can I come in?"<br /><br />She was dressed pretty much as she had been dressed the night before, black-on-black striped body suit with spiked bracelets and belt, but the barbed wire had been replaced by what looked like cobwebs spun from liquid metal. Glints of light moved up and down the strands in slow time, except when a flicker of lightning outside seemed to energize them. After a few seconds I realized that they were probably responding to AM radio spectrum static -- electrical discharge sensitive jewelry.<br /><br />She noticed my gaze and said, "You like it? It's called 'Weather or Not.' It was quite fashionable years ago, just after the first megastorm. I found it in a thrift store."<br /><br />"Frugality is a virtue," I told her.<br /><br />"Yeah," she said. "And I don't have that many. Do I have to ask to come in again?"<br /><br />"Oh, sorry," I said. "Please come in."<br /><br />She raised an eyebrow. "A 'please' and an apology. I'm impressed." She stepped in through the door. "Oh, and thank you," she said, as if an afterthought.<br /><br />She looked around the room, while I rezipped the door. Not that there was much to see. "So," she said finally.<br /><br />"So," I repeated. Then neither of us said anything for maybe a full minute. Finally she spoke; it was slightly louder than a whisper.<br /><br />"Goddamn you," she said. "Goddamn you to hell."<br /><br />"Nice to see you, too," I said. Then she slapped me, and I let her.<br /><br />"That was for running out on me," she said, her voice getting louder, but it was still more a hiss than a yell. "You made me feel like shit. Did you enjoy that? Let her get all hot and greedy, then just <span style="font-style: italic;">poof</span>, so long and goodbye? Did you think that it was funny?"<br /><br />"I didn't really think about it," I said. "I'm sorry if I didn't meet your expectations."<br /><br />"Expectations? Hell, I've had vibrators that did a better job than you."<br /><br />I couldn't help myself; I laughed. She started to slap me again, and I caught her wrist, just below her bracelet. I held her hand about six inches from my face and looked into her face. "I <span style="font-style: italic;">am </span>sorry," I said.<br /><br />The anger drained away from her face, and after a moment she chuckled. "I guess it was pretty funny," she said. "You gave me a very sleepless night, though. I'm not used to being dumped."<br /><br />"I can believe that," I told her.<br /><br />I slowly released her wrist and she left her hand where it was, then tentatively brought it to my face in a slow caress. The sudden pain caught me by surprise and I quickly stepped back away from her. She laughed again, louder this time. I reached up to my cheek and my fingers came away with a smear of blood on them. She brought her own fingers to her mouth and licked them.<br /><br />"First blood," she said.<br /><br />I stepped forward and grabbed her wrist again, and looked at her fingernails, seeing what the dim light had hidden from me before. Her nails had been coated with some sort of plastic, then filed to razor sharpness. She could probably rip out a man's throat with talons like that.<br /><br />She swung at me with her other hand, and I caught it as well, then brought both of her arms down to waist height and used them to push her to the wall. Her elbows poked into her stomach when her back hit the wall, and she gave a little <span style="font-style: italic;">huff </span>as she exhaled. I held her there, pinned, for several seconds as I wondered what to do next.<br /><br />Her bracelets had several slots in them, in a pattern that made them a match for the spikes. I brought her wrists together and fitted the spikes into the corresponding slots. There was a click, as if a mechanism had engaged, and her hands were locked together as if by handcuffs.<br /><br />She looked me in the eyes, and said, "Congratulations. You just solved the puzzle."<br /><br />Then the tiger stripes on her body suit began to come apart. It was held together with some sort of electrovelk, and the command had just been sent to <span style="font-style: italic;">unattach</span>. The strips of her clothing came off slowly, in a completely passive striptease, until all that she wore was the spidery jewelry, her handcuff bracelets, and the spiked belt.<br /><br />She licked her lips as she stared at me, her mouth a rictus, a slash of greed and expectation. A flash of light outside lit her face and glinted off of her exposed canines. She said, "Are you willing to finish it? Are you?"<br /><br />With one hand I pushed her hands above her head. With the other I ripped off her belt, the last sharp thing that was between us.<br /><br />__________________________________<br /><br /><br />The storm was still down below us when we were finished, but it felt like it was beginning to break. I finally pulled away and rolled over to near the inflatable chair about a meter away. Her breathing was nearly back to normal when she opened her eyes again. She did something to release her bracelets and then took them off completely, tossing them over onto the pile of her clothing.<br /><br />"Want any souvenirs?" she said with a smug smile on her face. I shook my head.<br /><br />"Suit yourself," she said, then stretched, a motion that would have been even more appropriate if she were still wearing her tiger suit. She sighed, then reached down to trace her fingers along the front of her hips, along her pelvis.<br /><br />"I wonder if I'm very bruised," she said. "You were pretty rough, you know?" She looked very pleased with herself.<br /><br />"Sweets for the sweet," I told her.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/07/chapter-twenty-two-like-harnessing.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-33155971459126547742008-06-23T12:55:00.000-07:002008-06-28T18:30:55.180-07:00Chapter twenty: In any other than a direct light encounter<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-nineteen-you-have-my-official.html">Last Chapter</a><br /><br />The next day was a light day, and I spent from morning to mid-afternoon running oxygen for the hotel. Sometime around 1500 by the twenty-four hour clock, I dropped down to the drift level and headed for the edge of the City. Once there, I let the bloon slowly rise, bypassing the City fringe and making mid-level out on the Circle.<br /><br />I docked at a small cafe that was on the Great Circle comm and transport line between two suburban towns. After I had a piece of pie, I went into a private comm booth and placed a call to Skyhook. There isn't even the illusion of security on calls that go through radio transmission; from the Circle, though, it was light pipe all the way to Anchorage.<br /><br />"This is Dr. Landau."<br /><br />"Dr. Landau, Ed Honlin here."<br /><br />"Hello, Mr. Honlin," Landau replied. "It's been over a week since your last brief, cryptic message."<br /><br />What had I said last time? Something like "Still on it, no news." Hey sport, these things don't come quickly.<br /><br />"Yeah," I said. "It's been about that long. Anyway, I've run across our friends from across the gulf of space."<br /><br />If you can hear someone sitting up straight, that was the sound that came through the wire. "Where are they?" he asked.<br /><br />"Still in Carnival Cluster," I told him. "Carlyle, at least is dressed out as a medical, a doctor going by the name of Warren."<br /><br />"I see."<br /><br />"My guess would be that they are establishing themselves in medical practice for the cluster, so that the next wig case gets brought to them before it gets dumped on the City hospitals. They are also well placed to make blood tests without anyone being the wiser."<br /><br />"That would make sense," he said. "In fact, I wish we'd thought of it."<br /><br />He couldn't see me shrug. "It's a slow payoff routine," I told him. "It will take months to get any results, most likely."<br /><br />"It's already been months," he said with what I took as self-recrimination. "Slow and effective is better than quick and ineffective."<br /><br />"Well, yes, there is that."<br /><br />He said nothing for a while, so I spoke up again. "There's another thing. In addition to the sex clubs I described to you, we have another possible contagion route to worry about." I then described the slash fight that I'd witnessed.<br /><br />"Is that likely to be a problem?" he asked.<br /><br />"I don't know," I told him. "On the plus side, there are fewer vectors than the clubs. On the negative side, the fighters aren't monks." I was thinking of Caine and his three women. "Also, the show goes on the road, sometimes, so you have the risk of sweeping up anything that's out in the upper latitudes."<br /><br />"Should we think about cracking down on the entertainment clusters?" he asked me. "It's sometimes argued that such a policy would just force the behavior farther out, where we have less chance of keeping track of it."<br /><br />I hesitated. I had no desire to be Big Brother's Judas goat. "Regulating the shadow clusters wouldn't be completely ineffectual," I said. "But it might not have the effect you want. Anyway, I think that it's premature to be making big changes. For one thing, I still haven't located anything concrete on Lucy Dahl. I'd prefer not to investigate anything while the cluster is under siege mentality."<br /><br />"That sounds like you've made some contacts, though," Landau said.<br /><br />"It might just be smoke," I told him. "Don't get your hopes up."<br /><br />He sighed. "There doesn't seem to be much chance of that, Mr. Honlin."<br /><br />I was about to ring off when I remembered. "By the way," I said. "Do you have anything for me on that list of names I asked for? Somebody local with some deep knowledge of the kind of thing we're dealing with?"<br /><br />"Ah, yes," he said, sounding a little better at having something good to report. "I have at least a partial list of Luna to Venus immigrants who used to work for the four research facilities. It isn't a very long list, actually; high level people tend to stay put."<br /><br />"I'll take low level people, too," I told him. "You can never tell what a janitor has picked up and read."<br /><br />"I'll do another search, then," he told me. "You should have it by tomorrow."<br /><br />"Thanks," I said, and clicked off.<br /><br />My next call was to Marjori. "Hallo, love," I said when she came on line.<br /><br />"Oh, Ed," she said, as if surprised to hear me. Well, it had been several days since we spoke.<br /><br />"I just called to see how you and Anna are getting on," I told her.<br /><br />"Famously," she said. "She sleeps through the night and always seems to need a nap just when I have something else to do. My own children should have been so accommodating. Suzette seems almost redundant. Anna is fun to play with, too."<br /><br />"So you're having fun?"<br /><br />"God, yes."<br /><br />"That's good," I said. "It makes me feel less guilty for neglecting you."<br /><br />"I'm sure you have good reasons," she said.<br /><br />"Um," I said, with a feeling that I'd just erred. Oh, well. "Any word from Leo?"<br /><br />"Yes," she said. "As a matter of fact, he's escorting me to some dreadful charity thing, this evening. I told him how I hated the things and he bravely volunteered. That was while we were discussing the adoption. He's of the opinion that we should take care of that before proceeding with anything else having to do with the Graylings. Apparently one of the things that they might try is to petition for custody, which they could do as long as she had no legal guardian. Once adopted, she's safe."<br /><br />"Sounds like a good idea," I told her. "Convey my appreciation to Leo."<br /><br />"I will," she said, softly. We said a few more things, then I clicked off and headed back out to my waiting bloon.<br /><br />___________________________________<br /><br />I pulled in one last string of oxy-bloons, then traded the tug in for a one-man squid and headed back to Carnival. This time I docked at the farthest end of the elongated cluster. I wanted to scout out the sideshows.<br /><br />Physical deformities are almost unknown on Luna; the genetic makeup of fetuses are monitored almost from the moment of conception, and uncorrectable defects are quickly aborted. Beyond that are gene replacement therapies, hormone and enzyme implants, and reconstructive surgery that can repair almost any injury. The extremes have been trimmed on the Procrustean bed of medicine in the name of survival.<br /><br />On Venus, though, things are different. Even now, more than sixty years after the Skyhook opened up Venus to Lunar trade, there are still clusters and individual bloons that aren't on the comm nets, that never get near the equator, sub-populations that keep to themselves with a xenophobic devotion. Some shy away from religious conviction, some just don't like outsiders. As you might expect, there is a fair amount of inbreeding in the hermit clusters and more recessives come to the fore. Beyond that are accidents of development, or oddities of nutrition or training. And when a person sees or is seen as being too freakish to fit in, they leave to find other means of living, and other places to live.<br /><br />So you can see the midgets in Carnival, and they have a giant, too. All the classics are there: the Fat Lady, the Pinhead, the Dog-faced Boy, even a pair of Siamese twins, though I suspect that they were attached by artifice, and can be disentangled any time they need a break from each other's company. That's the way it is in the sideshow; half of the draw is the sign over the stage; a good portion of the rest is often simple con. The name of the act can be more important than the act itself. The Rubber Man is just a contortionist, and the lure of the Snake Charmer is more to see real snakes than to see them respond to Man. I'm pretty sure that I can bench press more than the Strong Man, and I know that I'm more accurate than the Knife Thrower. I'm not interested in playing to an audience for money, but I don't despise those who make their living that way.<br /><br />Besides the physical freaks, there are the mental cases. There's a long and inglorious history to that one. "Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes," you know. On pre-industrial Earth, the insane were judged as possessed by demons, and sometimes were dressed up and painted, then rented out to perform at parties for the aristocracy. We do things in a more egalitarian fashion: catch a glimpse of the depths at half a deb.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><blockquote>Very few males, in my opinion, have any epidermis records of ever having been connected vibrationally to organized crime bosses, in other than a direct light encounter.</blockquote></span><p>A wall-eyed guy with a flat affect was chanting his rant below a sign that said, "Marat-Sade." Unlike the other barkers along the sideshow strip, his ravings made no particular sense. I expect that was the point. I'd check out that geek show some other day.</p> <blockquote style="font-style: italic;">No males, in my opinion, have ever gotten any definite idea of either the vectors to their person from whence the organized crime boss vibrations are originating or the distance from their person from whence the organized crime boss vibrations are originating, in any other than a direct light encounter.</blockquote><p>Across the way from Marat-Sade stood a barker who stood maybe one meter high, dancing slowly and pointing to a sign that said, "Girls with Tails and Other Things." I smiled at him and moved along, the saga of crime bosses beginning to fade.<br /></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">No males, in my opinion, have ever gotten any specific identity of any organized crime boss when connected vibrationally at a distance in another direct light encounter.</blockquote><p>"Hello, Ed," came a different, more familiar voice from behind me. I'd noticed him scurrying to catch up with me, while at the same time trying to look unhurried. He wasn't very good at it.</p><p>"Hi, Al," I said. His full name was either Albert or Alberto, depending on who he was trying to impress at any given moment. He was a small-time smuggler, part of a large and loose coterie of odd-job men of flexible ethics who lubricated the skids of Darkunder commerce. I'd run a few shipments up through the floor of the City for him once upon a time, but I hadn't had any dealings with him for many months.</p><p>He matched my walk and spoke in a way that only moved his mouth, something that he'd learned from old movies, I expect, though it looked a little like an imitation of the hebephrenic barker we'd just walked past. Only less impassioned.</p><p>"What brings you to Carnival, Ed?" he asked.</p><p>"This and that," I said.</p><p>"Word has it you've been asking around about some things."</p><p>"I'm a curious guy," I responded.</p><p>Albert wasn't quite as tall as I am, and he's skinny besides, but he's always tried to cloak himself in an aura of quiet menace that can be mistaken for the real thing if you haven't had much experience. I expect that he can be dangerous if you're quite a bit smaller than he is, or if you turn your back on him, literally or metaphorically. His tone of voice got darker when he next spoke.</p><p>"The word is that you're doing a police job," he said. "I thought you were through with the cops. That's what you said when you ran for us."</p><p>"You'll have to refresh my memory on that one," I told him. "I don't recall talking with you about the cops. Nor, for that matter, do I remember talking about you with the cops. Seems to me like anything else I do is none of your business."</p><p>He put his hand in his pocket, but kept it flat, so I didn't think he was about to pull anything out. Another tough gesture. I checked my peripheral vision to see if we had an audience. Just the barkers and the gawkers, as nearly as I could tell.</p><p>He said, "I think that you should keep it that way." He paused, I guess because that's the way his mental script told him to. Then he said, "It can get unhealthy to be closely associated with the police, especially after so many people trusted you in the past."</p><p>I stopped walking and he took a couple of steps before he realized that I was behind him and he turned to face me, a little bit of nervous animation on his face.</p><p>"What the hell is this all about?" I asked him, letting my annoyance find its own way out. "Did you and Hugh and Ray and the rest of the merry men draw straws to see who got to find old Ed to warn him off? Has anybody been jerking your collective chains, or are you just feeling paranoid? Or is there some sort of 'Find the stupidest twit in Darkunder' contest, and you're going for the top prize?"</p><p>He almost took a step backwards, as surprised at my sudden emotion as I was myself. Then he reminded himself how tough he was supposed to be.</p><p>"I'm just delivering a message," he said. "Smart guys don't ask too many questions."</p><p>"Yeah, and what about stupid guys?" I asked.</p><p>He shrugged. "Things happen," he said. "You're beginning to get a high profile, and that's not good for anybody."</p><p>I noticed with increasing surprise that I was getting angrier with every word he said. I didn't know if I was angry at the veiled threat, or the silliness of it all.</p><p>"Yeah, yeah," I told him. "You know where I live, yabba, yabba. But I can see pretty good, and I can see folks for a long time before they get there. And you know what?"</p><p>He didn't react to the question, so I moved to take a step towards him. His eyes widened very slightly, and he began a step back. I almost laughed. Halfway through the step meant he only had one foot on the floor. I extended my own step and brought my foot down hard on his instep. I heard a faint crack just before his yelp of pain. I only used enough force for a greenstick fracture, though.</p><p>I said, "If the guy who comes after me walks with a limp, I'll know it's you. Merry Christmas."</p><p>I turned and headed back the way I came.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><blockquote>Of those males who have ever been vibrationally addressed by organized crime bosses, all have experienced step and fetch vibrational conditions from the general direction of organized crime bosses, in my opinion, at the time of this writing. Males experience it, females don't experience it, is my present guess. Step and fetch vibrational conditions as experience by the recipient results in a situation where the male epidermis does something and, rather soon afterward, a remote entity knows what the male epidermis has had done, within a context of a surveillance relationship. It is a round trip communications loop from the remote entity to the male epidermis without the permission of the male epidermis and without the male epidermis being able to disconnect at the discretion of the male epidermis.</blockquote></span><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-twenty-one-i-guess-that-youre.html"><span>Next Chapter</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote></span><br /><br /></p>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-63203248944804351902008-06-13T17:25:00.000-07:002008-06-23T13:08:34.687-07:00Chapter nineteen: You have my official apology<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-eighteen-or-whether-they-were.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />We exited The Arena right into another parade. This one consisted of maybe two score people carrying sticks that they clacked together in a syncopated pattern while they danced along. Clack clack, tic tic, then take two steps forward. More pounding then step to the side. For a brief moment I flashed on beaters driving wild animals in front of them for the hunt.<br /><br />"What are you looking for?" Cheryl asked me as she clung to my arm. "I know some places where we can go…"<br /><br />I shook my head. "I need to find a stairwell to the lower level," I told her. "I want to get a better look at those fighters, without their masks."<br /><br />"Why?" she asked with a note of disappointment in her voice. No, Cheryl, I'm not that easy.<br /><br />"You don't have to go along," I said.<br /><br />She pulled away from me with an angry gesture. I was supposed to try to mollify her at that point, if I read the scenario right, then she'd allow herself to be coaxed into coming with me. Instead, I turned and headed up the street, against the flow of the parade.<br /><br />"Hey, where…?" I heard her voice from behind me, but I'd set into a fast walk, and I doubt that she could move that fast when there were that many people in the way.<br /><br />I found the access door about two hundred meters up the corridor. It was down a short side alley, and it was supposed to be locked, but it was a simple loop latch that nearly fell apart when I used my knife on it. Then the door unzipped just fine. I went in and zipped it closed behind me.<br /><br />The stairwell spiraled down into the gloom of the next level. Down below was where a lot of the maintenance areas and living quarters for Carnival are located. The top levels, above the main drag, are mainly for extra lift and air circulation and supply. I'd sussed out the general physical layout of the cluster on my first few swings through Carnival cluster. It always helps to know where you are.<br /><br />The fighters and their handlers had come from down below. I figured that to be where the dressing rooms were. I wanted to talk to the fighters.<br /><br />The stairs ended in another dim alleyway. I made my exit and headed back toward the direction of The Arena.<br /><br />The space below the main drag in Carnival was not well lit; anyone down there should know where they are or where they were going. In this case, that was easy. There were people milling in the corridor in front of an entrance, well-wishers, hangers-on, essos and exxons, anybody who wanted an entree to the backstage world. I pushed my way to the front and flashed my Sky City Police ID at the bouncer on duty.<br /><br />"So what's this to me?" the guy asked with a hint of a sneer. Sky City Police have no official jurisdiction in Darkunder, but just because it's unofficial doesn't mean there is no leverage.<br /><br />"Unemployment if I yank this cluster's tethering privileges," I told him, softly so no one else heard. "Some broken bones if I just decide to go in over you."<br /><br />He looked like he was about to see if I had a bark/bite mismatch, but instead he nodded once and slipped back through the door, closing the flap, but not zipping it. After a few seconds, it opened again and he waved me in.<br /><br />I went in cautiously; I might have pissed the guy off enough to try a sucker punch. But there was another, smaller guy now with him. The smaller guy looked like management. "So what's this about?" he demanded.<br /><br />"My name's Honlin," I told him. "I just want to ask a few questions of some of the fighters."<br /><br />He shook his head. "They're getting cleaned up after the fight," he said. "Then they rest. They deserve it."<br /><br />"I'm sure they do," I told him. "I won't take long."<br /><br />"Forget…" the guy began.<br /><br />I slammed the bouncer in the solar plexus, just once, but hard enough to double him over, retching, onto the floor. The manager tried to yell something, but I had my fingers around his throat at that point, and nothing came out.<br /><br />"You have my official apology," I told him. "I deplore the unnecessary use of violence. I also deplore wasting my time with assholes. Now we are going to go see the fighters."<br /><br />He nodded, his eyes bulging. I let go of his throat and heard the sound of air going back into his windpipe. "Tell Fido here to resume his post," I told him. He nodded.<br /><br />"Get back outside," he told the bouncer, in a raspy voice, still constricted from my throat hold. The bouncer was trying to get back to his feet. After he made it and began an unsteady walk toward the door, the manager-type and I headed inside. I had one hand wrapped around his wrist in a come-along that wasn't very painful, but the guy kept complaining.<br /><br />"Is this necessary?" he asked.<br /><br />"Probably not," I admitted. "But it's fun."<br /><br />It was easy to find the way to the post-fight dressing rooms. All we had to do was follow the smell of sweat and blood. There were four dressing rooms, in a row along a narrow hallway, but two were empty, the two glove boxers having already left, I surmised. The two remaining rooms were pretty crowded near the doorways, especially Caine's.<br /><br />As we neared the door, the manager-type seemed about ready to call out to some more security guys who maintained a vigil just outside of the dressing rooms. I tightened my grip on his wrist and he winced.<br /><br />"Sure," I whispered to him. "You can make a scene, and try to get some more people to throw me out. And what does that get you? Maybe a broken wrist, if you try to do it now. Worse if you try it later, since that would really piss me off. You might also wind up with a couple of damaged employees, not to mention the likelihood of getting yourself in Dutch with Skyhook. Didn't you see my badge? I'm special appointment to upstairs. You don't need that kind of trouble. Not just to stop someone from asking a few questions."<br /><br />For a second I was worried that he wouldn't buy it. His pride had been wounded and that makes people stupid. But he was bright enough to wonder how silly he'd look in a body cast maybe, and he had up front evidence of how strong my hands are. So he introduced me to the two security men as if I belonged there.<br /><br />"J. J., Twill, this is…" he looked blank.<br /><br />"Honlin," I repeated. "Ed Honlin."<br /><br />"Ed Honlin," he said, without missing another beat. "He's going in to see Caine. Just for a few minutes. It's okay."<br /><br />The two guys parted. I let go of the manager-type's wrist. "Thanks," I said with a smile. "I owe you one."<br /><br />"Yeah," he said flatly. "I owe you one, too."<br /><br />___________________________________<br /><br />Inside wasn't as crowded as I'd feared, because the room was quite large, probably twenty meters deep, though it was only maybe four meters wide. There was a cluster of people around the door, and another group over to the right at what I took to be a wet bar. Caine was about halfway back, and behind him was nothing much, just some storage lockers. I headed back, cautiously, since I hadn't made any friends on the way in.<br /><br />There was a knot of people around him, four females, three of whom were dressed for speed. The one who had plenty of clothes on was a medical type, dressed mainly in white, a tall, rangy blonde with eyes the color of almonds. She was busy sewing cuts and putting on butterfly bandages. She seemed to be nearly done.<br /><br />The group looked up as I approached. "Mr. Caine?" I inquired.<br /><br />Caine looked at me and gave a short laugh. "Stage name," he said. "Call be Bill. William Bomar." He glanced at the medical tending his cuts. "I'd rise to shake hands, but, well, you know." He flashed a smile.<br /><br />"You're from Luna?" I asked. It had been obvious from the way he moved when he fought. Some of it had been like looking at myself in the mirror.<br /><br />"Yeah," he admitted. "Eight years ago. What's this about?"<br /><br />I showed him my police ID. One good thing about Lunars is that they respect the police. One of his girls took the card and showed it to him. Then she handed it back. He nodded.<br /><br />"So, Mr. Honlin, what's up?" he asked again, wincing slightly as the med cut a suture line. She was finishing the last cut to his scalp.<br /><br />"It's nothing special," I told him. "I'm trying to get some information about a guy who might have spent some time in Carnival here. He was good with a knife, so I thought he might have tried out the fights." I showed him Costello's picture. He stared at it for several seconds.<br /><br />"Morgue shot," he observed. I nodded.<br /><br />"He killed a girl and got killed in the process," I told him. "I'm seeing if he has any backtracks."<br /><br />Bomar scowled. "Killing girls is not a nice thing to do," he said quietly. A couple of his girls nodded at this wisdom.<br /><br />"No," I said. "It's not very nice at all."<br /><br />He stared at the picture for a while longer. "He does look familiar," he said at length. "I think it's him I'm remembering, too, not just a type. Give me a few seconds on it."<br /><br />The woman stitching his cuts had finished. She stood up and stooped down to get to a bag, reached in and removed a tube of ointment. She looked at the other three women, and said, "This salve should go onto the cuts when you change the dressings. I'm sure you can find some help in that. It's to prevent scarring." She said it with about as much emotion as someone giving street directions.<br /><br />"Yeah, sure, Doctor Warren," Bomar told her. "Thanks again." He watched as she left.<br /><br />"She's lots better than the old guy," he said appreciatively. "Prettier, too."<br /><br />"What are we, squid pus?" said one of the three woman and the other two nodded.<br /><br />"Shut up, Judy," Bomar said. "Without the Doctor, I'm a mass of scar tissue, and none of you would have anything to do with me."<br /><br />"Oh, I don't know," said another. "I think that scars are sexy." She lightly touched one of his bandages.<br /><br />"Bullshit, honey," he said pleasantly. "The only things you think are sexy are blood and money."<br /><br />"I'm kind of fond of penises," said the third one, and that one got a laugh from the others.<br /><br />Bomar looked at me. "I've heard of you, haven't I?" he said.<br /><br />"I don't know," I said. "Have you?"<br /><br />"Yeah," he said. "You train with McElroy, right?"<br /><br />Close enough, I thought. I nodded.<br /><br />"And you're another ex-cop," he said.<br /><br />"Another?" I asked, not that I was surprised.<br /><br />"I was on the force in Clavius for a few years before I immigrated," he said.<br /><br />"So why'd you leave?" I asked.<br /><br />He shrugged. The movement looked painful, given his current state, but he didn't seem to mind. "I didn't like it much," he said. "No special reason." He was lying, just like we all do. But I wasn't interested in prying.<br /><br />"About Costello," I said, indicating the photo again.<br /><br />"Yeah," he said. "I was hoping more would come to me." He paused. "As best I can recall, this guy came through a few months ago, trying to get into the game. Said he was good with a knife. That's okay, but we don't do knife fights; they're too dangerous. Sometimes they get staged way out on the rim, so they can be taped for folks who like to watch the really hard-core stuff, but the folks here won't touch it. Slash fights are about the limit, and personally, I expect those to get shut down before too long."<br /><br />"Why is that?" I asked.<br /><br />He looked at me. "Were you here tonight?" I nodded. "Well, there you are," he said. "Things like tonight are pretty common. Near riots. Some night there's going to be a real thing and somebody's going to get killed or seriously hurt, and there it goes. No one wants to give the pricks in the City an excuse to shut us down. We blow in the breeze, you know?"<br /><br />He paused. "Anyway," he continued, "This guy Costello, he may have been good with a knife, but he didn't cross over too well. That's my guess, anyway. I couldn't have seen him more than twice, then he was gone, so that's what must have happened.<br /><br />I nodded. This was a lot more information than I'd ever expected to get. "Who would have made the decisions on Costello?" I asked.<br /><br />"One of the personal managers, I'd say," he replied. "Mine is Bobby, over there by the bar. You might ask him."<br /><br />"Thanks," I told him. "I'll do that."<br /><br />I pulled out a few other pictures, and fanned them. "Do you recognize any of these women?" One of the photos was of Lucy Dahl.<br /><br />While Bomar looked at the pictures, one of his girls spoke. "I'm pretty sure I've seen that one," she said. She pointed at Lucy's photo.<br /><br />My throat tightened. "Where?" I asked.<br /><br />She scowled. "Not around here," she said dubiously.<br /><br />"Not in Carnival?" I asked.<br /><br />She shook her head. "Oh, I didn't mean that. I mean, I hardly ever leave the place, so it would have to be in the cluster somewhere. But more out on the edges. Like in the sideshow areas. Probably just walking down the street. But I'm pretty sure I've seen her."<br /><br />I pulled out a couple of cards with my name and number on them and passed them out. "If either of you remember anything more, please call me, okay?" I said. "I'll make it worth your while." The girls perked up at this.<br /><br />"Sure, Ed," said Bomar. "Maybe you can come by sometime and we can spar a little."<br /><br />"I'd like that," I told him. Then I gave everyone my best smile and left.<br /><br />__________________________________<br /><br />On the way out, I checked with Bobby, last name, Fulton, William Bomar's manager, to see if he knew anything more about Costello, but Bobby had a convenient memory. That was all right. I'd pushed my luck far past the point of reasonable that night.<br /><br />I'd come down there to see Caine because the way he moved in the ring gave me the wild thought that he was Harmon Reed, the Lunar Guard operative who was also trying to track Lucy Dahl. But without his mask, I could see that the resemblance was just body type and the fact that he moved like a Lunar transplant. That Bomar had a memory of Costello was just a stroke of good fortune; his girlfriend's recognition of Lucy Dahl's picture was like filling an inside straight.<br /><br />I had no simile for the coincidence involved with the doctor, though. I'd come down hoping to find Harmon Reed, but the doctor who sewed up Bomar's wounds was Juliet Carlyle.<br /><br />Which also meant that Reed and Carlyle now knew I was investigating Carnival.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-twenty-in-any-other-than-direct.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-1618013016101322252008-06-06T17:50:00.000-07:002008-06-13T18:01:07.528-07:00Chapter eighteen: or whether they were feeding on the blood that leaked through<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-seventeen-i-felt-like-ice-was.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />"But it was over so fast!" complained Joan while we waited for the crowd to settle and for the next fight to begin.<br /><br />"So how long does it take you to come?" Cheryl asked with a little bit of a curl to her lip. Joan gave another giggle at Cheryl's sophisticated <span style="font-style: italic;">bon mot</span>, while John continued to rub her body in the places that weren't covered with barbed jewelry.<br /><br />Cheryl turned back toward me, and I asked, "Is this one of your standard Darkunder outings?"<br /><br />"You mean, go to the fights then find some place where we can screw?" she asked. She showed her teeth; I'd call it a smile.<br /><br />"You can't, you know," I told her, watching her face. There was a brief expression of confusion that flickered across it.<br /><br />"Can't what?" she asked me.<br /><br />"Shock me. You can't shock me. You're working a nice contrast here from the time Calvin and I had dinner with you. There you were cool and witty in a post-debutante sort of way, and here you're doing a good female slime-wrestling impression. I appreciate it, really I do. But it's not going to shock me, no matter what, so if it's an effort, or if you're doing it for my benefit, don't bother."<br /><br />An angry look flashed across her face, but it died almost immediately and she laughed. Her whole body moved with her laughter, and then she squirmed closer to me in her seat and took hold of my arm. "I'm really glad we ran into you," she said. Then the public address system squawked and began to announce the next fight.<br /><br />"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the main event of the evening, a blood match between two major stars of slash fighting."<br /><br />The crowd cheered its approval, with special notice given to the mention of "blood." Two men appeared on the fight platform, rising from their respective trapdoors slowly, milking every bit of applause from the spectators. Ah, show biz.<br /><br />"The challenger tonight is a newcomer from the far north, where they gut bloons before breakfast, and slice open squids for lunch! He was weaned on razor blades and learned to walk on broken glass! This man sleeps on a bed of nails. This man cuts no deals; this man deals in cuts! I give you, in white, Jaxon Manic!"<br /><br />Both men were dressed in tight body suits that looked quite a lot like what Cheryl and her companions wore, sans the barbed wire, and the clothing extended up into hooded masks that looked like a cross between movie ninja and biocontainment gear. Both men were well built, and the sheen of their clothing highlighted their muscle definition. Certainly the material was too thin to leave anything to the imagination. Any thinner and you'd be able to make out the label on their loin cups.<br /><br />"In the other corner, in black, is Caine, the current champion of The Arena Slash Ring!"<br /><br />The rest of it was drowned out by the crowd. I caught something about "undefeated by rivers of blood" but I may have heard it wrong.<br /><br />Both men were carrying a weapon, the crux of the forthcoming combat. It looked like a slightly shortened billy club, with three long, thin, knife edges set into it, each one quarter of the way around. The remaining flat edge I guessed as being for blocking and parrying. The club looked to be a soft plastic, slightly flexible, but tough.<br /><br />The blades were narrow, no more than half a centimeter in depth, and there was no point to the weapon, just a blunt tip at each end. The blades ended far enough from each tip to make each end a handle. So "slash fighting" seemed to be basically short stick fighting, but with the added ability to make shallow cuts. Jabs wouldn't penetrate, but a straight strike could open a welt, and grabbing your opponent's weapon was out of the question.<br /><br />The bell rang and the two fighters began to circle one another. Caine shifted his slasher back and forth from hand to hand. Manic kept his in his left hand, and kept rotating his wrist as he moved. Neither man seemed anxious to begin.<br /><br />Suddenly, Caine darted forward and whipped his slasher toward Manic's left hand, apparently aiming for the wrist. Manic's elbow came up and the two weapons met, with Caine's being parried to the outside. There was a brief clack, and Caine withdrew.<br /><br />This repeated itself several times, usually with Caine on the offensive. On the third or fourth time, however, rather than withdraw, Caine used his left hand for the slash attack, and as the two weapons met, he swung his right hand toward Manic's face.<br /><br />Manic flinched, and as Caine withdrew, he flipped his slasher across the back of Manic's hand. The fabric parted slightly and a slight line of pink and red appeared.<br /><br />"First cut!" cried out somebody to my left; I don't think it was any of my companions. The crowd seemed ready to surge to its feet, but then subsided back into the seats.<br /><br />"Is that legal?" I whispered to Cheryl. "Using something other than the weapon, I mean. Can they kick or punch each other?"<br /><br />"Anything they can get away with," she told me. "But they only score with blood."<br /><br />As if to prove her correct, Manic tried to kick Caine in the knee, a crippler that would have left his opponent considerably less nimble. But he received nothing but a gash on his calf for his troubles.<br /><br />The two then began a series of thrust and parries, with Manic on the defensive. He took a weak jab to his chest at one point, but he managed to cut Caine's biceps in the process.<br /><br />It went on like that for a while; neither man was doing serious damage to the other, but the small cuts began to multiply. The idea seemed to be to use kicks and punches to set up an opponent for point gathering cuts, or, alternatively, to use the threat of a cut to try for some blow that would significantly weaken one's opponent. There were no rests allowed, so eventually one or the other would begin to make mistakes as his stamina ran out.<br /><br />Or when his patience ran out. After about twenty minutes of back and fourth, Manic suddenly gave a piercing scream and ran full tilt at Caine. I could see some sense to it, especially if an opponent were good at the bloodletting, but not so hot at the rest of the fight. In that case such a tactic would give up some points on the attack, with the hope of a grapple that could do some real damage to the opponent. Unfortunately for Manic, Caine was as good at the rest of it as he was with the slasher. He sidestepped Manic's attack and slammed him in the sternum with the tip of his club when Manic got near enough. Then Manic was past him, and Caine made two quick, long cuts to Manic's lower back as he, Caine, backed off.<br /><br />Then Caine made a mistake, probably thinking that Manic wouldn't try the same tactic immediately, he let himself relax slightly. But Manic came around without a pause and, screaming another bloodthirsty cry, came at Caine again. Caine slipped slightly; I couldn't see, but there might have been some blood on the floor by that time, since each fighter had at least one slow dripping wound. Manic took advantage of Caine's off balance posture and swung his stick high, with his whole weight behind it. Caine partly blocked the blow, but enough of it got through to glance off his head. The blades gleamed red in the light of The Arena, and suddenly Caine was bleeding from a scalp cut, just over his right ear.<br /><br />Scalp cuts are real bleeders. The fabric that covered that part of Caine's head quickly soaked, and as the first rivulet of blood slid behind his ear to trickle down his neck, the crowd roared approval and leapt to its feet. One section began to chant "Manic! Manic!" and Caine glared at them.<br /><br />Then, with his own weapon, Caine reached around and cut himself over his left ear, in a place symmetric to the cut that Manic had just inflicted.<br /><br />For the barest instant there was a beat of silence; fighters cutting themselves was not a common thing, I guess, nor was it common for someone to so obviously sneer at the audience. Then there came a huge roar as Caine launched himself at Manic.<br /><br />It looked like a berserker attack, no skill, no forethought, just overwhelming force. But it wasn't. To my eye it was a pure mastery of movement; force meeting little opposition because of the angles in which it was directed. Caine went in through Manic's defenses like smoke through a grating, and his left elbow came forward with a savage strike to Manic's lower rib cage. Manic's sudden exhalation of breath was lost in the thunder of the crowd, and I could see Manic's knees wobble. Caine's stick came down on the inside of Manic's elbow, then again, same spot, and Manic's stick slipped through his grasp.<br /><br />Manic tried to protect himself from the sudden onslaught of blows that Caine rained down upon him. He fell to his knees trying to reach for his slasher, to maybe regain at least some possibility of rejoining the battle. But Caine was concentrating his strikes to Manic's head, and the blood was flowing freely, covering Manic's head with it, sluicing down into his eyes. Manic was nearly blind at this point, his white mask now bright red, and he was holding his hands to his eyes, both to try to clear them, and also to protect them from Caine's blows.<br /><br />The overhead lights were flashing, a signal to end the match, I think, but the crowd had gone berserk, much more so than Caine. I could see spatters of blood whip off of Caine's weapon and splash upon the wire mesh of the screen that shielded the platform. Some of the spectators had left their seats and were trying to climb the wire mesh, but it was too fine for handholds. Others were pounding at it, and yelling. Some were pressing their lips against it. I couldn't tell whether trying to yell more directly into the ring or whether they were feeding on the blood that leaked through.<br /><br />The trapdoors opened up and people spilled out of them, swarming over Caine and Manic, holding Caine's arms, pulling the slasher from his grasp. The new people in the ring were heavily padded and wore night vision goggles, or so I surmised, because then the lights went out.<br /><br />They were only out for a few seconds, but when they came back on again, the stage area was empty. The crowd was still stone crazy, though. Several fights seemed to have broken out. One erupted only a few feet away from me, I think that it involved the guy that had tried to block our seats when we came in. I couldn't tell who was at fault, but I was annoyed, so I stepped over and rabbit punched one of the participants, and he dropped to his knees. The other guy looked disappointed and looked at me as if trying to decide whether to take me on as a consolation prize. I smiled at him and stepped away. He decided not to pursue it.<br /><br />I took Cheryl's arm and leaned close to her ear. "Let's get out of here," I told her.<br /><br />She fastened herself to my arm without even a backwards glance toward John and Joan. That was just as well. They seemed about ready to rip off each other's clothing and go at it on the spot. At any rate, they were temporarily oblivious.<br /><br />It was surprisingly easy to get out, once we made it back out of the seating area, but we had to climb over some seats to do that. Once that was accomplished the combination of my size plus Cheryl's spiky clothing opened a pathway to the door. Thus we made our escape.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-nineteen-you-have-my-official.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-17147203177659096762008-05-31T20:26:00.000-07:002008-05-31T20:36:54.764-07:00Chapter seventeen: I felt like ice was thickening in my veins<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-sixteen-not-when-lawyer-does-it.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />It was in the third week of my slow infiltration of Carnival cluster that the megastorm hit. It was at the south pole of Venus, and Lewis had been right, the live footage of it was impressive. All the news channels were full of the thunder and lightning it and people followed the storm's course as if it were a war. There weren't many casualties; people had learned the lessons of how to ride out the fury from previous experience.<br /><br />With the news of the storm, there began a mass migration of bloon fishermen from the northern to the southern hemisphere, because the dust stirred up by a megastorm causes a huge upsurge in the bloon populations in the storm's aftermath.<br /><br />The storms effects were felt even at the equator; the overturning of the atmosphere at the south pole generated planetary waves that rippled along the natural stratifications in the Venusian atmosphere. The City and the Circle around Venus started a slow undulation that the control systems of the City worked hard to dampen. They were largely successful, and a good thing, too. Uncontrolled oscillations of that magnitude could rip the seams of the City apart.<br /><br />In Darkunder, the altitude controls for the clusters are inferior to those of the City and the Circle. Small clusters are less at risk; they don't flex to waves that are longer that the cluster size. They do bob in the air currents, however, and the storm brought a mild sense of unaccustomed movement to the land of shadow.<br /><br />I watched the storm for a few hours in the afternoon, then headed over to Carnival. I took a taxi, letting someone else drive for a change. It was light night; I wasn't sure how long I'd be away from my hotel and I didn't want to tie up one of Fumio's transport bloons for so long a time.<br /><br />When we arrived at Carnival, I noticed that it had grown since the day before. Many of the traveling shows were returning for the duration of the storm, to make preparations before heading south to entertain the fishermen during the great bloon harvest that was in the forecast. Another shuffle of the cards, I guess; another Carnival hand to play.<br /><br />I paid the driver and sent him on his way. Then I headed toward theater row.<br /><br />There are five main theaters in Carnival, performance spaces large enough to hold as many as five hundred people at a time, though it would overload the cluster if all were to be filled at once. One of the theaters, called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Labyrinth</span>, has been cut up into a multitude of smaller spaces, public, semi-private, and private. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Labyrinth</span> specializes in sex, a venue for voyeurs and exhibitionists, people meeting people that they don't particularly want to ever see again, but who they want to see for a night. It's not a very good market for prostitutes, except as stage acts; <span style="font-style: italic;">The Labyrinth</span> specialized in amateur talent. It also seemed like a good place to track certain types of disease vectors, and I'd been keeping my eye on it for a while, with no success. I had, however, checked its history well enough to have found a couple of outbreaks of hepatitis G in which it had been implicated. People never learn.<br /><br />Three of the other four theaters in Carnival were general performance spaces that swung from light opera to Shakespeare to power quintets. The remaining theater was called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Arena</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Arena</span> was another specialized venue; it specialized in fights. Mostly this was human combat, but I saw one cockfight staged during my time there. Beyond that there was boxing, judo, full contact karate, kendo, fencing, you name it. As long as it involved a winner and a loser, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Arena</span> liked to put it on the stage, especially if there was the possibility of blood involved. It was this aspect of it that interested me.<br /><br />I'd been to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Arena</span> three times in the three weeks I'd been investigating, and I hadn't seen the entire repertoire of the place yet. That night, there were two scheduled competitions, Olympic-style gloved boxing, and a relatively new thing called "slasher." I hadn't seen a slasher fight yet, but from its description, it was something I needed to check out.<br /><br />The larger clubs and theaters are near the midway of Carnival, where the air is a swirl of light and shadow, and there is always a babble of a crowd. I trailed a parade when I arrived, a procession of costumed dancers following a drum line toward who knows what destination. The costumes seemed to have an animal theme, with wolves and tigers in the majority. People seldom dress as sheep or cattle; they prefer to fantasize about freedom and power.<br /><br />I was maybe a hundred meters from the Arena when I heard a woman's voice from behind me. "Hello, Ed," someone said, and I turned around.<br /><br />It was Cheryl Chiba, Calvin Lee's former girlfriend. She was with two other people, one male, one female, both about her age. All three were wearing masks, but they were for show only, black eyemasks that covered little more than eyeglasses would. Black was the central theme of the trio, in fact. Cheryl wore a striped black leatherette body suit that had a peacock sheen to it, barely visible in the shifting lights of the Carnival corridors. The stripes were dark gray on the black, and the whole things would have been unisex, except that the body that it enclosed was so obviously female. Wrapped around her at various places, as jewelry, were strands of metal, twisted together like barbed wire. Her belt band and bracelets were both fully spiked; the belt had several strands of chain dangling from it. The overall effect was an apparently deliberate traipse along the boundary between bondage and outright sado-masochism, a sexuality-in-your-face sort of outfit, with all the equipment fully tuned.<br /><br />Cheryl's companions were similarly dressed, though the effect was less pronounced. They looked like xerx plant copies, following along after the original.<br /><br />"Hello, Cheryl," I said, turning. "What brings you to these parts?"<br /><br />She let a smile break though the intense blasé expression that young people have always worn as an attempt to appear worldly. She held out a hand to me, and I touched it briefly in greeting, wondering just how much damage a full embrace from her barbed outfit could do to a man.<br /><br />"We're here for slash night at the Arena," she said. "This is John and Joan, not their real names, but an accurate simulation." Her eyes glittered behind the mask, and her voice was slightly revved, like someone with a stimulant buzz on. Her companions seemed to vibrate slightly; they didn't have the sort of muscle control that Cheryl had, and their movements were vaguely spastic. Cheryl's had a more controlled, whiplike character to them. I wondered just what mix they were on.<br /><br />"Nice to meet you," I told the two of them, and offered a handshake to each of them. The girl giggled when I touched her.<br /><br />"So are you headed for the fights?" Cheryl asked me. "I hear that Caine is fighting tonight."<br /><br />"I'm going to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Arena</span>, yes," I told them, as the four of us began to walk again. "I don't know any individual fighter's name; I only got interested a few weeks ago."<br /><br />"Why the sudden interest," she asked. "Are you thinking of taking up a hobby?"<br /><br />I shrugged. "No particular reason," I told her. "Just curious."<br /><br />"Is this the guy you told us about?" said John. "It is, isn't it? The cop-oid who does the jump kicks and who did the sky dive that time?" Cheryl made a face at him.<br /><br />"Jeez, John, you can be such a pleege. Why don't you just ask him his dick size while you're at it?" Then she said to me. "Sorry if I blabbed," she told me.<br /><br />I shrugged again. "No matter," I said. "These stories grow with each retelling." I paused. "Rather like my dick size, in fact." Both John and Joan giggled.<br /><br />Then we reached the Arena, paid our tickets and went inside.<br /><br />___________________________________<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Arena</span> can hold maybe four hundred people without crowding, but it was crowded that night, and the four of us had to push our way through the crush of people at the door. We'd gotten seats near the front, but there were a lot of people milling around in the standing room section behind the seats. There was an edge to the spectators. Violence as a spectator sport can do that. The main ring was an elevated platform at the center of the space, surrounded by wire mesh. From the looks of the crowd, I could see why the fighters might feel safer that way.<br /><br />One guy tried to block our path as we neared the seats; I couldn't tell if he was just harassing the rich folk, or if it was meant as some sort of challenge to me. I sometimes get that, most often in a certain kind of bar, and it has always baffled me why the challengers are so often guys who can't fight worth a damn. That looked to be the case with this one, certainly.<br /><br />The guy was more intelligent than some, though, or maybe my cheery smile, and "Excuse me," confused him. Anyway, the four of us slid by him without a protest. The aisle wasn't quite narrow enough to block without effort, and I don't think this guy wanted to expend much effort. Or maybe he didn't want to miss the fight.<br /><br />We'd arrived between rounds of a gloved boxing match. Olympic-style boxing has lasted for centuries; it found a good match between style and bloodshed, and it has served as a crowd pleaser ever since. I've tangled with a few boxers from time to time, and they are not my favorite sport. They're tough and they know how to take and inflict pain.<br /><br />Every martial art has to solve an important conundrum, which is, how do you make it real? You can do kata until your body is hard and tuned, but you still don't know how you will react in a real fight, when there is something at stake other than a raised eyebrow from the sensei.<br /><br />So the fighting arts tend to divide into two categories: those that test, and those that hold competitions. Each has its drawbacks. Those that give tests can only hope that the fear of failure somehow approximates the fear of death or mayhem that comes when someone is really trying to do you harm. That it works at all gives some indication of the relative importance that we give our egos and our bodies.<br /><br />Competition, even full contact competition, brings a more subtle problem. No martial art will last long if it kills its students with any regularity. But that means that the strongest techniques -- those that can kill -- must somehow be blunted. I have seen powerful and well-trained men lose an encounter because their training included too much of pulled punches, and proscribed strikes. They simply didn't get reality through to their reflexes.<br /><br />The introduction of gloves into boxing (the old word was "fisticuffs" because all the hitting is done with the fists) produced another paradox. The gloves are to protect the hands; bare-knuckled fighters break their hands too often, and that shortened careers and lost students. Also, the gloves, because of the way that they cushioned the blow, actually improve the momentum transfer between a thrown punch and the body or head of the target. The paradox then, was that hand protection translated into increased risk to the head and its contents. Knockouts became far more common after the introduction of the gloves allowed a punch to bounce a man's brains back and forth inside his skull, rather than expending its energy in breaking bones. And with the knockouts came a greater risk of brain damage, and occasionally, of death.<br /><br />So, although Olympic-style boxing has no truck with killing blows like elbow strikes, or choke holds, or neck breakers, it carries a significant risk to the boxer. It makes the combat real with the oldest of tricks, reality.<br /><br />The reality that night was of a crowd in the opening throes of blood lust. We'd arrived just before the beginning of the fourth round, in what was billed as a twelve round fight. My first impression was that it would to go the distance. Both men were near-heavyweights, each massing easily above ninety-five kilos. There the similarity ended, however. One fighter was a short, squat, bull of a man, with a pneumotube body and a glaring expression. The other was taller, and seemingly quicker on his feet. He seemed to glide over the floor, his feet never leaving the springy surface of the cage the two of them inhabited. He was always just outside of the little one's reach, firing off short jabs that missed three-to-one and did seemingly little damage when they landed, but enough to score points with the judges and the crowd, and enough to infuriate his smaller foe.<br /><br />I glanced over at my companions. They had slid into our seats before me; I'd chosen to stay in an aisle seat, Cheryl to my immediate left. Ordinary sound was drowned in the ambient noise and frequent shouts from the crowd, but occasionally, I'd hear a rasp of breath intake from one of the three. Often enough, one of them would shout encouragement to one of the fighters, adding to the surrounding din. I couldn't see her two companions, but Cheryl's brow had developed a sheen of sweat that matched the speedy glitter in her eyes.<br /><br />Another roar from the crowd brought my attention back to the front. The small one had landed a vicious body strike to the abdomen of the tall one, and the tall one reached out to grab his small opponent behind the head, pulling him into a clinch. There were scattered catcalls as the referee moved in to separate them.<br /><br />As the seconds passed, I began to wonder at my original judgment. The short one, for all his seeming sluggishness, was slowly modifying his style to take into account the quickness of his longer reached opponent. He already knew enough to roll away from the jabs; now he was beginning to roll forward when he wanted to attack.<br /><br />The round ended, and the two men went back to their corners, and their handlers appeared through trap doors in the platform floor. The short one was bleeding through multiple cuts to his face and one fairly bloody one to his scalp. He grimaced as the styptic salve was applied to it, but was otherwise occupied in rapid conversation with his trainer. The tall one was unmarked, but he was also talking to his trainer, and he seemed a little worried.<br /><br />The handlers vanished to where they had come from, and the fifth round began. The short one charged at the tall one, and just as he entered the dangerous range of his opponent's reach, his hips began an almost imperceptible rotation. The jab that was meant to stop him bounced off of his suddenly turning head, like someone punching through a swinging door. And like a swinging door, the short one's body cocked back and came at the taller opponent with a snap.<br /><br />The tall one managed to get his other hand between himself and the roundhouse right that came at him, so it was primarily his own glove that jolted him. It was enough to interfere with his timing, and when he tried to pull a clinch with his free right hand, the short one ducked under it and landed a short but powerful blow to his short ribs.<br /><br />The tall one should have gone down, then, to recover his breath. But he didn't and remaining erect was costly. The short one loosed a series of blows that broke through his opponent's guard and pushed him back to the padded wire mesh of the cage. I saw the tall one's legs quiver, like he was now trying to descend to the sanctuary of the floor, but he was pinned.<br /><br />The crowd had leapt to its feet, and the sound of it was enough to feel as a physical thing. The referee was trying to get between the two fighters, but the small one was just pounding away at the taller man, feet set, like he was working a heavy bag. Finally, the referee grabbed his arm, the short one stepped back, and the tall man slid to the floor. Even then he wasn't limp; he kept trying to sit up, his eyes curling backwards into his head, but his body trying to continue its schedule, trying to get up and keep fighting.<br /><br />The referee declared the short one the winner, and the trapdoors erupted with each fighter's handlers coming from below. The short boxer did a little victory dance while the taller man was lead off the platform, then the referee repeated the victory announcement, and everyone deserted the stage.<br /><br />Then the lights came up, and a voice said, "Ladies and gentlemen, there will be a twenty minute intermission. Drinks are available at the rear, and from the roving vendors. If you leave the building and wish to be readmitted, please get your hand stamped before you leave."<br /><br />"All right!" exclaimed John, who was sitting farthest from me. "And that was just the warm up act." He leaned over and kissed Joan full on the lips. She reached up to stroke his hip.<br /><br />"Now, now, children," Cheryl said. "This isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">The Labyrinth</span>, or even <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cave</span>. Save it for later." Then she looked over at me and said, "Pretty plasmoid, eh? Maybe even coronesque?" A bead of sweat ran down her forehead and onto her cheek. I felt the cool air descend from the blowers high above us.<br /><br />"Surface of the sun," I told her, but I felt like ice was thickening in my veins.James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-35465291277602927352008-05-26T13:22:00.000-07:002008-05-31T20:38:04.653-07:00Chapter sixteen: Not when a lawyer does it<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-fifteen-or-tell-you-lie-of-such.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />Two weeks after our visit to May B's place, two weeks after bringing little Anna Laird back with us to Marjori's place, I received a call from Marjori. I was in my room at Fumio's at the time, preparing to make an oxygen run, something that I hadn't done for too long, and which needed doing immediately, as one of the other runners had left suddednly.<br /><br />"Hello, Ed?" Marjori said as I picked up the comm receiver.<br /><br />"Marjori!" I said with some pleasure. "I was just thinking of you." I had seen her only once since we had brought Anna back, and I hoped that she would not think that I was neglecting either her or Anna's situation.<br /><br />"That's sweet," she told me. "Even if it's just blarney. I've been talking to Leo Rhinard, my attorney. He's been checking out the laws that apply to Anna's case. Can you meet with us?"<br /><br />"Any time that's convenient," I told her.<br /><br />"How about this evening?" she asked. "Maybe around seven? We could have dinner."<br /><br />"That would be no problem," I told her.<br /><br />"Good," she said. "I'll have James fix a stir fry."<br /><br /><br /><br />________________________________<br /><br />The dinner was, as usual, superb, good enough to make even a palate as coarse as mine take notice. We three agreed to not talk of the legal situation until after dinner, so Leo Rhinard and I traded stories and used the time to size each other up, as two men will always do when meeting in the presence of a lady known to them both.<br /><br />Rhinard was a small man, though a better word for it would be compact. He stood maybe one hundred and sixty-five centimeters with an average build kept trim by exercise. I asked him about it and he confessed to an addiction to velk climbing, a sport where people climb walls with special cling shoes, gloves, knee and elbow pads. I told him I'd never tried it, though, in truth, I actually had.<br /><br />His brown hair was graying at the temples, which gave him a definite presence, amplified by a deep and resonant voice. I told Marjori that he would make a match for Fumio, who has a weakness for beautiful voices, and Marjori laughed. She explained the joke to Rhinard and he laughed also, and suggested that I set up a meeting.<br /><br />"Wait until she's between lovers, Leo," Marjori told him, and he nodded.<br /><br />"Very well," he said. "I can be very patient." The barest look passed between the two of them, and I wondered what past involvements Marjori and Leo had been through. I knew from Marjori that her marriage had been somewhat adventurous, and extra-marital activities had certainly been one subset of the adventures.<br /><br />I refused coffee and dessert, so Rhinard suggested that we begin our business. Marjori said, "I've heard the first part of this already, so I'm going to go check on Anna." We nodded.<br /><br />He had brought a silver metal briefcase with him which he retrieved from a place by the front entrance, and we went into the main living room, which has the high window overlooking the City. Leo stopped in front of it to admire the view.<br /><br />"Really quite remarkable, isn't it?" he said. "I grew up much farther down in the middle zones. We used to come up for picnics in one of the upper parks, but the view from there isn't quite as good. The moisture condenses on the windows and anyway, the windows are much smaller."<br /><br />"Wealth has its advantages," I said. "There are offices on the Skyhook that have views even more impressive than this. Robert Grayling had such an office."<br /><br />"And now he's dead," Rhinard said. "I understand the sentiment."<br /><br />"I didn't mean any implications," I said. "We all die, but that doesn't have to make life meaningless." I paused for a moment. "So where do you work?"<br /><br />"In an office on the Skyhook," he said. "My window is smaller than Grayling's was, I expect, but if you stand closer to it, I'll bet the view is pretty much the same." He broke into a grin. "Should we get philosophical about ambition and striving?"<br /><br />I shook my head. "No, I think we should talk about inheritance law." I showed my teeth in a grin. I liked Leo Rhinard, though I had the impression that he was slow in making up his mind about me.<br /><br />We went over to the conversation pit, a sunken area of blue chairs on a black rug, and sat down. Rhinard opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of printouts. "Let's see here," he said to himself. "Judgment this, plenary session that, joint Skyhook/City Authority session . . . ah, here we go."<br /><br />He looked up at me and smiled. "I've been doing some checking on Grayling's enterprises and how the probate is going. That's easy enough, because it's a massive set of business deals. Some of them are carried in the Financial Times listings, even.<br /><br />"Now, for our purposes, we want to know what legal rights Anna Laird, the illegitimate granddaughter of Robert W. Grayling might have. That turns out to be a four-part tangle, because there are four overlapping jurisdictions involved."<br /><br />He picked up a small piece of paper. "One part of it is easy. For the Taylorville jurisdiction, the home of Anna's putative father, Anna has no claim on any inheritance from Grayling. Taylorville is part of a circuit court system, based on a common law tradition. Under precedents established for that legal jurisdiction, no judgments within the system apply to properties held outside of the system. That is consistent with Skyhook codes, as well. So Graylings' assets don't count in Taylorville. However, Anna would have a claim on the Anderson family, should they desire to recognize the child. Marjori tells me that you think this is unlikely."<br /><br />I nodded. "That family is devoted to maintaining its social position. They would be terrified of losing some of the family assets to the child."<br /><br />"What if the child turns out to have a claim on a larger fortune?" he asked me.<br /><br />"That might be a different story," I said. "So I'd prefer not to tell them."<br /><br />Rhinard smiled a wicked smile. "Yes," he said. "I think that we might be able to file a claim in the Taylorville circuit court, asking for child support for Anna. That would get the Andersons to file a counter-motion, denying legal parentage, under something called 'presumed entrapment.' The law in Taylorville doesn't hold the father responsible unless the father was informed of the mother's pregnancy, among other things. So if William Anderson states that he didn't know, then he signs away his rights."<br /><br />"That's slick," I told him. "My hat's off to you on that one."<br /><br />"That's the easy case," he said. "The others get trickier." He separated out a much thicker sheaf of papers.<br /><br />"First, we have Lunar law." He held up the sheaf of papers. "This is just a listing of decisions, and they all say the same thing. Illegitimate children have no standing under Lunar law. Period. That means that any portion of the Grayling estate that is found to exist under Lunar jurisdiction is denied to Anna."<br /><br />He pulled off another set of papers, the thickest of the lot. "This is Sky City casework," he said. "Skyhook tried imposing Lunar law on Sky City when it first set up, and that was a total disaster, the closest thing to war that we've had since the Silence. So they started fudging it, fast. And one of the first fudges had to do with inheritance. Legitimate children have the most rights, of course, but then there is the category of acknowledged children, children who have been treated as blood relations through word or deed."<br /><br />"But Grayling didn't know that Molly was his," I said.<br /><br />"Didn't he?" Rhinard asked me. "How do we know that? The resemblance was there. He kept in touch with Molly's mother Elizabeth over many years. Then there is the matter of the pistol, a Grayling family heirloom that turns up in Molly's possession. If he gave it to her or her mother, then that could well be taken as acknowledgement."<br /><br />"Grayling also invited Molly to his funeral," I said.<br /><br />Rhinard nodded. "Another argument that could be made. Clearly Molly was special to him."<br /><br />"Well," I began. "That could be..." But I broke off when his gaze shifted as Marjori returned.<br /><br />"How is Anna doing?" Rhinard asked her.<br /><br />"Fine," she said. "She's started to cry and Suzette and I sang her a lullaby while we rocked her. She's a very agreeable child. Adorable, too." She gave us a smirk. "I'm thinking of keeping her," she said. I couldn't tell if she was joking.<br /><br />After a moment of silence, Leo said, "I've been taking Ed down the list. Where were we?" He looked over at me.<br /><br />"You were about to tell me about the Skyhook laws on inheritance," I told him.<br /><br />"Ah, right," he said. "Now that's an odd one. There are very few children born on the Hook itself, because you get low gravity deformities, and they don't have the space for centrifuge rooms like there are on Luna. But there is wealth there, and when someone dies, it undergoes a process called 'virtual repatriation.' That means that for the purposes of a legal fiction, the estate is held to exist elsewhere. So the buck gets passed back to the some other locality."<br /><br />"So Skyhook law doesn't count?" I asked.<br /><br />"Actually, it does," he said. "Grayling's business enterprise spanned the Venus/Skyhook/Luna trading system. Make that 'enterprises,' because Grayling owned literally hundreds of companies, many of them limited lifetime shipping ventures, corporations that existed long enough to capitalize the contents of a sunship, and which were liquidated when the goods were finally sold at retail.<br /><br />"So you had one Grayling company buying from another Grayling company, and selling to yet another Grayling company. There were some limits, due to the way the value added taxes are administered, but within those broad limits, Grayling could shift resources between jurisdictions with impunity.<br /><br />"After Grayling's death, an administrator was appointed to the estate, a Jesse Grayling…"<br /><br />"Robert Grayling's cousin," I said. "We met at the funeral."<br /><br />"Right," he said. "Anyway, Jesse Grayling was appointed by Skyhook Authority administrative action as executor of the estate. Skyhook Authority regulations take precedence in matters involving Venus/Luna trade. So that's why Skyhook law is a factor in this. It was a Skyhook judge who appointed Jesse Grayling, and Jesse Grayling has very broad authority over the estate, unless you can convince the Skyhook judge to overrule or remove him."<br /><br />"So what's the bottom line?" I asked him.<br /><br />"The bottom line is this. Since becoming executor to the Grayling estate, Jesse Grayling has been doing a rolling liquidation of the estate of Robert Grayling. The main action is for the estate proper to borrow money from some of the Lunar subsidiaries in the Grayling conglomerate, using the Venus properties as collateral. That money is then shifted up to a Skyhook bank, where it is 'repatriated' to Luna, where it can be used to buy up the notes that the Luna companies hold on the Venus holdings. Basically, the Grayling estate is buying itself and shifting the funds to Luna."<br /><br />I thought for a moment. This sounded confusing. "So where would this leave Anna?" I asked.<br /><br />"Nowhere," Rhinard said. "Once the process is complete, there will be precious little of the Grayling net worth left on Venus, so there would be nothing for Anna to inherit under Venus law."<br /><br />"That's legal?" I asked.<br /><br />"Hell, yes," he said. "In fact, Robert Grayling had done pretty much the same thing in reverse during his lifetime. All his Luna holdings were shells, with the notes held by other subsidiaries on Venus. Cousin Jesse is just reversing the process. Probably for the same reason that Robert did, actually, to allow for a centralized control. They just want that control on Luna now, rather than Venus."<br /><br />"How long will this take?" I asked. "How long before there's nothing left on Venus?"<br /><br />"There we have a bit of a break," he said. "The entire process will take years. The law says that everything has to be done at market rates, and you have to move slowly in order not to upset the market. I'd give it one to three years."<br /><br />"Could you go after the assets immediately?" I asked him. "And get something out of it before the deal was done?"<br /><br />He shook his head. "I'll file some motions, of course," he said. "But this fund shifting is perfectly legal under Skyhook Authority, and that's what takes precedence here. If Jesse Grayling wants to delay it all, then he can easily buy enough time to finish what he's doing now."<br /><br />"And Sky City law gets completely overruled?" I asked.<br /><br />"Sky City inheritance law does," he said. "Now if there have been other legal violations, that might be another matter. Marjori tells me that Grayling was involved in smuggling, those funds would be…"<br /><br />"He didn't make any money at it," I told him. "We made sure of that." I thought for a moment. "How about other laws," I asked.<br /><br />"Such as?"<br /><br />I shrugged. "Suppose Jesse Grayling gets into trouble," I asked. "Suppose he were involved in smuggling, or even something worse, like extortion, or murder?"<br /><br />Rhinard got very attentive. "Do you know something?" he asked.<br /><br />I shook my head. "Only suspicions," I told him. "But I do mean to check into them."<br /><br />"By all means do so," he told me. "Even a well-founded suspicion might be enough to go before the Skyhook judge and ask for another executor, or maybe outside oversight and an independent audit. Or Jesse might think it worthwhile to try to buy us off."<br /><br />I raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that extortion?" I asked him.<br /><br />"Not when a lawyer does it," Rhinard told me, and he winked.<br /><br />_________________________________<br /><br />Later that night, after Rhinard had left and after Marjori and I had gone to bed and to sleep, I awoke with a start, dreams or nightmares lurching into oblivion, alone in the large bed in Marjori's bedroom.<br /><br />At first I thought that she would soon be back, but after several minutes, when she had still not returned, I got up and donned a plush robe, noting that Marjori's robe was already gone. I went out into the hall. The door to the nursery was at the end of the corridor, and it was open, a faint night light spilling from inside.<br /><br />I padded down the corridor and entered the nursery; Marjori was standing motionless over the baby's crib, an abstract mobile slowly moving just above her head. I walked over to her and put my arms around her waist from behind. Her body leaned back into mine.<br /><br />"Hello, Ed," she whispered. "I thought I heard Anna cry out, but it was just a dream. I came down here anyway."<br /><br />"Where is Suzette?" I asked, referring to the newly hired nursemaid.<br /><br />"Next door, asleep," Marjori said. "She was very tired. Babies can do that to you. Not that I know all that much about it." There was a tinge of regret in her voice.<br /><br />"You raised three children," I reminded her.<br /><br />"I think that the money did most of it," she said. "I've been thinking a lot about what I told you about that. It's true, you know. Enough money can make children a minor inconvenience. Enough money and enough external distraction. Or indifference."<br /><br />"That sounds like self-recrimination," I told her. "You don't deserve it. I've met your children. You did fine by them. You still do."<br /><br />I couldn't see her face, but I think she smiled. "Maybe so," she said. "I'm not sure I did fine by myself, though. I sometimes feel that I missed so much. It's so easy to get distracted by life."<br /><br />"So you really are thinking of adopting Anna," I said.<br /><br />She nodded. "Isn't that terrible of me? So dreadfully selfish? To want to take this child to fill my own emptiness?"<br /><br />"More self-recrimination," I told her. "I won't stand for it." I turned her to me and kissed her. She responded warmly.<br /><br />"I shouldn't second guess my good fortune," she said. "I've missed you though. I haven't seen much of you lately."<br /><br />"I have a task," I told her. "I can't really talk about it. It was a special request from Skyhook, though."<br /><br />"I understand," she said, turning back to watch Anna. "Well, actually, that's a lie. I don't understand. I'm not supposed to. But I accept it."<br /><br />"I'll never ask for more than that," I told her. I think that I believed it at the time.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-seventeen-i-felt-like-ice-was.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-67062655177923977392008-05-23T21:33:00.000-07:002008-05-23T21:39:34.823-07:00Chapter fifteen: …or tell you a lie of such towering audacity…<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-fourteen-i-thought-you-had-plan.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />When I was young I used to fall into dictionaries. There is a lot of human history in the history of words, and when the study of history is regulated, as it is on Luna, any glimpse of it can carry the delicious hint of the forbidden.<br /><br />"Carnival" comes from the Latin, the etymological lookup tells me. "Carne vale," literally, means "Goodbye flesh." It used to be a time of merrymaking (another deliciously archaic word: <span style="font-style: italic;">merrymaking</span>) before the asceticism of Christian Lent. The last day of it, Mardi Gras (literally: Fat Tuesday) was the big blowout. Entire cities on old Earth would give themselves over to the festivities, and tourists would come from all over the world to take part.<br /><br />Somewhere in the deal, long before the Silence, another sort of carnival began. These were associated with circuses, apparently, a wandering patch of entertainment that brought amusement from town to town before the advent of mass entertainment. The people of the carnival would show off their freakish bodies, or freakish talents, connive the locals in (usually rigged) games of chance or strange skills, let the children ride animals or mechanical rides, then move on to the next town before the amusements began to pale, or the rubes began to see through the cons.<br /><br />The Carnival Cluster in Darkunder was a mixture of the two sorts of carnivals, I think, a free-fire zone party and parade for people who just want to blow off steam, and a bit of a con job for those who don't mind being taken. In fact, some sections of it are still it are still itinerant, leaving the niche beneath Sky City for months at a time to go out into the distant clouds far from the equator, to bring the same sorts of timeless entertainment and chicanery to those who still lack better sources of fun. For the first few decades of Venus' colonization, such freefloating carnival clusters were the main source of amusement for a frontier existence, and a fondness for that era still lingers, or so I'm told.<br /><br />When I first came to Venus, when I couldn't sleep (and that was often) I roamed the clubs and party clusters of Darkunder, seldom lingering for long, always on the move because stillness was abhorrent to me. I spent some time in Carnival, enough to get the taste of it, but not really enough to digest it entire.<br /><br />It's a big place, the biggest in Darkunder, at least when the nomad clusters are hooked in. Unlike many clusters, it makes no pretense of having a center. Carnival cluster makes a long arc below City Center, a ten kilometer long semi-circle as close to the below-the-City deep descending portion of the Skyhook as is allowed by law. It's one of the oldest parts of Darkunder, a fit place for the pleasures of the hindbrain to be serviced.<br /><br />It's an easy shuttle ride from the Skyhook, and Carnival cluster is a favorite entertainment spot for the highborn and the mighty, as well as those with energy and a taste for the outré. You can spend an entire evening there "en masque," anonymous, with a false face made publicly presentable by cash. Periodically there is talk about "cleaning up Darkunder," while means Carnival cluster and others like it, but the talk always leads to nothing. Too many people like it the way it is, even if they seldom admit it. Each large entertainment cluster has its own security force, and its own vague sort of law. There are two basic rules in Carnival, "Don't bother the help," and "Don't interfere with someone who is spending money." That seems to cover a lot of human existence, actually.<br /><br />Carnival is a place of long broad corridors; entire bloons are given over to the thoroughfares, and on any given night you can see at least one or two impromptu parades. The corridors are lined and littered with temporary booths, and a successful booth might move to the side and become a sideshow attraction. The more permanent features are the clubs, and the largest clubs are called theaters. There are two rules for the clubs, that match the rules for the cluster: any customer can leave at any time, for any reason, and any club may ask any customer to leave at any time, for any reason. Both rules have the force of high custom, if not law, and all business, I'll say it again for emphasis, is done in cash.<br /><br />When Landau of Skyhook Public Health and Safety asked for my help, I hadn't been to Carnival in over two years. It had changed in that time, of course; the layout of the place changes from night to night, and fashions come and go as rapidly as the fickle tastes that drive them. I recognized fewer than half of the clubs from my earlier excursions. In fact, the sideshow booths looked more permanent to my (perhaps ironic) eye.<br /><br />Carnival holds maybe ten thousand people on any given peak time, which is well past midnight by the twenty-four hour clock. The cluster could probably hold a maximum of twenty thousand souls, more, if some of the furniture were jettisoned, an activity that does occur from time to time, though always from faux vandalism, not necessity. There are maybe one or two thousand full timers, those who live and/or work in the cluster. One of them had been Lucy Dahl, a woman with no official background (there are many such), and no address save General Delivery, Carnival 300965-4926, a semi-private Ident code.<br /><br />Now Lucy Dahl was dead, of a possibly terrible disease, though more likely a coincidental one. And I was supposed to find, not Lucy herself, since she was dead, but rather where she had been. I was to search out, not the needle in the haystack, but rather the place where the needle once resided.<br /><br />Ask a straight question of Carnival people and they will either ignore you or tell you a lie of such towering audacity that you feel an urge to pay them by the word, at fiction rates. Press the matter and you will be shown the door. Argue too hard and you may find that the door option has become unavailable. I was looking for a phantom in a world of fantasy.<br /><br />Dr. Landau's investigators had apparently researched the mores of Carnival the hard way. In reading their reports, I was surprised that only one of them had been seriously injured. The job needed a light touch. Which is, of course, why they came to me. I am, as all will tell you, <span style="font-style: italic;">light touch personified</span>. They may even avoid laughter until you leave the room.<br /><br />However. Despite my harsh words to Calvin, I was operating under a cover story. That my cover story might be as provocative as my real intention was part of its charm. I was going to pretend that Bert Costello was a Carnival regular (which he may have been for all I knew) and try to track him. Using Landau's high level access codes, I'd modified Costello's records to give him a General Delivery address in Carnival. I'd make a few discreet inquiries to check the pressure gradients. And I'd wander around and watch. And listen. As a great philosopher said, you can see a lot by just observing.<br /><br />I had a story within a story. I could spend a lot of time in Carnival as just a patron. Story number one. If I needed to ask general questions, I was looking for someone who knew Bert Costello. Story number two. Eventually, I might catch some word of Lucy Dahl; then I'd need to invent Story number three.<br /><br />This was going to take time. All good recon missions do. Landau had been impatient, the impatience born of desperation. I considered the matter less urgent.<br /><br />And why was that? I thought about the situation while I wandered the hectic corridors of Carnival that first night. There was always music in the air; not infrequently two or three discordant forms would wrestle for sway above the din. More often, different groups of musicians would find a common theme to hold among themselves, the hollow beat of congas dancing with the hybrid mixture of a Dixieland waltz. Or a brass band would depart from march tempo just long enough to allow the atoballet dancers to twirl by.<br /><br />If it turned out that Lucy Dahl had indeed died of a contagious disease, what then? That would depend on whether or not the disease vectors could be located and isolated. It would depend on whether or not the disease was treatable, or curable, or whether an effective vaccine could be found. The specter of the Madness Plague on Earth is certainly enough to wreck a man's restful sleep (if one had it to begin with, another "advantage" that I have over so many others). But, in truth, the Madness was unique in human history, and there are few diseases that approach its impact. Landau was correct; a disease of only a fraction of the virulence of the Plague would doom Luna and the artificially maintained colonies, but only if they came between the hammer and the anvil. If none of the ordinary measures were of effect, then extraordinary measures would be used. Extraordinary measures would end or greatly limit interplanetary trade.<br /><br />Twenty-five years ago, that would have been a disaster; the lifeline between Venus and Luna was stretched tight as a noose. But that equation had changed with Comet Alpha, and its hoard of hydrogen from which water could be made. Luna could go it alone if need be, though great privation would result. And the social structure on Venus would flip and flop. Sky City would shrink to a fraction of its current size without the river of trade that went through it.<br /><br />But it was not clear to me that the end result would be a bad thing. Life away from Sky City seemed always various and often wonderful to me. For every Taylorville that I'd seen, there was a Marley Farm, with its ganja-loving squires; for every family like the Andersons there were people like Lewis and his tribe of Stochasticists. I admired the world that had grown up within the living bloons and I sometimes worried about what effects of the ongoing migration from Luna would have on it.<br /><br />Still and all, I am by birth and rearing a conservative person. All policemen are, to a large extent, I think. Also, I did have family back on Luna, an ailing father and a young sister whom I barely knew, assorted cousins and other kin. That I never communicated with these people did not eliminate the bonds of blood. I had personal ties to Luna from my previous lifetime; I did not relish the thought of the sort of disruption that a system wide pandemic could wreak. I would work to prevent it, and if my actions seemed measured and without the frantic flurry induced by panic, well, that was good, too.<br /><br />So I wandered the corridors of Carnival, thinking my thoughts, seeing the sights, and wondering who and for whom Lucy Dahl had been. This was likely to be a project of some length, and I hoped that the time would be well spent.<br /><br />In the days that followed, I set to work on my various jobs. During the days of light, I spent my time as I usually did, ferrying oxygen between the light beyond the City and the Dark beneath it. On some evenings I would then go over to Carnival to sit in clubs or walk the corridors, occasionally striking up conversations with those who worked and played there. During the two days of cyclical darkness, my time there was more lengthy, more intense. Some nights I would take the mask and wander silently. Occasionally I would hire a prostitute and spend the night in one of the Carnival cribs, saying hello to the flesh, carne salve, in the flesh there may be salvation. And slowly, slowly, I began to see the weave of the place, to feel its rhythms and to learn its secrets.James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-73128392370423798032008-05-17T13:49:00.000-07:002008-05-23T21:40:37.223-07:00Chapter fourteen: I thought you had a plan for all this.<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-thirteen-truth-is-hard-act-to.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />Marjori didn't start to laugh until we pulled away, and she kept it moderate in order not to disturb the child. "Is it that funny?" I asked her.<br /><br />"Oh, darling, the look on your face was priceless," she said softly. "Just 'Hi, my name is Honlin,' and she pushes a baby on you. Whoops." She gave another laugh.<br /><br />Some of it was a release of tension, I knew. And she was uncertain about our circumstances as well.<br /><br />"So now what?" I asked her.<br /><br />"You're asking me?" she said. "I thought you had a plan for all this."<br /><br />In truth, though, I did not. I'd wanted to find out more about the situation before committing to a course of action. Not much chance of that now, however.<br /><br />"Well," I said, after a pause. "I suppose that we should contact the child welfare agencies."<br /><br />She shook her head. "Not yet," she said. "Why do you think that Ms. Barker didn't call the City hospitals and such to inquire about Molly?"<br /><br />I thought for a moment. "Because she didn't want anyone to know whose Molly's people were. If something had happened to Molly, she didn't want them tracing the child."<br /><br />"Because there might be some who consider little Anna here to be an inconvenience, right? And that's dangerous for Anna."<br /><br />"You're pretty sharp, lady," I told her. "So what would you suggest?"<br /><br />"Anna will be safe with me," she said. "And I have a top rate lawyer. So we'll see what Leo has to say about it all."<br /><br />"Won't the child be a bother to you?" I asked, thinking of Mirri and the dark circles under her eyes.<br /><br />"Dear, I raised three of them already," she said. "You're just lucky I've been visiting some of my brood and that I'm feeling maternal." She gave a sharp barking laugh, and Anna stirred.<br /><br />"Really, though, Ed," she continued in a whisper. "I'm rich, remember? We rich folk hire people for the drudgery. Another nursemaid or two won't cause even a ripple in my household staff. So I get all the pleasure of a little one around the place, and none of the pain."<br /><br />I think that she was maybe painting a rosy picture for my benefit, sparing me the guilt of having involved her in something that she hadn't asked for. Or maybe not, what the hell did I know about it?<br /><br />In any case, things were turning out well enough, and for once, I wasn't going to question good fortune, especially not little Anna's.<br /><br /><br />____________________________<br /><br />We returned to Marjori's place and she turned Anna over to one of the James gang while she made calls to arrange for additional servants. She also promised to set up a meeting with Leo Rhinard, her attorney. She'd call me with the meeting time, she promised. Then I left and headed home.<br /><br />I didn't want to proceed with Molly's case until I learned more about the legal ramifications. Besides, there was this new matter to look into, the problem of tracing the former whereabouts of Lucy Dahl, and finding out whether or not there was a new disease vector for us all to worry about.<br /><br />It occurred to me that I needed more background, plus some other things that I could only get through a secured data comm unit, and those were most easily accessed at Police Headquarters. So I changed my route to take me through City Center before I went back to Fumio's.<br /><br />"So," said Calvin as I came in through his office door. "What did the high and mighty want from you? Or can you talk about it?"<br /><br />"Only to the extent that it's a missing persons job," I told him. "I have to do some trace work in Darkunder, and they didn't have anyone else familiar with the place." That satisfied him for the moment, so he let it drop.<br /><br />"So what can I do for you?" he asked.<br /><br />"I need a terminal and privacy," I said.<br /><br />"Oh," he said, his curiosity obviously again aroused. But he suppressed the urge for further questions and let me use the next office over, one of the time shares that the part-time people used. Calvin was also part-time for homicide, but he also used his office for his other assignment, which was the robbery detail.<br /><br />The first thing I did was to pull the file on Bert Costello, the man who killed Molly. It wasn't much, but I printed his morgue photo, which was the only one we had. If I was going to go looking for someone in Darkunder, I wanted a cover story, and trying to backtrack Mr. Costello looked to be as good a cover as any. His last known address was in a small dive only a couple of klicks from Carnival, a coincidence that I could use to my advantage.<br /><br />Next I tried for Reed and Carlyle. The first time I'd tried to access them, I'd lacked the slick, but with my new, top-of-the-line Skyhook codes, I got a partial dump. There was no mention of their current assignment in their files; that probably wasn't even recorded anywhere. But I got their descriptions, photos, some medical records, and service histories.<br /><br />They were, as I expected, a double team, the Special Guard equivalent of a married couple who trained and worked together. No one in the Guard is allowed to have children; it's something of a priesthood that way, but when they retired, they'd be allowed an unlimited number, or at least as many as they could have in the few remaining years of fertility that Carlyle would have left. It's one of the carrots that gets dangled by Luna Gov to keep the troops in line.<br /><br />The two had both come up through the ranks of regular police work, though Reed had spent a couple of years in hospital security when he was in his teens. The Guard had also given both of them special medical training, but the assignment that they'd used it for was blanked out. They'd apparently met during their academy years; my guess was that it had been during deep cover training. That's when a lot of the character armor gets stripped away, and it leaves some cadets vulnerable to romantic attachments. It's easier to fall in love when your personality is in a state of flux.<br /><br />One of Landau's unstated missions for me was to find out what Reed and Carlyle were up to. I'd been doing some thinking about it all, and I gave Dr. Mike Morales a call.<br /><br />"Hello, Mike? This is Ed Honlin."<br /><br />"Hello, Mr. Honlin. Is this a secured line?" he asked me after a brief pause. There's about a half second delay for a round trip signal to Anchorage, just enough to be annoying if you notice it.<br /><br />"Yes, but don't let that count for too much," I said. All Skyhook messages are recorded, and most codes can be cracked if you want to spend a lot of machine time on it. Landau might have been able to wipe yesterday's conference from the databanks, or he might not, depending on who got to it first. My best guess was that he'd made arrangements to kill the files even before the meeting. Dr. Landau seemed to have a good case of looking-back-over-his-shoulder.<br /><br />"I'll bear that in mind," he said.<br /><br />"This is just some background," I said. "I've been thinking about something you said, the stuff about bioengineering and the fruits thereof. Who would have that kind of capability currently?"<br /><br />The pause was longer than the signal delay. After a few seconds, he said, "I honestly don't know, Mr. Honlin. We lost a great deal of technical capability when the Earth went into Silence, of course. Many things that used to be commonplace are now heroic efforts. That would include many types of protein and nucleic acid engineering. And this is not really my specialty."<br /><br />"Could there be anyone currently at work who could do the sorts of things we spoke about?" I asked.<br /><br />Another hesitation. "We considered that possibility," he said. "But it seems very unlikely. For one thing, we were unable to come up with a motive for such a bizarre action. Most of the probable causes of the previous . . . um, example, are long dead or defunct."<br /><br />"Things don't always work the way that they are planned," I said. "Could there have been an accident?"<br /><br />"Possibly," he said. "The nature of the work is such that only deep black organizations would be allowed to do it, however. So there would be no public record."<br /><br />"How about the physical facilities themselves?"<br /><br />"My guess would be that there are no more than three or four such laboratories in the system," he said. "Two in the L-4 cluster, one in L-5, and one on Luna."<br /><br />"I see," I said. "You say that this is not your specialty, though. Do you have the names of anyone whose specialty this is?"<br /><br />"I'm not privy to that information, either," he said.<br /><br />"Okay," I said. "I'll settle for the names of those facilities."<br /><br />"Well, there's the main biochemical research lab on Luna, of course," he said. "That's the LunaGov Institute for Biomedical Research. Then there's the Sloan Institute in the L-5 cluster, plus Hoffla Research and Clarke-Saunders in L-4."<br /><br />"Would it be possible for you to ask Dr. Landau to get me a personnel roster for those?" I asked him.<br /><br />"I doubt that it would be complete," he said. "Some of the work there is deep black, like I told you."<br /><br />"I understand," I told him. "But something is better than nothing."<br /><br />"I'll ask him," he said.<br /><br />Then I thanked him and clicked off.<br /><br /><br /><br />___________________________<br /><br />I got up and went back to Calvin's office. "This is on the QT," I told him, "But Molly Laird did have a child. A three-month old daughter. She's safe for the moment; Marjori is taking care of her."<br /><br />He looked at me and blinked. "Oops," he said. "That does complicate matters, doesn't it?"<br /><br />I nodded. It complicated a lot of things. "I think we'd better keep quiet about it for a while."<br /><br />"Anything else you want from me?" he asked. He looked like he was expecting bad news.<br /><br />I shrugged. "Can you get the Laird case reopened? Nothing fancy. I'd just like to try to do a traceback on this Costello guy. I won't try anything in the City without your say-so, but I'd like to ask around in the shadows." I showed him the picture.<br /><br />He looked relieved, but also puzzled. Costello was the least likely lead on the whole deal. If he was a hired hand, whoever hired him would have had the brains to cover the tracks. Checking out the Grayling organization would have made more sense at this point. Then the mental gears worked a bit and he grinned. "Ah, I get it. An excuse to ask around. You're going undercover to . . ."<br /><br />"No."<br /><br />I cut him off. Maybe my voice had an edge to it and it surprised him.<br /><br />"This is not undercover work," I said evenly. "No fake identity, no phony cover story. I'm doing a real investigation on a real case, and anything else I turn up just happens to turn up."<br /><br />"Anything you say," he said, but he sounded dubious.<br /><br />I tried a smile. It felt real enough. "Just a little legwork for the exercise," I told him. "And maybe a way to stretch a City contract for a few more days."<br /><br />"Hell, from the kind of pressure I got to get you back on board, you could stay on until you retire," he told me.<br /><br />"I'm already retired," I told him. "This is just killing time."<br /><br />"Don't kill too much of it," he said. "We don't have that much room in the morgue."<br /><br />I had no idea what he meant by that, but it seemed like a good snappy exit line, so I smiled at him again and I left.<br /><br />_________________________________<br /><br /><br />It wasn't really that much of a coincidence that Costello had lived near Carnival cluster. He was muscle, a bouncer or enforcer type, and it made sense that he'd try to find work at the largest sleaze palaces in Darkunder. His trips to the City showed no obvious pattern, so I'd start with his hotel and then head for the clubs.<br /><br />His hotel was a dive that made Fumio's look like the Ritz. Where I live is as cheap as they come, but it's an unfurnished lift bloon in a place that has better digs. Fumio's has the bar and lounge downstairs, places to sit comfortably in the lobby, and a courteous staff. And it doesn't stink.<br /><br />As you may have guessed, I mention these things about Fumio's to contrast it with Costello's last abode, a place without a name, as nearly as I could tell, just an ad in the Directory that said, Rooms for Rent, and an address code.<br /><br />The desk clerk wasn't much help, either. I showed him Costello's picture and he said, "He looks dead." The clerk was a runt with beady eyes and an expression that wasn't much better than Costello's picture.<br /><br />"Sharp eyes," I told him.<br /><br />"The management won't be happy about that," he said. "I think he owes money."<br /><br />"Probably because he didn't check out before he checked out," I said. I love to say things like that, but the clerk wasn't up to appreciating my wit. He just nodded.<br /><br />"What can you tell me about him?" I asked.<br /><br />"Nothing," he told me. "He came, he went. Then he didn't come."<br /><br />"Visitors?" I asked him. Another shake of his head. "Any calls?"<br /><br />"I don't pay much attention to that," he said.<br /><br />I shook my head and flipped him the smallest denomination note I had on me. His face was a study in disappointment. "Next time pay more attention," I told him, with some disgust, and then I left.<br /><br />As I pulled the squid from the docking bay, I took stock of the situation. It was beginning to get late and the sun was nearly set. I hadn't even had dinner. I could go back to my hotel, have dinner, call Marjori, and leave my Quixotic quest for another day. Or I could check out the Carnival cluster. I flipped a coin and it came up heads. So I set my sights for the Carnival and put the fans on full.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-fifteen-or-tell-you-lie-of-such.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-28111447358276788792008-05-11T18:27:00.000-07:002008-05-17T13:52:15.296-07:00Chapter thirteen: The truth is a hard act to pull off.<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-twelve-what-do-you-know-of.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />On my way over to the home of Marjori Low, I had plenty of time to think about the way that life doesn't ask if you're hungry before it fills your plate. Nor does it ask if your plate is full before it dumps another load on you.<br /><br />And it could care less about your dining preferences.<br /><br />Landau had offered me money, which I refused; I didn't want to show up on any payment files, and I have enough money to operate. The only thing I took from Landau were a couple of high level access authorization codes and some secured comm line numbers. I don't have that much confidence in secured lines, either, but there are some tricks you can play to make them nearly trustworthy.<br /><br />Beyond that, what? I didn't know. Lucy Dahl's case probably was a coincidence, for all the fear lurking in Landau's gut. And for all the fact that the phrase,<span style="font-style: italic;"> it wouldn't hurt to look into it</span>, felt to my own gut like famous last words.<br /><br />There was also the possibility that I was being set up. I only had the word of two public health officials that there might be a variant of the Plague virus at large. Was that really enough to risk a tangle with the Special Guard?<br /><br />Well, that was for later. Tonight, I had other plans. Tomorrow as well. After that . . . we'd see what happened.<br /><br />I went back out through the checkpoint, and through City Center to my waiting bloon. Marjori lived on the outer edge of The Maze, in a residential section called The Heights, where the old money of Sky City liked to live. Multi-bloon dwellings are either hotels or mansions, and Marjori lives in a mansion, a ten bloon cluster that predates the City even; it was towed into place during the wild years after the Skyhook came down and when the Maze grew like topsy.<br /><br />There is no checkpoint at the front of Marjori's place, just a dock and an air curtain in front of the door. I rang the front buzzer and was ushered in by one of her servants. His real name is William, though Marjori calls him 'James' just like all the others. That night I said, "Hello, William," maybe because my experience with the Andersons in Taylorville had left me sensitive to the identities of servants.<br /><br />"Hello, Mr. Honlin," William said with a smile of greeting. Something in my expression must have made him add, "Hi, Ed. Mrs. Low is in the shower. She's been here for about an hour."<br /><br />"Darling!" came Marjori's voice from across the room. She was barefoot, dressed in a plush robe and her hair was still wet. She not-quite-ran across the space between us and I pulled her into my arms when she got near enough. William discreetly vanished right about then, and Marjori gave me a passionate kiss that underscored her first words.<br /><br />"I missed you, dear," she said when we finally broke the clinch.<br /><br />"And I missed you," I told her.<br /><br />"I wasn't quite finished with my shower," she said, and shrugged her shoulders so that the robe slipped a little. "Would you like to help me finish it?"<br /><br />"Of course," I told her.<br /><br />_______________________________<br /><br />Later, after we'd showered then gone to her bedroom and gotten sweaty enough to need another shower, I told her of Molly Laird and Molly's, at this point still theoretical child. I concluded, "So I'd like your help in checking up on the matter, assessing the situation, figuring out what to do next."<br /><br />"What do you expect?" she asked me.<br /><br />I shook my head. "This is a little out of my line," I said. "I haven't checked on the value of the antique gun, for example, but I think that it's worth quite a lot. Whether it's enough to pay for the raising of a child is another matter. But if there is a child, he or she is an orphan now, and arrangements need to be made. There's the problem of custody, for example. I don't know anyone in the Darkunder cluster where I think the child is now, but I suspect that it's not what the authorities would call a 'suitable environment.' Also, I don't know the attitude of whoever has the child now, or what their relationship was to Molly.<br /><br />"Then there's the Grayling family. I don't want to even think about that bridge until I come to it."<br /><br />"So tomorrow is…" she began.<br /><br />"Reconnoitering," I told her. "And I suspect that people will be a lot more forthcoming to a woman than to me."<br /><br />I traced her collarbone with my finger. "I'd like to have you come with me," I told her. "But you don't have to do it, I'm sure that Fumio would be willing to substitute."<br /><br />She snorted a laugh. "And have me miss watching you at work again?" she said. "Why should Fumio have all the fun?"<br /><br />I told her nothing about my new mission from Skyhook.<br /><br />______________________________<br /><br />The next morning found us en route to a small cluster in Darkunder near the southern edge of the City, where the shadow is less intense. Sky City had passed into light by that time, and while the sun had already risen high enough to be obscured by the City itself, the Darkunder edge clusters still got some light from the unshadowed clouds out past the City borders.<br /><br />The main planetary directory gave the owner of our destination cluster as one May Barker, formerly a licensed prostitute in Sky City itself. Although it's not required, Ms. Barker had registered a business there, probably to make it easier to request services from the City government. Madame Fumio did the same thing; she found that it made getting her weekly power tether more reliable.<br /><br />The business was registered as "May B's," and also had several licensed masseuses, physical therapists, and sex workers on its official employee roster. But the designated form of business was "night club."<br /><br />Marjori said, "A place for tired businessmen, perhaps? Come out to May B's, maybe baby? We'll take good care of you. Let go of the tensions of the day; our thoughtful employees will rub and stroke those cares away."<br /><br />I felt another smile take over my face. "You may have a future in advertising," I told her. "Set it to music and you have the next hit jingle."<br /><br />"That's jiggle," she said, and she leaned over to lick my ear.<br /><br />"Not now," I told her. "I'm piloting this squid."<br /><br />We were almost there, in fact. I'd reset the transponder frequency to indicate a request for docking, and someone had switched on the ready light at the cluster docking area. Marjori made some sort of comment about how the light should be red.<br /><br />"I'm sensing a certain nervousness about this," I told her. "Could it have anything to do with the fact that this place is basically a bordello?"<br /><br />"Ah, that could be it," she said. "Henry and I had quite a few adventures over the years, but we never got around to visiting a cat house. For purposes of academic interest, you understand."<br /><br />"I understand," I said, and she punched my arm.<br /><br />"Oh, be like that," she said. "So what sort of act should I put on?" She was obviously enjoying the prospect.<br /><br />"I'd say cool and reserved," I said. "A posture befitting your social standing. Sympathetic and generous, of course, with just a distant hint of snootiness. Too much pleasantness would be taken as phoniness. You are a kind society matron interested in the welfare of an orphan."<br /><br />She gave me an odd look. "Isn't that what I actually am?" she asked.<br /><br />"Pretty much," I told her. "That's why this may be difficult. The truth is a hard act to pull off."<br /><br />_________________________________<br /><br /><br />We docked at May B's, and pushed our way in through the air curtain. Since it was morning the place was not open for business and the docking area had no attendant. Inside, there was a single man waiting at the entrance. He was nearly as big as I am, and built like a pneumotube, being of the same circumference from hip to shoulders with his neck doing a good job of keeping up. He had the look of a professional bouncer to him.<br /><br />"We're closed, folks, unless you have a special appointment."<br /><br />"I did call yesterday," I said. "There was no answer, so I left a message. My name is Ed Honlin, and this is Marjori Low. We're here to see May Barker, about a girl named Molly Laird."<br /><br />"I wouldn't know about that," the bouncer told us. "You'll have to wait here." It was obvious that he knew who Molly was, though.<br /><br />The guy vanished through a doorway, then reappeared after only a few seconds. "Mizz Barker says to go on up," he said, his tone of voice telling us how rare a privilege we were getting.<br /><br />"Thanks," I told him. I felt him looking at me until we were out of sight. I knew that look; he was wondering if he could take me. It goes with a job like his, or any kind of police and security work, actually. It's an automatic function for me as well. I expect that we'd come to the same conclusion about the matter, which is that he couldn't, not on his best day.<br /><br />We climbed a short ramp to a room of modest size, bare except for a desk at the far end, and a curtain that I guessed concealed a bed. Behind the desk sat a woman who looked like she'd just gotten dressed. She was of indeterminate age, partly because of clever makeup, and partly due to the wig she wore, which was silver gray. She rose to greet us.<br /><br />"You would be Mr. Honlin, and you would be Mrs. Low," she said to us. "Pardon my appearance, but this is a night club, so I'm usually still in bed at this hour."<br /><br />Marjori scowled slightly and her tone of sympathy was perfect. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Ms. Barker," she said. "This is my fault, I'm afraid. I didn't think of the time. I just got back to the City last night, and I wanted to take care of this business as soon as possible."<br /><br />May Barker was cautious in her reply, a hostess smile on her face that revealed nothing. "Please call me May," she told us. "Your message only said that your business involved Molly," she said. "Do you have word of her?"<br /><br />Marjori looked over at me. I cleared my throat. "We were hoping that you'd already been informed," I said. "But I can see that you have not. Molly was killed about a week ago, a senseless mugging in the City. I've been hired by the City to attempt to put her affairs in order."<br /><br />What little there was to May's smile vanished, then her face froze into a flat mask. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. She did that a couple of times, then finally found her voice.<br /><br />"I was afraid of something like that," she said. "I was hoping that she was just being thoughtless, but of course that would have been unlike her. My second hope was that she was kidnapped, or comatose." She gave a short bleating laugh that had no humor to it. "Imagine hoping for things like that, just so you won't have to think about worse things."<br /><br />Marjori reached out and touched her shoulder. "We're so very sorry," she said.<br /><br />May's back straightened and, while her eyes glistened, no tears fell from them. "So what is to happen to Anna?" she asked.<br /><br />I asked, "Anna would be Molly's daughter, yes? She said something about a child before she died."<br /><br />May gave me a funny look, then walked over to her desk and pressed a button. "George, could you get Mirri and have her bring the child with her?" Then she turned back to us. "How did she die?" she asked. "Don't try to spare my feelings; people will tell you that I haven't any."<br /><br />"People are obviously wrong," I told her. "But I will tell you. Molly was killed with a knife and she died quickly, though she did managed to shoot and kill her assailant. The suspected motive was robbery, of course. You knew that she carried an antique pistol?"<br /><br />May nodded. "Yes, she wanted to sell it in order to raise money for the child. I think that she wanted to bring some sort of legal action."<br /><br />"Against the father?" I asked, meaning William Taylor.<br /><br />"Against his estate," May said, misunderstanding the question. "Molly's father died recently, and he was quite wealthy, at least according to Molly. She wouldn't say who he was."<br /><br />"Molly's father was Robert Grayling," I told her. "He was indeed quite wealthy."<br /><br />May's eyes widened a little at the mention of Grayling's name.<br /><br />"You didn't know?" I asked.<br /><br />"No, Elizabeth came to us after she had already had the child. She wanted someplace to disappear into, and you can't do that as a prostitute in the City; you can be tracked through the licensing agency. I run a very discreet operation here, though, Mr. Honlin, and Elizabeth stayed with us for almost ten years. She eventually left when she felt that Molly needed a better environment." She spat out the last phrase, leaving no doubt as to how she felt about the "better environment" of Taylorville.<br /><br />We turned at the sound of a baby's crying and a woman's voice saying "There, there, Anna." The woman carrying the child was herself as young as Molly had been, and she was rocking the child as she walked. She also had dark circles under her eyes.<br /><br />"Mirri," said May Barker. "This is Mr. Honlin and Mrs. Low. They have come for the child."<br /><br />Mirri looked at us with a mixture of sudden sadness and relief. I had the distinct feeling that child care hadn't been part of Mirri's job description when she signed on at May B's. For my own part, I was surprised that Anna was being handed over with so little fuss. May must have caught my expression.<br /><br />"Surprised, Mr. Honlin?" she asked. "That I would just hand Molly's child over to a stranger? But you are not really a stranger, you see. Molly specifically told me that if anything were to happen to her, you would take care of things for Anna. She spoke of you by name. Naturally, I had you checked out, and I can see why Molly thought that you were the man to call."<br /><br />Mirri had handed Anna over to Marjori, and Marjori was making little cooing noises at the infant, who had quieted down as soon as Marjori held her. Maybe practice has something to do with it.<br /><br />"And I know this much," May continued. "I'm a small fish and I make my way by not making too many waves. I've heard enough of Robert Grayling, and his kin to know that their kind makes waves. Big waves. Big enough to capsize an organization like mine. So Molly's problem is yours now, Mr. Honlin. Yours and Mrs. Low's. And I thank you."<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-fourteen-i-thought-you-had-plan.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-59123930221029283362008-05-04T16:43:00.000-07:002008-05-11T18:37:46.787-07:00Chapter twelve: What do you know of the Plague virus, Mr. Honlin?<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-eleven-dont-push-him-if-you.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />Landau said, "About a year ago, a woman by the name of Lucy Dahl entered Sky City Psychiatric Facility. She was complaining of a variety of ailments, including hallucinations, both auditory and visual. Ms. Dahl was not a Sky City resident; she lived in one of the larger Darkunder clusters, a place called Carnival. Are you familiar with it?" I nodded yes.<br /><br />"Sky City medical facilities tend to pretty much anyone who comes to them, since we like to keep track of the public health situation on Venus, so Ms Dahl was admitted.<br /><br />"After a brief observation, her doctors concluded that Ms. Dahl was in the midst of a psychotic episode of unknown origin. Therefore, she was given anti-psychotic drugs in an attempt to stabilize her sufficiently to form a reasonable diagnosis. This is standard procedure.<br /><br />"Ms. Dahl then proceeded to go into anaphylactic shock and died before anyone realized what was happening to her. She was rushed to Sky City Intensive Care, but it was too late for resuscitation. The anaphylaxis had induced major encephalitis and there was extensive brain damage.<br /><br />"The circumstances of death were sufficiently strange to warrant a full biochemical autopsy, so a number of tissue samples from Ms. Dahl were sent to Anchorage for testing. Unfortunately, the rest of Ms. Dahl's body was cremated shortly afterward."<br /><br />Landau reached over and touched a button. "Dr. Morales, are you ready?" he asked.<br /><br />"Yes, Dr. Landau," came the reply.<br /><br />"Good," said Landau and he pushed another button.<br /><br />A second wall flickered and suddenly there was another person in the conference. Dr. Morales looked to be another Luna émigré, short, slender, of mixed race and coloration. Darkish brown hair going bald on top. He was wearing a white lab coat, and looked like he'd just stepped away from the glassware.<br /><br />"Your turn, Mike," Landau told Morales.<br /><br />Morales looked at me and gave a nod of introduction. Unlike Landau, he started in immediately.<br /><br />"What do you know of the Plague virus, Mr. Honlin?" he asked me.<br /><br />My skin had tightened a little when Landau had told me how Lucy Dahl had died. Now the shiver of it went up my spine. I knew more about the Plague virus than is legal to know, probably, but that's one of the things I don't volunteer.<br /><br />"Maybe you should pretend that I'm completely ignorant," I told him. "Better to hear it twice than to miss something."<br /><br />He nodded. "Okay, first the short form that everybody knows." He sounded like he was giving a lecture for the hundredth time. "One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the Plague hit the Earth. Its effects were both dramatic and rapid. It drove people insane, with a particular tendency toward paranoid and megalomaniacal delusions. Some estimates place the incidence as high as one-quarter of the entire population of Earth, more than enough to bring down human civilization. Nuclear weapons were used, among other things, and the Earth's Skyhook was destroyed. Shortly thereafter, Earth dropped out of contact with the rest of the solar system, even to the extent of a cessation of all telecommunications. Some subset of Earth's missile defenses remained, however, even after all communication was cut off, to the effect that any powered or large ballistic craft that attempted to enter the Earth's atmosphere was destroyed. The last such attempt was over a century ago, but we can still detect the radar of the defense systems, so it's assumed that the extreme defensive posture remains in effect.<br /><br />"Fear of the Earth's automatic defense systems, and the machine intelligence devices that operate them, are the stated reasons why no attempts are made to resume contact. In fact, such attempts are illegal."<br /><br />I nodded at this and concentrated on Morales' face, the way his lips moved when he talked. Keep to the here and now, and don't think of the past, Honlin.<br /><br />"The biological nature of the Plague is not a subject in common knowledge," Morales continued. "It's one of the restricted subjects, in fact. However, those researchers who have studied the reports from Earth and the few Plague cases that occurred on Luna and elsewhere in the system, are pretty well convinced that the Plague was artificial in origin."<br /><br />"How can they tell?" I asked, because that was what I'd asked the first time I'd been told about it.<br /><br />"Because the Plague is too complex a phenomenon to be an accident," Morales replied. "In fact, it is not one virus, but two, called a 'primer' and an 'activator.' That is a biological warfare technique. The primer/activator setup is also one of the reasons why the offworld colonies were spared. The primer hadn't spread very far, and the activator didn't really get off the Earth at all. There wasn't time for it.<br /><br />"The primer virus was a B cell leukocyte retrovirus that passed by sweat contact. The spread was moderately rapid on Earth, but very slow offworld. We don't know why this was so, but that seems to be the case. It may simply be a matter of differences in vector opportunities. Or some of the spread on Earth may have been artificial. Whatever. The activator was a form of influenza. The effect of the primer was to modify the antigen response of B cells to influenza. Basically, certain neuropeptide chains were added to the antigens and those neuropeptide chains were unstable, breaking off into pieces that could pass the blood brain barrier. After a period of only a few weeks, insanity ensued."<br /><br />He paused again, for effect, I think. "One vicious little irony of it was that you didn't need the activator per se to do the job. Attempts to immunize against the activator virus also triggered the reaction. So when it looked like there would be a bad 'flu outbreak that year, public health officials in a hundred countries did their jobs -- and poisoned their own populace. By the time anyone realized what had happened, it was far too late."<br /><br />"So who did it?" I asked. "Who set off the Plague?"<br /><br />"No one has any idea," Morales said. "I personally think that speculation is pointless. We weeded out all occurrences of the activator virus from Luna, Venus, and the other colonies over a century ago. That's one of the routine blood tests now given to every infant, and every traveler. As far as we're concerned, it's extinct, though obviously, that may not hold for Earth."<br /><br />"So why tell this to me?" I asked.<br /><br />"I'm getting to that," he said. He wiped his hands on his shirt in what I took as a nervous gesture. He continued, "One of the occasionally reported symptoms of the Plague was an allergic reaction to several classes of anti-psychotic drugs. Exactly the sort of reaction that Lucy Dahl had shown."<br /><br />"So you think that she had the Plague?" I asked.<br /><br />He shook his head. "No, she didn't have the Plague. I tested for that first thing, of course. So we first thought that it was just coincidence. There are plenty of other possible allergens that she could have been reacting to. And when the Plague test came up negative, her body was disposed of." Morales grimaced like a man kicking himself mentally.<br /><br />"So?" I prodded.<br /><br />"I didn't stop at that point, however," Morales continued. I continued with some blood tests, protein fractions, that sort of thing. After several weeks of work I found a set of proteins in Ms.Dahl's blood. Let me show you."<br /><br />Morales went behind his desk and touched a few keys. Suddenly, in the space in front of his desk, there appeared a set of molecular model forms. Right, I thought to myself. One of the advantages of appearing via holovid is that you can put your three-D view screen anywhere you want.<br /><br />"These two fragments here," Morales began, and as he said it, two of the four floating forms began to glow. "Are taken from Lucy Dahl's blood. The other two are peptide fragments that appear in those of Plague victims."<br /><br />"They're not the same," I observed.<br /><br />"Right," he said. "But look at these sections." He tapped a few more keys and parts of both pairs of the forms began to glow.<br /><br />"Those have the same shape," I said.<br /><br />He nodded. "The same shape and the same functionality. Those are part of the neuroactive fragments of the Plague antigens. I've isolated no less than twelve similar pairs. Lucy Dahl was probably suffering from something that was very similar in its antigen response to the Plague. Her anaphylactic reaction just underscores that similarity."<br /><br />"Probably?" I asked. "So you're not certain?"<br /><br />He grimaced again. "No, goddamn it, I'm not certain. I couldn't isolate a virus from the tissue samples, nor could I get one to grow, at least not that one. I got a couple of dozen viruses, from Ms. Dahl's tissues, and I managed to culture at least half of them, but none fit the profile of something that could give psychoactive antigen fragments.<br /><br />"But she'd had a recent, fairly severe viral illness, there were several traces of that, things like interferon levels and so forth. And I did manage to analyze her B cell makeup sufficiently to know that it wasn't a primer/activator kind of thing. I think we're only dealing with a single virus, and my hunch is that it's not spread by casual contact. If nothing else, if it were, we'd already have seen more cases. This isn't a slow growing disease. It seems to be acute; at least it was for Ms. Dahl, unless her recent viral reaction was a complete coincidence."<br /><br />"But you don't know for sure," I said.<br /><br />He sighed. "No, I don't know for sure. I can't be sure about any of it. I can't rule out the possibility that this is a disease with a long incubation period, and that it's spreading through the population of Venus. I don't think that's the case, but it might be."<br /><br />Dr. Landau spoke up then. "Ed, if we knew for sure, I'd have declared a medical emergency long before now. I'd put all of Venus into quarantine before I knowingly let something like this get out. But I won't…I can't shut down interplanetary trade just on the basis of some medical guesswork. That would cost lives in other ways, too. I'd be removed from my post before I could carry it out. And I can't go public; the panic would have nearly as profound a negative effect as a full quarantine."<br /><br />"So what do you want from me?" I asked.<br /><br />Landau looked to his right, at what I assume was his teleconnection to Morales. "That's all we need now, Mike," Landau said. Morales nodded at him and then to me. "Keep in touch, Mr. Honlin," Morales said, with a trace of irony in his voice. Then the screen went blank, taking the pretty molecular pictures with it.<br /><br />Then Landau said to me, "I've tried putting some of my medical investigators on this, and they can't even get out of the starting gate. Lucy Dahl lived in Carnival Cluster in Darkunder. You know what things are like in Darkunder."<br /><br />I grunted. "Yeah," I told him. "You're lucky your men didn't come back dead."<br /><br />"One of them was assaulted," Landau told me. "Not badly injured, but enough to scare him off."<br /><br />"So you want me to try to trace this Dahl woman," I said. "After your boys have already messed up the trail."<br /><br />He moved his head wearily. Maybe it was a nod. "Yes," he said. "We've screwed this up about as badly as you could ask for. We need help. Can you give us some?"<br /><br />"What about Reed and Carlyle?" I asked him.<br /><br />"The agents from the Special Guard?"<br /><br />"Yeah."<br /><br />"I don't know where they are," Landau said. "They don't report to me, and they've gone undercover."<br /><br />I thought about that for a moment. Something tried to nag at me. One potato, two potato, three potato…<br /><br />Hot potato.<br /><br />"So you handed the thing over to the Guard," I said to him. "They told you, 'fine, we'll take care of it.' Is that right?" He nodded, a look of misery spreading across his face.<br /><br />"Did you send your own investigators before or after the Guard got involved?"<br /><br />"Before," he said. Then after a moment's hesitation he said, "Mostly before."<br /><br />"But you've kept investigating," I said. "And when the Guard found out about it, they ordered you to stop." Again, that miserable nod.<br /><br />"But you don't trust the Guard," I said. "You lack the necessary faith." That put a little steel back into him.<br /><br />"Don't patronize me, Mr. Honlin," he told me. "This is my job here, to protect the health and safety of Skyhook, and by implication give similar protection to the population of Venus."<br /><br />"And you can't just hand that responsibility over to some assholes from Luna," I prompted.<br /><br />"Something like that," he answered.<br /><br />He got up from behind his desk and walked toward me, stopping with his face just inches from the screen. His voice was plaintive.<br /><br />"Mr. Honlin, a Plague of Madness one-tenth the incidence rate of the one that hit Earth could doom Luna and every other human colony, with the possible exception of Venus. Skyhook certainly would never survive; there are too many people in too many critical positions. We depend too much on a very advanced and touchy technology. Sometimes I lie awake at night trying to think of how to protect us against something like this, and I get no answers. Then I go to sleep and things get even worse.<br /><br />"Maybe it's nothing," he said. "Maybe it's all just a coincidence, and maybe there's no danger. But my subconscious thinks otherwise. I haven't had a good night's sleep in over six months. I keep dreaming of new ways to blow up the Skyhook. I keep having visions of more ways to die."<br /><br />He looked at me with that pained look of a man used to giving orders, not asking for favors. "I hope I'm wrong, Mr. Honlin," he said. "I hope that it's just me who is going crazy. I wish I didn't have the gut feeling that I really, really need your help. But that's the feeling I have. Maybe it's all just silly bullshit, but I have the firm conviction that having you investigate Lucy Dahl is the only thing that is ever going to let me get another good night's sleep."<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-thirteen-truth-is-hard-act-to.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-10823185081889329802008-04-26T18:36:00.000-07:002008-05-11T18:34:20.855-07:00Chapter eleven: "…don't push him if you value your life."<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-ten-so-you-kick-people-in-head.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />The next day promised to be busy. The night before, Marjori had called to tell me that she arrived back in the City that evening, which was good news to me. I promised to meet her at her place when she arrived. But first I had to meet with the Higher Authorities who had Taken An Interest In Me.<br /><br />City Center is not really the center of Sky City, if that makes any sense. It's really just a hub around Skyhook, and the Skyhook is the real center of the City and the world. Most of the trade between Venus and Luna passes through the Skyhook and Anchorage terminus at the other end. Down below, the Hook is surrounded with short term storage and administration offices.<br /><br />I was supposed to meet with someone from Anchorage itself, but rather than make the hours long trip up the Hook, we were going to use one of the holoconference rooms connected directly to the Skyhook. There are a few such setups on Luna, but they are seldom used; the longest trip on Luna by high speed tube is still less than a tenth of the full Skyhook traverse, so there's less of a need.<br /><br />I signed in at the main Skyhook entrance gate, and gave them both a thumb and retinal scan; they run a real belt-and-suspenders operation at Skyhook. I was met by a bright young thing of indeterminate sex, at least the way that she/he was dressed, and followed her/him to a gocart where we spent the next few minutes dodging the frenetic traffic in the corridors at the center of the world.<br /><br />"Here you go, Mr. Honlin," said my androgynous guide. "Conference room number one. I'll be here when you come out."<br /><br />I thanked her/him and opened the door.<br /><br />The lights came up as I walked into the room. There was a desk for me to sit at, and three walls looked to be full holorez viewscreens. See the world from your desk, I thought, and I wondered how much a setup like this would cost to a private individual. I wondered if I had ever met anyone that rich. Maybe Grayling. Maybe.<br /><br />Then the screen in front of me came on, and I was looking at another office, much like the one I was in, with another desk, and another occupant behind the desk. Only the desk looked like it was permanently occupied, with papers strewn all over the top, and various data lines leading off of it into the farther wall.<br /><br />"Hello, Mr. Honlin," said the man behind the desk. "My name is Grant Landau. Dr. Landau, if titles matter, which they don't. I'd rise and shake your hand, but circumstances do not permit it."<br /><br />He got up anyway and stood leaning on his desk. I was still checking out the place. The setup was impressive, I'll give it that. The wall was full holorez, and the illusion was nearly perfect. The only discrepancy that I could really notice was when Landau sat down again. Normally you can feel the movement in a room through the floor, but Landau felt like a ghost. He looked a little like one, too; his skin was pallid, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His round face looked a little puffy, as if he'd had a recent weight gain. Stress will do that to some people. They overeat as a compensation.<br /><br />"So what's on your mind, Dr. Landau," I asked him. "You look like a very busy man and I'd hate to waste your time."<br /><br />He smiled a thin smile and sighed. "Yes, and I'd hate to waste yours. But however much we'd like to cut to the chase, some chases are a bit harder than others. So you'll have to bear with me a little bit."<br /><br />He paused, his face a grimace that was an attempt at a smile. "Are you a man of faith, Mr. Honlin?" he asked me.<br /><br />"I doubt it," I said to him. "I can't think of many things that need faith to make them run, and the rest of it doesn't seem to matter much to me these days. Or did you have a more specific sort of faith in mind?"<br /><br />He shook his head. "No, I think I'm talking about the most general sort of faith. Faith in faith, even. Faith that somewhere, somehow, there is something or someone that it's proper to believe in."<br /><br />"I think you've lost me," I told him, hoping that the correct phrase wasn't really lost it.<br /><br />He shook his head again. "No matter," he said, almost to himself. "Maybe I'll just have to put my faith in you."<br /><br />"That might be a bad idea," I told him.<br /><br />"It might be the only idea I've got," he said.<br /><br />He shook himself, like someone coming awake. "Enough of this," he said, reminding himself that he had something important to tell me, I expect. "I first heard your name eighteen months ago, I daresay that you know in what connection."<br /><br />I shrugged. "Grayling, no doubt."<br /><br />"No doubt," he said. "A couple of reports crossed my desk and suddenly, a smuggling ring that was completely unknown to me is broken apart, largely by your efforts, it would seem. That in itself would be impressive enough. But the background checks showed you to be a most unusual man. Very highly connected, good family, with a wide range of very important personages on Luna willing to give you their highest recommendations. As nearly as I can tell, you could have written your own ticket Luna-side, yet you chose to immigrate to Venus and live in what, if I may speak frankly, can only be called 'squalor.'"<br /><br />"Oh, I think we could come up with some other names for it," I told him.<br /><br />"Ah, yes," he said. "Then there is the matter of your attitude. I read Mr. Lee's reports on the case, and they are quite confusing. He started out thinking you a total burnout, and by the end of the matter, he'd walk through fire for you. Literally."<br /><br />"The fire wasn't our idea," I said.<br /><br />"No, I imagine not," he replied.<br /><br />He looked closely at me, with one of those attempted mind reading looks that people get sometimes. "Of course I looked at your file," he said. "And you know what I found."<br /><br />"Yeah," I said. "A lot of people have had that frustration." There is a total blank in my personnel file dating from about ten years back until I came to Venus five years ago. It looks like it's been encrypted, but if you break the code, it's just noise. They wiped the records of that period in my life. Completely. I've sometimes wished they could have done the same for me.<br /><br />"Then a few months back, your name comes up in another context," he continued. "We have a . . . problem," he said, then paused again. "Which I will shortly explain to you. And that problem is being investigated by a couple of agents from the Guard to the Special Cabinet on Luna. Are you familiar with that agency?" he asked me.<br /><br />"Every Luna cop knows the Special Guard," I told him, truthfully, if somewhat noncommittally.<br /><br />"We here at Skyhook know the Guard, as well," he said. "They are the big guns that get called if things look to be getting seriously out of hand. Needless to say, we prefer not to see them very often."<br /><br />I nodded. That was pretty much the attitude of cops on Luna, too.<br /><br />"During the years for which your record does not speak, you were in the Guard," he said. It was not a question.<br /><br />"What gives you that idea?" I asked him, thinking that he was fishing. But he wasn't.<br /><br />"Does the name Martin Fisk ring any bells?" he asked me.<br /><br />I said nothing.<br /><br />"Dr. Fisk treated you for an extended period just before you came to Venus," he said. "I have been in communication with him for the past several months."<br /><br />"That is a violation of doctor/patient privilege," I said, but without heat. Hell, I'd seen that happen enough times not to harbor any illusions. I was a little surprised, though. I thought that Fisk was too afraid to talk. Too afraid of me and what I represented.<br /><br />Landau seemed to read my mind on that one, at least. "There are some privileges that go with being a fellow member of the medical community," he said. "He was very reluctant to speak, of course. I also had to threaten him with the Guard a little bit. And some other things, as well. That Dr. Fisk was willing to communicate with me tells you something about the problem we face."<br /><br />"I'd say it's about time to tell me about it, then," I told him.<br /><br />He held up his hand. "Soon, soon," he told me. "I'm giving you this background to let you know that I'm going into this with open eyes. Through Dr. Fisk and several other contacts that I have, I have learned something of what actually happened to you during that blank period. I know the sort of things that you are capable of, in other words."<br /><br />He let that sink in for a bit. I began to wonder just how desperate he was.<br /><br />"What does the Guard say about this?" I asked him.<br /><br />"I haven't told them," he said. "Early on, they had some interest in using you because you were already in place, with some experience in areas that they need to investigate. But they decided against it. I think that some of them think that you are too unpredictable. Or they may have other reasons."<br /><br />I snorted a little on that one. "Yeah, I expect they have a reason or two," I said.<br /><br />He shrugged. "In any case, I don't entirely trust the agents of the Guard," he said. "I'm sure you understand."<br /><br />"Yeah, I'm sure I do," I told him.<br /><br />"You may be interested to know," he told me, "That Dr. Fisk still considers you to be an outstanding individual. He was of the opinion that, if you could be induced to work for us, you were our best hope."<br /><br />"Now I know you're desperate," I said.<br /><br />He ignored the jibe. "In truth, I think that Dr. Fisk was a little surprised that you were still alive. He said that you weren't suicidal, but that he thought that you might arrange for a situation that would lead to your demise. A 'death wish,' I've heard it called, although he didn't use that phrase. Dr. Fisk also said that you were as thoroughly immune to pressure or threats or bribery as any human being can be. He told me that the only way that you would work for us is if you decided that you were going to do it. That's it, just a personal decision. Nothing else would work. He told me 'Tell him the truth, lay it out for him, and hope he says yes. And if he says no, that's it, don't push him if you value your life.'"<br /><br />"Dr. Fisk can be a little melodramatic," I said.<br /><br />"I thought that too," Landau said. "Until about ten minutes ago. Now that I've seen you, I think he might have you pegged."<br /><br />I felt myself give a little sigh. "Okay," I told him. "You have my attention, anyway. Maybe it's time to lay it out for me."<br /><br />So he began to tell his story.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/05/chapter-twelve-what-do-you-know-of.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-15452994041684253472008-04-21T18:51:00.000-07:002008-04-26T18:41:11.600-07:00Chapter ten: "So you kick people in the head just because you get impatient?"<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-nine-i-should-have-known-better.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />Calvin had a meeting to attend, so he left me in his office for the rest of the afternoon, a time I spent on his data access comm, running down background information that I thought might come in handy. I tried running background checks on Harmon Reed and Juliet Carlyle, the two Guards from Luna, but they were under a blackout, and Calvin didn't have enough clearance to get at their files. I tried a couple of access codes that I used to know, but they were long out of date. No surprise there.<br /><br />When Calvin returned, he had that slightly glazed look of someone who had spent time trying to keep from falling asleep. "Interesting meeting?" I asked, and he gave me a dirty look.<br /><br />"Budget review," he said. "Most of it was spent going over meal accounts. Somebody had the bright idea that City employees should be reimbursed for meal expenses, provided -- and this is the good part -- provided the meal is eaten during standard lunch hours, and outside of the normal range of City Center operations. Oddly enough, this has resulted in more late morning field work away from City Center. So now someone wants to make the policy apply only to amounts in excess of standard meal rates, with documentation required that there were no cheaper alternatives."<br /><br />"This took two hours?" I asked, suppressing a grin.<br /><br />"Oh no," he said. "There were four other items on the agenda. So the meal thing just took an hour and a half."<br /><br />I shrugged. "Administrators may not know anything about police work," I told him. "But they know food. So they try to stick to what they know."<br /><br />"Oh, crap," he sighed. "And speaking of food, let's go get some. We're supposed to meet Cheryl soon."<br /><br />"Anything you say," I told him, and we left.<br /><br />__________________________________<br /><br />The restaurant was called The Chalet, I think, but the maitre'd pronounced it The Shallot. Maybe it was a joke. If so, it was a high priced joke; the place was one of the most expensive in the City. We got there a little early and passed the time in the bar.<br /><br />The Chalet decor was polymonochrome, which was the posh decorating style that year. The rug, tablecloths, and wall hangings were of a new Lunar-import fabric with an electrically controlled tint, so the color of the place slowly shifted during the course of the evening. When we got there, it was a mild pink; by the time Cheryl arrived, it was approaching mauve.<br /><br />"Hi guys," she said from behind us, just as we were finishing our drinks. We turned, and Calvin got a quick peck of a kiss as she extended her hand toward me. I shook her hand briefly, noting that she gave my palm a slight caress when she removed her grasp.<br /><br />"Ed," said Calvin. "This is Cheryl Chiba. Cheryl, Ed Honlin."<br /><br />Calvin's former fiance was wearing a cut-to-the-shoulders black form fitting dress, from which I guessed that she had been to The Chalet before, or at least knew about the shifting color scheme. Anyone wearing colors other than basic black or white would wind up clashing at some point during the evening. I guessed her age at early twenties, a little younger than I would have expected for Calvin, but she made up for it in sheer physical presence. She had the high cheekbones and brown eyes of a Eurasian mix that still showed some ethnic identity, unlike Luna, where the racial groups long ago vanished in a hybrid swarm. She carried herself with the controlled movements of someone who has had some sort of training in that regard, dance or gymnastics, perhaps even one of the martial arts, though I did not recognize any specifics. She was nearly as tall as Calvin, but slender, with the firm look of someone who kept thin by activity rather than anorexia.<br /><br />All this I took in during the short time we took to get the attention of the maitre 'd, and on our walk to our table. I was not unaware of Cheryl's sizing-me-up glances as well. Calvin, I think, was oblivious.<br /><br />After we had been seated and the water had been poured, the waiter gave us menus and asked if we wanted something to drink. We answered "no," so he left us to ponder our orders.<br /><br />"Well, that's the last we'll see of him for a while," Calvin said, and Cheryl smiled.<br /><br />She turned to me and said, "So, you're the mystery man who saved Calvin's life by kicking people in the head."<br /><br />Calvin was sipping his water and gave a little strangled sound like he'd almost choked. He reached for a napkin (white, but it picked up the color of the entire room, which was by now nearly a royal purple), and held it in front of his mouth while he slowly turned red.<br /><br />"I'm not sure about the 'saved his life' part," I told her. "Calvin is pretty good at taking care of himself."<br /><br />She shrugged her bare shoulders and said, "Perhaps he embellished the tale a little. Still, it sounded like quite a fight."<br /><br />Calvin had recovered his voice by now. "I told her about the lab raid, and how you took out the guy who was trying to pound my skull in," Calvin said, as if his telling her had violated a confidence.<br /><br />It was my turn to shrug. "Calvin was wearing a helmet," I told Cheryl. "And the guy who did the pounding wasn't very good at mayhem. I think that Calvin would have handled it with more time. I was just impatient."<br /><br />"So you kick people in the head just because you get impatient?" she said, still smiling, but the pupils of her eyes had grown larger, turning more of the brown centers of her eyes to black.<br /><br />"Very rarely," I said.<br /><br /><br />"How fortunate for our waiter that you are so rarely impatient," she said, and we all laughed at this.<br /><br />"Besides," said Calvin. "The guy lived."<br /><br />Through most of dinner Calvin and Cheryl spoke of mutual friends and their past times together with the ease of old friends tempered by the reserve of the formerly passionate. Periodically, Cheryl would steer the conversation over to me, asking me about the way I lived, who I knew in Darkunder, how I went about my life. She confessed, with the attitude of one confiding secrets, that she found Darkunder both fascinating and repellent.<br /><br />And if those occasional glances that she sent in my direction were speculative, she did not volunteer her speculations.<br /><br />She left before dessert, kissing Calvin on the cheek and once more touching my hand in a parting gesture that lingered only for the briefest instant. After she was gone, Calvin looked over at me and shrugged helplessly.<br /><br />"Still a little torched?" I asked him.<br /><br />"A bit," he admitted. "It will pass, I expect. She's from a wealthy family, old money, I think it's called. Dating a cop was a bit of a rebellion. We're not special here on Venus. It's not like Luna."<br /><br />"Cops are special everywhere," I told him. "High or low, it's all special. But she's one to cause problems, I think."<br /><br />"You think right," he said, but he said no more about it and then our coffee came.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-eleven-dont-push-him-if-you.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-27211399203367602992008-04-17T18:26:00.000-07:002008-04-21T18:57:25.199-07:00Chapter nine: “"I should have known better than to set you loose”<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-eight-like-dreams-of-alien-gods.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />I awoke in the near darkness of the Venus night, the only light coming from the intermittent flashes of distant lightning down below. It was afternoon by the clock, though; it's not unusual for Venus dwellers to sleep late during the first hours of darkness, since we tend to skip sleep during the light days and make up for it in the dark.<br /><br />I got up and had a four liter shower, then dressed and headed toward the City without bothering to eat. As we checked out the bloon that I was going to use for the trip, Joey commented that I looked better than I had before. A trick of the light, I told him, but in truth I did feel better.<br /><br />I checked into City Center and, before I went into Police Headquarters, I used a public comm to place a call to Marjori. A child answered the phone, one of Marjori's daughter's children by the sound of it; then Marjori came on line.<br /><br />"Hello, darling," she said, in a slightly breathless voice. "Are you missing me?"<br /><br />"Yes," I told her. "You sound out of breath."<br /><br />"I've been downstairs playing with the youngest boy," she said. "I think I need to get more exercise; I'm out of shape."<br /><br />"You couldn't prove that by me," I told her.<br /><br />"Flattery will get you a great deal," she said with a laugh. I do enjoy hearing her laugh.<br /><br />"So when are you coming back?" I asked.<br /><br />"Tomorrow or the day after," she said.<br /><br />"Let me know exactly when," I said. "I may have a favor to ask."<br /><br />"Oh?" she said. "What sort of favor?" She laughed again, and a slight shiver went up my spine.<br /><br />"Not that sort," I said. "Well, maybe that sort, too. But the thing I'm thinking of...hmm, actually I'm not really clear on it just yet, though I should be soon. There's a case I'm involved with that could maybe use a woman's touch."<br /><br />"Going to turn me out on the street are you?" she said teasingly.<br /><br />"Oh, sure, definitely," I said. Then after a pause, "I do miss you."<br /><br />"Good," she said. "I like that a lot." Then we said a few more things along those lines and hung up. One of the things about Marjori is that she knows what questions not to ask.<br /><br />________________________________<br /><br />Calvin was in his office when I arrived at PDH. "Hi, Ed," he said to me as I came in. "I'm just running those numbers you asked for. Have a seat." I bounced one of his chairs around beside his desk so I could watch the data screen while he worked.<br /><br />"You're looking better," he told me as he tapped at the keyboard in front of him.<br /><br />"So I'm told," I replied. "Sleep that knits the raveled sleeve...."<br /><br />"Finally broke down and took a sleeping pill?" he asked absently.<br /><br />I hesitated. I rarely take pills because I often get paradoxical reactions, to put it mildly. Also, I have a certain fear of being helpless while I sleep.<br /><br />"Sort of," I said, noncommittally.<br /><br />"Here we go," he said as some numbers came onto his screen. "Not many of them, actually. Taylorville gets a fair number of outside calls, but they are usually from standard places, people they do business with, other farming clusters, that sort of thing. I've weeded those out, like you said. So we get...."<br /><br />"Only four numbers," I said. "What are they?"<br /><br />"Two from the City, one from the Rim, and one from Darkunder. The City calls are public comm units. The one from the Rim is a private residence. The one in Darkunder is a business listing."<br /><br />"What's the business?" I asked.<br /><br />"'Night club,'" he told me. He tapped a few more keys. "Basically it's a brothel." He looked at me. "That's the one, isn't it?" he said. "You're not surprised."<br /><br />"No," I told him. "Betty Laird, Molly's mother never told anyone what she did for the years surrounding Molly's birth. She had no significant skills and she came home when her looks were beginning to fade. That narrows the field."<br /><br />I told him about the things that Lewis and I had learned in Taylorville. When I was done, he gave a low, soft whistle.<br /><br />"Oh, great," he said. "I should have known better than to set you loose on finding next-of-kin for dead girls."<br /><br />"Meaning that you'd rather I hadn't found any?" I said.<br /><br />He sighed. "No, I guess I don't mean that. But it complicates things, doesn't it?"<br /><br />I shrugged. "This is still all hypothetical, you know," I told him. "We don't know for a fact that Molly had a child."<br /><br />"Yeah, but it makes sense," he said, and I agreed.<br /><br />"So now what?" he asked me.<br /><br />"I'm going to hold off on going to this 'night club' for a couple of days," I said. "I want Marjori to accompany me when I go."<br /><br />"Why?"<br /><br />"Oh come on," I told him. "Molly probably spent time there as a child, which is why she went back when she was in trouble. We're guessing that they still have her child. Do you think they're going to be thrilled at the idea of turning her over to someone like me?"<br /><br />He had to laugh at that one. "Point taken," he said.<br /><br />"How about the gun?" I asked him. "Have you tried to trace it?"<br /><br />"Oh, yeah," he said. "Let me show you." With that he called up another file, and pointed to a set of names.<br /><br />"Perfect tie-in," he said to me. "That particular antique was last registered on Luna, to Emerson Grayling, Robert Grayling's grandfather. Passed from father to son to grandson to...."<br /><br />"Daughter," I finished for him. "Actually, I suspect that it was more complicated than that. But it does make the connection pretty strong. And the DNA typing?"<br /><br />"That's as near as matters to one hundred percent," he said. "That one is courtroom solid."<br /><br />"Not on Luna," I said. "On Luna, it's irrelevant."<br /><br />"Yes," he said. "So I've heard. When are you going to pay a visit to Jesse Grayling to break it to him that he has a blood relative that he didn't know about?"<br /><br />"I think I'll hold off on that for a while," I said. "I'd like at least to wait until we know for sure that there is such a person—the child, I mean."<br /><br />"So you're not going to go charging in and rattling the cages to see what slips out through the bars?" he asked. He made it sound like he was joking, but I caught the undertone.<br /><br />"You know me better than that," I said.<br /><br />"Do I?" he asked. The joking tone was less apparent now.<br /><br />"Whatever." I gave it a gesture of dismissal. "There are times to stir things up, and times to let things settle. I already told you, I'd rather that none of the Grayling's know that they're under suspicion."<br /><br />He nodded, then took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "Uh, now I have to bring something up."<br /><br />I felt my eyebrows move. "A piper that wants to be paid?" I asked him.<br /><br />"Um, maybe," he said. "It sure didn't take them long."<br /><br />"Who wants to see me?" I asked.<br /><br />He sighed again. "You don't have to do this if you don't feel like it," he said. "Oh, hell, of all the people to say that to. Anyway, there's a guy by the name of Landau, Grant Landau. He's part of Skyhook Security, not one of the crime units, but public health and safety. In fact, he's head of the epidemiology section. He's sent me a request for a meeting with you."<br /><br />"When?" I asked.<br /><br />"Anytime that is convenient, but the sooner the better, he says."<br /><br />I must have been in a good mood that day. I said, "Well, I'm not doing anything tomorrow."<br /><br />"Good," he said, with obvious relief. It can get troublesome when the upper levels lean on you.<br /><br />Then his comm buzzed. He picked up the receiver and said, "Calvin Lee, here." Then the tone of his voice changed substantially. "Oh, hi Cheryl, how are you? No, I was just in a meeting with a someone, Ed Honlin. Yeah, that's the guy. What? Oh." He looked over at me. "Are you busy for dinner?" he asked me. I shook my head. "Yeah," he told the comm. "I'll ask him along. Say about six." Then he hung up.<br /><br />He looked over at me. "That's Cheryl, my ex-fiance. We still meet for dinner every now and then, and she's going to be downtown tonight. Want to come along?"<br /><br />"Cheryl is the one who didn't want to marry you because you were a cop, right?" I asked.<br /><br />He grimaced. "That turned out to be a mixup, I think," he said. "I eventually found out that being a cop was maybe the only thing she really liked about me. No, that's not quite fair. Anyway, we're still 'friends,' I guess. And I'd appreciate your company at dinner."<br /><br />I was dubious about the entire thing. Three's a crowd even for ex-couples. But I was also a little curious. "Okay," I told him. "But I may decide that I have business elsewhere, even before the main course."<br /><br />He smiled. "She knows enough about you not to be surprised," he said.<br /><br />"What have you been telling her?" I asked.<br /><br />"Nothing not known to dozens of people," he joked, referring to the way my files had been accessed by what seemed to be everyone we'd encountered during the Sheila Mason case. Luna computer records aren't known for their privacy.<br /><br />"Well, I'm always happy to meet one of my adoring fans," I told him.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-ten-so-you-kick-people-in-head.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-44042510690649970632008-04-07T16:43:00.000-07:002008-04-21T18:55:51.930-07:00Chapter eight: Like the dreams of alien gods.<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-seven-with-dreams-of-much.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />After William Anderson had left, I told Lewis that we were leaving; there was no way I was going to sleep that clock night, and I figured I might as well take us back to the City. Lewis agreed. I don't think he wanted to stay any longer in Taylorville, either.<br /><br />I did most of the work setting the airfoils, drag line, all the rest. Lewis realized that I needed the activity and sat over by the side near one of the aft viewports, watching the sky. About the time I had everything set and we were at full drift, he spoke.<br /><br />"Do you think she was?" he asked me. "Pregnant, I mean."<br /><br />He hadn't needed to clarify. I'd been thinking the same question.<br /><br />"Yes," I answered. "It would make sense. I think she'd have spurned the money, otherwise. She was young. Pride."<br /><br />"And she had the child?"<br /><br />"She'd never have aborted it, if that's what you mean," I told him.<br /><br />"You talk like you know a lot about a girl you only met once," he said.<br /><br />I'd thought about that, too, but I didn't have an answer to it. "I guess so," I said. "It's always possible that I'm wrong. But I'm not uncertain about it. Some people are obvious. Not shallow or transparent, but obvious. You feel like you know them from the first. Maybe it's just a projection on my part."<br /><br />He said nothing for a long while. "If there is a child," he said finally. "How messy does that make things?"<br /><br />"Very," I told him. "A direct descendant of Robert Grayling. But not through a legal marriage. On Luna, that's no relationship at all. All children have a legal mother and father at birth, or they aren't allowed to come to term. There are some cuckoos, of course, but legally they are still only related to their parents."<br /><br />"That's a stern system," Lewis said.<br /><br />"Luna is a stern place," I told him.<br /><br />I continued. "On Venus, as I understand it, the laws of the local cluster prevail, the same as for most everything else. Then there is Sky City, which has developed its own legal code. City law is more flexible than Lunar law, and blood relations count, even when not formalized by legal marriage. It pretty much has to work that way, since so many City residents are originally from free clusters, and the City management doesn't want to try imposing a single code on people who didn't grow up under it. If someone dies in the City, no one wants to tell his mother that she isn't legally his mother."<br /><br />Lewis nodded. "And Grayling?" he asked.<br /><br />"A lot would depend on where the estate is settled. Grayling owned property on Venus, Skyhook, and Luna. That makes it a hell of a tangle. One of Grayling's cousins, a guy named Jesse Grayling, is trying to untangle the matter right now, I'd say."<br /><br />"Do you think that this Jesse knows about the child?" Lewis said. "Or even that there might be a child?"<br /><br />"I hope not," I said. "If I have to get involved in another matter involving the Graylings, I'll need every edge I can get."<br /><br />______________________________<br /><br />We got back to the City as the sun was in its final descent toward the forty-eight hours of blackness that are true night. As the cloudtops begin to cool the storms in the clouds below often begin to make their presence felt, a distant growling sound that can be felt in the belly if the mood is right, and if one is prepared to listen to things from the depths.<br /><br />"The weather service says that a megastorm may be brewing, pardner," Lewis told me as we were pulling in the lines in preparation to go to powered flight. "We haven't had one of those in five or six years now."<br /><br />"There hasn't been one since I've been on Venus," I told him. "I thought that they were mostly polar events."<br /><br />"They are," he told me. "But the whole atmosphere gets a bit more turbulent for a while. And the bloons really get a feed after one hits. The dust from below gets a high ride."<br /><br />"Should I make any preparations?" I asked. Lunar natives such as myself don't really have a handle on weather. It seems too much like magic, or the dreams of alien gods.<br /><br />"Nah," he said. "Just find a place with full holo and watch the show. It's pretty impressive, so they usually have some crews up there taping it. Some go on tours to the things."<br /><br />"Isn't that dangerous?" I asked.<br /><br />"Not so much for a small bloon. The big ones get sheared pretty good, and a megastorm will rip a cluster apart. They don't kill as many as it seems they ought to, though. That's the advantage of riding the winds."<br /><br />_____________________________________<br /><br />We docked back at Madame Fumio's after the new clock day had started, just before 5000 hours, 0200 hours by the twenty four hour clock. Lewis had napped in the bloon on our way back; he said good bye and left to collect what remained of a night's sleep. I was still jumpy from the trip and whatever the events of the past few days had stirred up.<br /><br />So after I let Lewis off, I took the bloon out again and took it down to the drift level under the City, and turned off both the fans and the transponder. That's mildly illegal, but it's never enforced, because most free drifting bloons at that level are unmanned strays, and it's too much trouble to police the area. That far down is pretty warm, too, and the pressure begins to tell. You can only go for a half hour or so at drift level before you have to worry about decompressing when you rise again.<br /><br />My route puts me at the higher pressure just long enough to get a little dreamy from nitrogen narcosis, but not long enough to cause problems. During the time I'm down, the City above moves forward without me, west to east, so I wind up near the western edge.<br /><br />At the right moment, I dump my ballast and bubble up, heading for an illegal entry point to the City, an entry point that's pretty much mine alone by now, because it isn't worth much as a smuggler's hole. It's just a zippatched section on a warehouse bloon, but it's my own little bolt hole, a City entry without going through the checkpoints. Once my bloon's snug in its nest, a minor indentation between two much larger bloons, I enter the warehouse, spring the lock on its door, and go prowling in the lowest level of Sky City.<br /><br />There are certain sections of any city that are known to the people who need them to be the way that they are. This section of Sky City is mostly storage areas, with a few bars and such for the longshoremen and teamsters who lug material out of transport bloons and onto transport vehicles or pneumotube. Some of those bars have rough reputations, and some of the men who frequent them like to prowl. Sometimes they prowl for women of a certain sort; sometimes they prowl for men.<br /><br />You can find most kinds of people much easier in Darkunder. There is at least one cluster for almost every sort of need down below. The big exception is for those who find the prowling almost as important as the object of the search. Look on it as primal Stocasticism. Look on it as another way of tossing the dice. If you need some free range, you still need to go Cityside.<br /><br />When I search out the lower levels of the up and up, I'm never quite sure what I'm looking for, and most often, I'm disappointed. That's okay, too. Sometimes even disappointment helps me to sleep. And that's what I was looking for that night, a way to get some sleep.<br /><br />I walked for a couple of hours that night, finding no one on my usual routes except the prostitutes and the men looking to find them. None of them were what I was looking for, a fact made plain by the way most of them shrank from my gaze when it found them. By 5300 hours, I was beginning to think I was wasting my time.<br /><br />Then I saw them. They weren't much to look at actually, just five young men, boys really, marching through the corridors as if they owned them. A gang, I guessed, looking for solidarity and a group to give them identity. They were each carrying a short stick, less than a meter long. Call them canes, though none of them was using them to walk.<br /><br />They walked more or less shoulder to shoulder, taking up the entire width of the corridor. The idea was that anyone who saw them should turn and run away, I expect. Anyone who didn't, well . . .<br /><br />I decided to find out what happened if someone didn't.<br /><br />If I'd been a smaller man, I expect that they would have just come at me straight out, sticks swinging or whatever. But I'm sufficiently large to give most people pause, even when they're part of a group that outnumbers me five-to-one. When I didn't stop my ambling walk in the appropriate place, the two of them on either end of the line sped up a bit, to move around me on either side and flank me from the rear. The three of them in front of me spread out to block my progress.<br /><br />They weren't very good at it. Not good at all. They held their sticks down at their sides, as if by doing so they could gain some element of surprise. The down side of that was that when the one behind me began his swing at my head, I had all the time in the world to react. The strike was telegraphed six ways from Sunday, by the feel of shifting weight through the yielding floor, by the way the eyes of the three punks in front of me followed the motion, by the sound and feel of air displacements from behind. It came from the guy to my right rear, who was right-handed besides, so the trajectory of it was easy to spot, even without seeing it. I pivoted on my left foot, entered his safety zone, and joined his motion before it had even reached the top of its arc. The easiest move at that point was a projection throw that I put too much muscle into -- Sensei Mac would have scowled and snorted. But it got the job done, and lifted the guy off his feet and into the one directly in front of me at about knee level. I heard the pop of cartilage as his knee dislocated, the sound immediately drowned out by his yelp of pain.<br /><br />Whatever scenarios they had in their heads evaporated with that yelp, and the two still standing in front of me froze. That gave me time to snap out a kick to the other one at my rear. Contempt made me sloppy on that one as well; I put it right into his solar plexus. It's dangerous to kick that high against someone who knows what he's doing, but these were just children, playing at being tough. Welcome to show biz, guys.<br /><br />The two in front of me came out of their daze and started swinging wildly with their sticks. That was the first flash of danger that I felt, not because they were any good with the things, but because they weren't. You can never tell when someone is going to get lucky with a weapon, long odds though that might be. I dodged back and picked up the stick from the guy behind me who was on the floor gasping for breath and came around at the other two. Deflecting a blow from the one on my right, I jabbed in at the one on my left and caught him in the throat. That was all for him. The punk standing to my right turned and fled. He was followed by the fellow who had struck the first blow. That one had scrambled to his feet after I'd thrown him, and he decided to become the better part of valorous.<br /><br />None of the others moved from their positions on the floor. They were watching me with fear on their faces, and I liked that part. It was the only satisfying thing that had happened, really. They hadn't been enough to properly feed the demon until then. The one I'd gotten in the throat was making little gurgling noises. I considered whether or not I'd crushed his windpipe, and decided I hadn't used that much force. I might have been wrong about that though, and if so, he'd probably die soon. I didn't care enough to investigate further. I twirled the stick in my hands, to test the balance of it, then resumed my walk, heading back toward my exit hole and my hidden bloon. Not the best of late night entertainment, but not the worst either. The tightness in my chest had eased somewhat, and by the time I got back to my hotel, I was getting drowsy.<br /><br />I slept a full eight hours after that, and if I dreamed I don't remember of what, or of who, or of when.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-nine-i-should-have-known-better.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-24925402172032431082008-03-29T21:49:00.000-07:002008-03-29T21:53:00.387-07:00Chapter seven: …with dreams of a much larger, tiny pond.<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-six-he-looked-like-he-had-money.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />The Andersons lived on the other side of the narrow docking area of Taylorville. As Lewis and I walked along the corridor past where our bloon was docked, we considered the town.<br /><br />"Snap judgments are odious," Lewis said.<br /><br />"Agreed."<br /><br />"Still, this place is a lot less pleasant than I would have thought," he continued.<br /><br />"Agreed on that as well," I said, thinking of the way that Betty Laird was "welcomed" back with a job of drudgery being her only option.<br /><br />"Why is that, do you suppose?" he asked.<br /><br />I shrugged. "Ever read any Twain?" He nodded.<br /><br />"Well," I continued, "Twain has an essay somewhere about the South, and how utterly ruined it was by trying to mimic a book. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ivanhoe</span> by Sir Walter Scott. Chivalry. All the Southern ladies wanted to be British aristocrats, and all the gentlemen wanted to be knights errant. But not just any aristocrats. Fictional aristocrats."<br /><br />"Life mimics art?" Lewis asked.<br /><br />"And badly," I said.<br /><br />"So what do you think these people are mimicking?" he asked me.<br /><br />I shrugged again. "Some movie, some play, some image of small town life and town meetings. How many times have you seen <span style="font-style: italic;">It's a Wonderful Life</span>?"<br /><br />"That ancient Christmas monstrosity? I prefer <span style="font-style: italic;">A Christmas Carol</span>, especially the one where Scrooge winds up in the asylum for hearing voices."<br /><br />"Revisionist," I told him. "These people like their fantasies more pure."<br /><br />"Ugh," Lewis said.<br /><br />___________________________<br /><br />The Andersons lived in the big house on the hill, or the bloon equivalent thereof. Most of the upper level of Taylorville was for farming, but the Andersons had set themselves into a set of bloons that rose higher than even the farming layer. Someone had believed in panoramic views, and possibly the notion of looking down on other people.<br /><br />And servants who answered the door. And not just any door, but a door that swung open rather than unzipped, a door surrounded by ornamentation that could only be called a 'facade.'<br /><br />I'm used to the idea of servants; Marjori Low has several of them, all of whom she jokingly calls 'James' though none of them are named that. But Marjori treats them as valued employees and views their services as conveniences, not something that are hers by divine right. And she will answer the door herself if she is nearby.<br /><br />She does not have her servants dress up in silly costumes like a period piece and them them affect silly accents. The Anderson's butler talked like he'd been forced to learn stage British as a second language.<br /><br />The man who answered the door looked like someone who takes his daily dose of humiliation as a tonic before breakfast. His face was impassive, with the look of stone that had been slowly etched by dripping water, or something perhaps more vitriolic. Stiffly erect, his posture still managed to convey the look of someone carrying a heavy load. My first feeling was one of sympathy, but I let that die. Worrying about the servant problem in Taylorville was not part of my job description.<br /><br />"What may I do for you, sirs?" the poor fellow asked, and Lewis and I struggled to keep a straight face.<br /><br />"We are here to see William Anderson," I answered. "We attempted to call earlier, but no one answered, so we left a message."<br /><br />From behind him came a woman's voice, also rich with affectation. "Let them in, Morris," the voice said. "This must be those policemen from the City."<br /><br />"Yes, Madame," poor Morris said, and complied, leading us into a room just off the entrance hallway. Maybe it was the "sitting room." Certainly Mrs. Anderson had been sitting in it, but she rose to greet us.<br /><br />Mrs. Anderson might have been attractive once, but I couldn't see it now. She was thin and gray with a mouth that looked like she'd just bit into something unexpected, in circumstances where she couldn't just spit it out. It isn't often that I take such an immediate dislike to someone, but Mrs. Anderson was an unusual person. If she employed poor Morris, that was reason enough to form an early opinion perhaps; there was also the matter of the furniture.<br /><br />The Anderson domicile was loaded with bric-a-brac of the most tasteless sort, inflatable furniture designed and decorated to look, more or less, but mostly less, like the Earth-style furniture that we see in all the old movies and holovids. There was no particular unity to the decorating scheme, ersatz wooden tables were set next to overstuffed chairs, synthetic fur rugs used as wall hangings; a replica Tiffany lamp stood on a faux formica table. My first wild thought was that the people of Taylorville had made a mistake in not letting more drugs into town.<br /><br />But I recovered. Not as quickly as Lewis, however, who said almost immediately, "Mrs. Anderson, I would imagine?"<br /><br />His voice had picked up a sudden flavor of refinement, not an accent really, just a certain firmness of phrasing. Lewis can be quite a chameleon.<br /><br />Lewis introduced us, and shook Mrs. Anderson's hand very briefly. She wore white gloves, I noticed, but even with that protection, she refrained from offering her hand to me. I suppressed the urge to scratch myself indecently to see how she would react.<br /><br />"Mr. Honlin and I are consulting to Sky City investigators to find possible heirs to Miss Molly Laird," Lewis told her. "She died recently, leaving a modest estate, and the law insists upon trying to find someone to inherit."<br /><br />I saw Mrs. Anderson perk up briefly at the mention of "inheritance." Do they get that way from being rich, or do they get rich from being that way? No, that is being unfair to other, richer, people. This woman was a small fish in a tiny pond, with dreams of a much larger, tiny pond.<br /><br />"My son, William, was very briefly involved with the girl, Mr. Lewis," she replied after some consideration. "I doubt that it qualifies as a legal connection. Besides, I do not think that any money that Miss Laird possessed could tempt anyone in the Anderson family."<br /><br />"Agreed," Lewis told her. "However, we were primarily inquiring about any other family connections that Miss Laird might have had. Perhaps William might know of …"<br /><br />"William isn't here right now," she snapped. She was lying from the slight reaction of Morris the butler, who had retreated to the entrance hallway again, but it was not worth pursuing. "Once he got over his infatuation, William wished to have nothing to do with the girl. He found her presence to be an embarrassment, as did I. I'm sorry that Miss Laird is dead, but I am not sorry that she is gone, if you can understand the distinction."<br /><br />Lewis and I both nodded, mainly because we wanted out of there.<br /><br />"Well," I said to Lewis, trying to look like I was his assistant or some other properly subservient person, "It's getting late, so we should maybe have dinner, spend the night in our bloon, then head back to the City in the morning." I looked at Mrs. Anderson and spoke to her. "We'll be in docking bay six until morning, so if William can think of anything when he comes in, please have him contact us."<br /><br />Then we let Morris lead us to the door.<br /><br />_____________________________<br /><br />"What a repulsive woman," said Lewis when we were far enough away from the Anderson abode.<br /><br />"No argument from me," I told him. "That was worse than I expected, and I expected it to be unpleasant."<br /><br />"So now what?" he asked me.<br /><br />"Well, first, I have to make a call to Calvin Lee," I told him. "Then, like I told Mrs. Anderson, we're going to have dinner and go back to our bloon for the night. I expect that William Anderson will visit us there tonight. Then we'll go home."<br /><br />"How sure are you about little Willy?" Lewis asked me.<br /><br />"Reasonably sure," I told him. "He was probably listening in during our visit, but even if he didn't, Morris will tell him."<br /><br />"Yeah," Lewis said. "Didn't look like Morris liked Mrs. A. very much, did it?"<br /><br />"I just think she'd better not have him cook for her," I told him. "Food taster would be much safer."<br /><br />We were at the docking area by this time, and there were several public comm units there. Lewis sat down to watch the haggling, while I placed a call to Calvin.<br /><br />"Hello, Ed," came Calvin's voice after the briefest connection delay. "What's up?"<br /><br />"I need you to run a few numbers for me," I told him. "Molly made a couple of calls to a woman named Josie Bush," I gave him Bush's number and the approximate dates of the calls.<br /><br />"So you want a backtrack?" he asked.<br /><br />"Yeah," I said. "Give me all the calls placed in the past year, but subtract out any that came in more than, oh, make it five times. With point of origin listings. Also get me the numbers for the Anderson family in this cluster. If you could cross check calls to the Bush number to the Anderson number, that would help."<br /><br />"Easy enough," he told me. "Priority?"<br /><br />"Not very," I said. "A few days. Tomorrow. Whatever."<br /><br />"I'll get on it," he said, and hung up.<br /><br />I turned to Lewis. "Okay," I told him. "Let's go get something to eat."<br /><br /><br />______________________________<br /><br />"Something to eat" turned out to be a small cafeteria that catered to the bloon fishermen. You'd think that people would want something different when they came to town, but most of the fare was standard stuff that can be made in any bloon: textured soy, bloon starch, and the mildly flavored drink that some call "bloon piss."<br /><br />But they also had chicken, bread, and real vegetables. We were in a farming cluster, so Lewis and I made the most of it. There was even a low alcohol near-beer, and we bought an extra couple of bulbs for taking with us.<br /><br />Back at the dock, Lewis excused himself briefly and went over to talk to Anne, who was still on duty. I heard her giggle again, and he shook her hand in a most charming way. When he came back, I asked, "She's a little young, don't you think?"<br /><br />"You have a dirty mind, pardner. It's one of your few virtues. Actually, I just slipped her a few coins and told her to pretend that she doesn't see anybody coming out to our bloon tonight. If little Billy is as scared of mommy as the butler was, I think he might be a little skittish."<br /><br />"Good idea," I told him.<br /><br />Back in our bloon, we listened to some news and drank our beer, letting the day close down. The sun was nearly overhead, and most of the cluster would be staying up late, for work, or whatever else needed doing by the light.<br /><br />"Still think he'll show?" Lewis asked me.<br /><br />"Yeah," I told him. "But if he doesn't, that will tell us something, too."<br /><br />"Like what?" he asked me. But I didn't have to answer, because then someone buzzed our comm from the external button.<br /><br />I opened the flap.<br /><br />William Anderson was a young man in his early twenties with the look of a golden boy about him, moderately tall, blond, with an unlined face that spoke of decisions deferred and easy choices. He was almost shy as he entered our bloon, but I expect that he lost the shyness when around his friends and cronies. He lost some of it once inside, away from prying eyes.<br /><br />"Mr. Lewis?" he asked. "Mr. Honlin?" He looked from Lewis to me and back again.<br /><br />"I'm Lewis," Lewis told him. "It's not really a last name; I've only got the one. This here is Ed Honlin. He's the boss, no matter what you might have heard."<br /><br />Anderson looked over at me, trying to size me up, which may have been a mistake, since the longer he looked, the less like a good idea this might have seemed. Still, he found his voice quickly enough.<br /><br />"I understand that you're looking for word about Molly," he said. His voice had a tight quality to it.<br /><br />I nodded. "You know she's dead, I assume."<br /><br />He swallowed and nodded. "I'm really sorry about that," he said.<br /><br />"I expect," I said neutrally. "I only met her once, but she seemed like a fine person. Why did you break up with her?"<br /><br />He looked around, as if the walls might have ears. Then he looked back at me and said, "You've met my mother." It was halfway between a question and a statement.<br /><br />I nodded. "Yes, but I haven't done any digging into your family history. Frankly, I'm not much interested in it, except where it has to do with Molly. We're from a long way off, and Taylorville is not a stop on my regular itinerary. Whatever you tell me goes no further than here."<br /><br />That seemed to lift some of his burden, because he relaxed a bit. "My mother has the money in the family, and she never lets anyone forget it. My dad left ten years ago; when she talks about it, she says it was to run off with some floozy, but everybody knows that he just got sick of her."<br /><br />He looked over at Lewis, hoping for an extra helping of sympathy, perhaps. "She's not really a bad person, you know? She just thinks that because her money and her standing in the community is the most important thing in her life, that it should be the most important thing in everybody else's life, too. I've tried standing up to her, but, well…" His voice trailed off.<br /><br />"And one of those times was over Molly," Lewis supplied.<br /><br />Anderson gave a sick smile. "Yeah," he said. "I really screwed that up. I did love her. A lot. But when Mom started in on me, well, most people think I just caved in. Molly probably did, too. But it wasn't like that. It's just that I started thinking about how much of what I felt for Molly was because she wasn't my mother, if that makes any sense. It didn't seem fair to Molly, to be using her to get back at Mom."<br /><br />That was as good a rationalization as I'd heard in a long time, the more so because it was probably true. I said, "So did you try to tell Molly that?"<br /><br />"Yeah," he said dully. "But I don't think I said it very well. She got pretty chilly. Then Mom gave her money to go away."<br /><br />He looked over at me with his eyes almost to the point of tearing. "Molly told me that I could come away with her if I wanted, that there was enough money to get us to the City, or at least one of the clusters down Under, or out on the Rim. I almost went with her."<br /><br />"Why didn't you?"<br /><br />"Because I didn't want to take charity," he said. "I know that sounds strange, but there it is. And it would have been charity, too."<br /><br />"Why is that?" Lewis asked.<br /><br />"Because Molly didn't love me any more. I lost her sometime during the arguments with Mom. You know the way that you'll make excuses for those you love? I just felt it when she stopped making excuses for me. When she stopped loving me."<br /><br />That left us silent. I don't really have much of a comeback when someone just suddenly dumps his guts onto your floor. I looked over at Lewis and found him looking back at me.<br /><br />"There's another thing, too," William said.<br /><br />"Yes?" I asked.<br /><br />"I . . ." he hesitated. "From some things she said when we said goodbye, just before she left. From the way she said some things. Nothing I could put my finger on, but…" His voice trailed off again, but I let the silence grow. Some times you have to let them start up again on their own.<br /><br />After a few more seconds, he said in a small voice, "I think she may have been pregnant," he said. "I'd have been the father, but I couldn't ask her about it; I didn't feel like I had the right. But she might have been pregnant."James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-62873299096740333732008-03-24T15:50:00.000-07:002008-03-29T21:54:00.302-07:00Chapter six: He looked like he had money but it wasn't doing him much good.<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-five-atheist-in-church.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />Inside the Taylorville reception area there was a small clot of bloon fishers, haggling with a buyer over the price of bloon parts. Taylorville had a sign-in protocol for visitors, and we complied. The fellow talking to the fishermen waved us through.<br /><br />"Down this corridor, then right," Anne told us. "That takes you to Andrew's office. He's the Mayor. Like I said, he's expecting you."<br /><br />We thanked Anne and made our way toward the Mayor's office. Every bloon cluster has its own physical rhythm, the swing and sway as it adjusts to minor changes in the wind and air. Most of the time you don't notice it; it's all part of the atmosphere, like the smells and sounds. Taylorville felt a little funny to me, at least in its centerpiece, probably because I wasn't used to clusters of that particular size and shape. It made me uneasy.<br /><br />"They seem to be friendly folks," Lewis said, and I agreed with him. They did seem friendly.<br /><br />Andrew Ogren was the Mayor of Taylorville. I put him at 170 centimeters and maybe 85 kilograms, a beefy man beginning to go to fat. Square-jawed, red hair, florid complexion, he talked and acted like a man who paid attention to getting elected. Most clusters of any duration are bound together well enough so that election politics gets subsumed in the sort of back room dealing that gives a less voluble appearance. Mr. Ogren was quick to tell us the town's history.<br /><br />"We're a democracy, Mr. Honlin, Mr. Lewis. Founded on the principles of Athenian democracy. I'm the elected Mayor, but big decisions go down by way of town meeting. Sometimes it can be tough to get a consensus, but that's my job."<br /><br />Ogren spoke in a voice that always seemed about one note away from turning into a speech. It's not a style that I'm comfortable with, but I can fake polite attention as well as I can fake anything. I was a real cop for a long time.<br /><br />"About thirty years ago, we had us a real squabble," Ogren continued. "I was just a kid, but it bruised feelings in a way that took years to heal. I never was too clear on how or why it happened, but there was an election that some folks didn't like, and a section of the town voted to secede. It might have had something to do with Walt Taylor losing the election; the Taylors founded the town, and Walt was the last remaining Taylor, so I guess he figured that he should be Mayor until he decided to retire, which other folks felt was taking 'way to long. So Walt and his supporters just up and moved out. They didn't go far, you understand. A trading community depends on being in pretty much the same place from day to day, so the fishermen can find you again. And they didn't want to go too far away from Sky City, since that's where we sell most of our stuff.<br /><br />"So Walt set up shop maybe a kilometer away from the main Taylorville cluster. For a little while, him and those who joined him tried to call themselves 'Taylorville' but we wouldn't let them get away with it. It was kind of funny, I guess, like two brothers in a snit who won't talk to each other except to pass messages back and forth. Anyway, that went on for a few years, then Walt got sick and died. Naturally everybody was too proud to just call the whole thing off and reunite, so what happened was that a tether line was stretched between the two clusters so we could share power and such like. And it turned out that the central line made a good docking hitch, so it got reinforced, and a walkway was built. Good thing, too, because after the first megastorm hit the pole, the bloons grew like crazy for a while, from all the new dust that was stirred up, and the fisher traffic really picked up."<br /><br />Maybe I was beginning to look impatient, or maybe Ogren just knew when to wind up a speech. In any event, he shook his head and leaned forward. "So what can I help you boys with?" he asked.<br /><br />I tried to smile at him. "We called earlier about Molly Laird, I believe," I said to him.<br /><br />He nodded. "Yes, we only got word of her a few days ago. A tragic case."<br /><br />"Does she have any family who still live here in Taylorville?" I asked.<br /><br />"No," he said. "Her mother, that would be Elizabeth Laird, she died about a year ago. Both of Betty's parents, Molly's grandparents are long dead. Betty left home many years ago after they died, in fact. She was a wild one. Went off and had Lord knows what kind of adventures, then came back with a ten year old daughter in tow. They were welcome, of course, but Betty always kept quiet about what she'd done while she was away. She never said who the father was, for instance."<br /><br />"How did Elizabeth's parents die?"<br /><br />"I'm not sure on the details," Ogren replied. "I'm good at remembering people, but that was quite a while ago. I think her father died from a bad heart, and her mother died pretty soon thereafter. Just sort of wasted away, as I recall. Lost the will to live, whatever. Might have even taken to drugs or drink. We had a few problems with Betty that way, over the years."<br /><br />"How so?" I asked.<br /><br />"We don't care much for drugs or drunkenness here in Taylorville, Mr. Honlin," Ogren said. "That's been made pretty clear by a lot of voters over the years. We're not completely dry, but we'll confiscate and destroy some drugs, and public intoxication earns you a spell in detention."<br /><br />I nodded. "I see," I told him. I pulled out a photograph of Robert Grayling. "Have you ever seen this man?" I asked.<br /><br />Ogren made a show of studying the photo, but it was obvious that he'd seen Grayling before. "Yes, I believe I have," he said. "Don't recall his name, though. He might have visited Betty a few times."<br /><br />I let the matter drop. I'd get more out of friends and associates. "Who can I ask for information about Betty and Molly? Employers, close friends, that sort of thing?"<br /><br />"Well, Betty worked for Josie Bush, who runs our cleaning services. You'd best start with her. As for Molly, the real people to check with are the Andersons. Molly was engaged to Billy Anderson, but they broke it off just before Molly left. Molly's mother died right around that time, too. I imagine it was all pretty stressful and confusing for such a young woman."<br /><br />"As opposed to the calm and collected way that we older people accept death and heartbreak?" I asked.<br /><br />"Hmm," Ogren said. "You may have a point." He sighed. "I'm just upset at Molly's death, Mr. Honlin," he said. "These are my people and I care for them. 'Every man's death diminishes me,' okay, sure, but when my people die, I'm diminished a whole lot more."<br /><br />I smiled, and it felt real this time. "I know, Mr. Ogren," I said. "I apologize for giving you a hard time. If your secretary could give us directions to..." I looked at Lewis, who was taking notes.<br /><br />"Josie Bush and the Anderson family," Lewis said.<br /><br />"Right," I said. "If you or your secretary could give us directions, I'd appreciate it."<br /><br />"No problem," Ogren said. "If you need anything else, my door is open."<br /><br />I smiled again. "Thanks," I told him. "That's a big help."<br /><br />_____________________________<br /><br /><br />Josie Bush was a small woman who was in her fifties, at least, maybe older, and had the stern face of a school librarian. Her hair was gray, but she must have used a rinse to give in a reddish tinge that came out mildly pink. I expect that there was no one around her who dared tell her that she'd look better in her natural color. The same was probably true of her use of makeup, where she was just on the wrong side of overdoing it.<br /><br />She had an office quite near to Ogren's, and it had only taken us a couple of minutes to walk over there, but we had to wait a while longer while she finished meeting with one of her employees. After we were ushered into her office, I briefly explained the purpose of our visit.<br /><br />"I don't think you'll get much from the people here, Mr. Honlin," she told me. "We're mostly a small town, close-knit and close-mouthed. Betty Laird didn't endear herself to the community by running away after her parents died, and she was barely readmitted when she showed up again with a child in tow. A child of unknown parentage, I might add. That didn't sit too well with the folks here."<br /><br />Her face softened a little. "I liked Betty, though" she said. "She'd gotten out of it, at least for a while, and she never seemed to regret it."<br /><br />"Do you know where she was during her time away, or what she was doing?" I asked.<br /><br />"I daresay that she was a prostitute," Josie said. "At least those were the accusations that were made at the meeting to decide whether or not to readmit her, and she never denied them. In the end, it all came down to whether or not we could find a job for her here. I was the only one who offered to take her on, so she came to work for me."<br /><br />"Very open minded," I said.<br /><br />She snorted in disgust. "Don't patronize me," she snapped. "I get no points for being a little less close minded than the folks around here. I run the cleaning service, the lowest jobs in town. I'm always short handed. I needed the help, and Betty turned out to be a good worker. Molly, too, for that matter. I just wish she hadn't gotten involved with William Anderson."<br /><br />"That's Billy Anderson, the boy that she was engaged to?" I asked.<br /><br />"Hah!" she said. "Engaged? Maybe for a day or two, before his mother found out. An Anderson marrying a cleaning woman? Little Billy must have been feeling pretty rebellious that day. Or maybe he just wanted to get in her pants.<br /><br />"Molly was a quiet girl, not much like her mother at all," Josie said. "When her mother died she probably slipped her tracks for a little while, and got involved with Billy. He told her the usual lies, and she believed them. Then, when she learned the truth, the whole thing fell apart. The 'engagement' was called off, and the whole thing collapsed into whispers and innuendo. Molly stuck it out for a couple of weeks, then she left."<br /><br />"Any idea of where she went?" I asked.<br /><br />"Not really," she said. "Somewhere near the City, I think. She only called a couple of times after she left, just to let me know she was okay."<br /><br />Josie looked at me and said, "I'm a hard woman, Mr. Honlin, with little in the way of maternal instincts, as nearly as I can tell. But I liked Molly, and I'm very sorry that she is dead. It pleased me when Molly called to let me know that she was all right, and it pains me to think of her dead from some ruffian's knife. I haven't cried for years, but if I were to take it up again, I'd cry for Molly."<br /><br />"I see," I told her. "I understand how you feel, I think. I only met her once, but I can see how she might have had that effect."<br /><br />I thought for a moment. "Can you narrow the times when she called down to any specific dates?" I asked.<br /><br />She thought for a moment. "Only that she called about three weeks after she'd left here, so that would put it at last December. Then she called maybe a month ago, to ask if anyone had been looking for her. No one had, and I thought it an odd question."<br /><br />"Thanks," I told her. "That's a big help." I showed her Grayling's photograph. "Have you ever seen this man?" I asked.<br /><br />She examined it. "Graybob," she said. "That's what Betty called him. He visited a few times. He wouldn't sign in, though, so he stayed out on his bloon and Betty and Molly visited him. He was traveling alone, I think, but I never went to his bloon; I only saw him once. He looked like he had money but it wasn't doing him much good."<br /><br />I nodded. A perceptive woman was Josie Bush. Then Lewis and I said the requisite pleasantries and we left.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-seven-with-dreams-of-much.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-8085995446557576772008-03-19T11:39:00.000-07:002008-03-19T11:42:41.053-07:00Chapter five: The Atheist in Church<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-four-lets-go-for-walk.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />Lewis is a dice man, a Stochastacist, an Everite. The Everites believe that our world is one of an infinite number of universes, which are constantly branching away from ours in a flux of quantum events and alternate realities. The implications of this can be mind numbing, but the Everites take it to mean that people can create universes, or at least control the nature of the universes that are created by human action. They do this by rolling dice or using other random activities to guide their choices. I'm not sure of the exact reasoning behind it.<br /><br />On the other hand, Lewis says that the whole thing might be just a front for running gambling operations. The Everites do own a few dozen floating (literally) casinos.<br /><br />But that's Lewis. He was born and raised a Stochastacist, and he's had some of the same doubts of faith that other religions are prey to. In fact, he was in one of those periods of doubt when I met him. He'd put the whole thing on the line by following a series of dice rolls that told him to leave his old life, and head for Sky City, float or founder, or whatever. And on his way to the City, I'd dropped in on him, owing to a series of events that I'm still not clear on. I'd wound up in a bloon that was falling due to some sabotage, and I'd managed to use one of the steering bodies to glide over to Lewis' drag line. So Lewis' dice mission probably saved my life. It was all so unlikely that it also reaffirmed his faith, and since that time, I've been his personal totem. He's often said that he'll join me in just about anything I ask him to do, without a dice roll before the fact, because there's nothing that the dice can tell him that's more of a chance than following me.<br /><br />I still haven't figured Lewis out, actually.<br /><br />But he said yes to my offer of a short vacation, so the next sunrise found us boarding a sail bloon and pushing off from the hotel cluster. Sunrise is about the brightest that it gets in Darkunder; some direct light edges under the City for a couple of hours in the mornings and at sunset. It's a good time for departures, because there aren't that many bloons up and running then. We made our way to the City's northwestern edge under a combination of power and drag line, then cut our fans and settled in for the slow sail to the cluster where Molly and her mother had lived.<br /><br />After the first hour of setting our wind panels, lifting trefoil and drag line, there wasn't much to do until we reached our destination. The tack was an easy one, giving us a straightedge to where we wanted to go. So mid-morning by the clock found us with our chores completed. Lewis put on some music from one of the public channels, and I leaned back against one of the pod chairs in the bloon and closed my eyes for a rest.<br /><br />"How'd you sleep last night, pardner?" Lewis asked me.<br /><br />"I didn't sleep very much," I admitted. "I was checking some things, packing, you know."<br /><br />"Nightmares again, huh?" Lewis is so guileless that he can get away with things like that.<br /><br />"Some," I said. "Pretty bad ones, as a matter of fact."<br /><br />"Think it has anything to do with the dead girl? Molly?"<br /><br />"Probably," I said. "I don't know why this one should get to me, though. It's not like I haven't seen plenty of stiffs before. Maybe it's just a coincidence."<br /><br />"Seen many stiffs lately?" he asked. "I thought you were the quiet type."<br /><br />"Those are the dangerous ones," I joked. "He always seemed so quiet. How were we to know that he'd go berserk with a plasma drill?"<br /><br />"Plasma drill?"<br /><br />"Miners tool," I answered. "Very dangerous. We had to investigate an accident involving one a few years after I joined the Luna City Police Force. Out away from the city in one of the meteor mines. There was some thought that one of the miners had gone psycho. Turned out to be just an accident, though. Not that the twenty guys it cooked were any the less dead."<br /><br />For some reason, I'll tell Lewis things that I won't tell other people. That was the first time I'd thought about the plasma drill incident in years. When Lewis saved my life, maybe he became my father confessor or something. That would be only fair, given my religious importance to him. Of course, that would imply that I was in need of confession. And absolution.<br /><br />Lewis hummed along with the Vivaldi for a while, not following up on his questions. He always seems to know when to stop.<br /><br />"Tell me something," I asked him at last. It occurred to me that my ongoing lack of sleep had produced something very much like intoxication. "Have I looked particularly threatening the past few days? Even more than usual, I mean." I smiled to show that I understood that I'm not Mr. Warm and Fuzzy even at my most mellow.<br /><br />"Well, you can be a pretty scary guy just ordering a sandwich," he said. "But now that you mention it, I'd have to say that it's been pretty obvious that something has been eating you, and whatever it is, it's got pretty sharp teeth."<br /><br />"Sensei Mack talked said that I was holding a wild animal that was about ready to slip the leash." I told Lewis of Mack's request.<br /><br />"That sounds like a case of 'atheist in church,'" Lewis said when I was finished.<br /><br />"Atheist in church?" I asked. "More wise sayings from the Founder?" Lewis was not above quoting from the writings of the Founder of Stochasticism, who is never referred to by name, mainly because he gave so many names, all of them false. Quite a Trickster was the Founder.<br /><br />"The very same," Lewis said. "The Founder had a lot of things to say about religion and what place it has in society. 'The Atheist in Church' is one of his best essays. He says, look, there are a whole slew of reasons for having churches. They're a form of social organization, you meet people, get moral instruction helpful for living in society. They can be a store of wealth, a means of education, all that stuff. So even an atheist might wish to join a church, regardless of what his opinion of the theology might be.<br /><br />"But an atheist makes the theists nervous. He can abide by all the same rules, profess the same moral code, and still the regular churchmen don't like his presence. He's not committed to the group, you see. He doesn't say the password. A secret password can't be something that you can figure out by just being reasonable, it has to be something arbitrary. So religions make their believers do things that just don't make sense. That's what really defines the group, the things they do that don't make sense."<br /><br />"So what does that have to do with me?" I asked him.<br /><br />"It's a matter of freedom," he said. "We like to think that freedom is a good thing, but joining society means giving up some freedoms. And society doesn't want it to be a conditional thing. It's not supposed to be a matter of choice. We much prefer to have people who <span style="font-style: italic;">can't</span> rather than <span style="font-style: italic;">won't</span> transgress. Which is the better husband, the man who couldn't beat his wife no matter how he feels, or the man who simply refrains?"<br /><br />I opened my eyes to see how closely he was watching me when he said that. But he was staring out a view panel at the clouds. "I thought that the whole point of it was moral choices," I said. "You talk as if not having a choice is better."<br /><br />"'Lead us not into temptation,'" he quoted. "Because we might succumb." He looked over at me and grinned. In my current exhausted state it looked a little like a grimace.<br /><br />"There are a lot of things in life that we don't know about until they happen to us. It's a lot of potential rather than actual freedom. And the potential may be bogus. We might not be able to do it when push comes to shove. That's part of what dice living is about. To test the limits. But if you do it from the dice, the gods might not get so angry at the freedom. That's a clear thread in most mythology. The gods get very angry when confronted by a free man."<br /><br />"So do you think that it's just the gods being angry with me?" I asked. I smiled again to show that I thought it was a joke.<br /><br />His face got a bit more serious though. "That's all metaphor," he said. "'A man's reach must exceed his grasp, else what's a <span style="font-style: italic;">meta </span>for?' The gods are stand-ins for human fate in human society. Stick your head up too far and the body politic will try to shear it off. You make people nervous, pardner. They don't know what motivates you. They don't know what you're capable of, but they're pretty sure you're capable of more than they want to know. If there's the choice of having dinner with someone who hated me and wished me dead -- but couldn't do me harm no matter what -- versus someone who liked me, but could kill me without a thought if he so chose, well, most people would go for the first guy, not the second."<br /><br />I sat up and looked at him carefully, but he was back to watching the cloud patterns. I looked out at them, but I knew that he saw things in them that I'd never see. And vice versa.<br /><br />"What about you?" I asked. "You said 'most people,' but you don't say about yourself."<br /><br />He looked at me and grinned. "Oh, I'd probably go with the first guy also; at least I'd load the dice that way." He paused for a moment. That's the secret of the punchline: timing.<br /><br />"Present company excepted, of course," he said.<br /><br /><br /><br />_______________________________<br /><br />Sometime on the trip, and much to my surprise, I drifted off into a blessed, dreamless sleep. Hours later, Lewis woke me by turning up the volume on the music and switching it on and off. I expect he didn't want to be too close to me when I awoke.<br /><br />"Hey, pardner," he called to me as I was blinking my eyes to clear them of sleep. "We're getting near to where we're going. Would you care to tell me about this place, or should I look upon the whole thing as a learning experience?"<br /><br />"Uh, sure," I said as I sat up. Usually I come awake quickly, in full awareness of my surroundings. I wondered if I was coming down with a cold or something.<br /><br />I pulled up the screen on my rented comm unit and refreshed my memory of what I'd gleaned from the main cluster database in the City.<br /><br />"It's a light craft and trading cluster, named Taylorville for the founding family." I said. "It took up a position relative to Sky City about fifty years ago. Main export is treated and sewn bloonskin -- and water, of course. Hit a bit of a snag when the water price dropped after Luna captured Comet Alpha, but recovered well enough since then. Population is about fifteen hundred, so it's a sizable cluster. Grows most of its own food. That's all we have in the database, unless I go into the archives."<br /><br />"So why are we going there?" he asked me. "From what you say, this Molly Laird girl, she left there almost a year ago."<br /><br />"Yeah, but she was raised there, and her mother was born there. So her people may be here. If she has relatives, they're probably here. Or someone may know where she went. I wanted to get a feel for her background."<br /><br />He nodded. "Okay, old son," he said. "We'll find out who she was. Seems only fair, actually."<br /><br />"Yeah," I repeated. "Only fair."<br /><br />________________________________<br /><br />Taylorville was a big cluster, with several layers. The top layer was farm, of course, but enough light seeps through a single bloon layer to keep the second layer viable. So the second layer of Taylorville was for living and working space. The cluster was oddly shaped, more like a flattened dumbbell than circular. I wondered why it looked like it did. The middle area that connected the two roundish outer clusters was where we docked.<br /><br />There were a lot of docking bays. Taylorville did a lot of trading with bloon fishermen, as all farm and craft clusters must, so they had plenty of room for a bloon to park. Lewis was pilot as we made our approach, and he slicked it in so smoothly that we didn't have to use fans, not even at the last moment when we touched the dock grabbers. The velk grabbed our nose and we tossed our line, which was picked up by a dock attendant and wrapped around an anchor hitch.<br /><br />"Yo!" Lewis called out to the attendant. "We're at Taylorville, right?"<br /><br />"You bet!" came the reply, somewhat muffled through the bubble mask our greeter wore. I saw that it was a teenaged girl, small and dark, with the sort of energy that brims out of a body at that age. "You traders?"<br /><br />"Naw," said Lewis. "We're from Sky City. We've got some talk business with your head guy."<br /><br />"That'd be Andrew," she said as she handed us the counterweights to balance our bloon when we stepped off. "He told us to expect you. You made good time."<br /><br />"Hey, any time's good when there's a pretty girl at the end of it," Lewis said. The girl giggled in response.<br /><br />"I'm Anne," she said. She shook Lewis' hand then helped him step down onto the dock.<br /><br />"This here is Ed," Lewis told her as I followed him down. Anne took my hand in greeting. "Don't let his looks fool you," Lewis told her. "Stands to reason that nobody can be both that mean and that ugly." Anne giggled again.<br /><br />"I'm pleased to meet you, Anne," I told her.<br /><br />"Howdy, Ed," she replied. "Lewis tells me good things about you."<br /><br />"Lewis is a liar," I told her. And she giggled yet again.James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-10711504643378246182008-03-10T13:29:00.000-07:002008-03-19T11:43:54.062-07:00Chapter four: "Let's go for a walk."<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-three-you-have-begun-to.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />The first thing Calvin said to me the next morning was, "Well, you look like hell."<br /><br />I'd returned to Sky City immediately after leaving Sensei Mack's. It had been a tossup whether I entered legally or illegally. In fact, I'd flipped a coin, a habit I'd picked up from Lewis. I was relieved when it came up heads, which meant that I hadn't really been ready for one of my late night prowls in the lowest sections of the City. Apparently I wasn't in the mood to hurt anyone that night, despite everything.<br /><br />So I'd come in through one of the checkpoints and strolled the corridors near Central Police Headquarters, waiting for clock time to pass by, waiting for Calvin's shift to begin.<br /><br />"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I told him. "Maybe I can use you for a reference."<br /><br />"So what's up?" he asked me. "Why are you here at this ungodly hour?" It was 0700 by the twenty-four hour clock, 7900 by Venus mean time. Daylight was still a clock cycle away.<br /><br />"You're here early, yourself," I told him.<br /><br />"I need to get some paperwork out of the way," he said.<br /><br />"Then I can add to it," I told him. "Get out your forms; I'll sign in blood." He gave me a strange look.<br /><br />"I know when I'm licked," I said. "I need to follow up on Molly Laird. It's necessary."<br /><br />He walked around to his desk and sat down. There were two desks in the office and he shared his with one other homicide detective. There was seldom more than a single detective in the office at the same time, since they had four part time guys to handle a round-the-clock duty. At a rate of only one murder a week for all of Sky City, they could afford the slack.<br /><br />Calvin looked up at the ceiling and made a show of thinking things through. At length he said, "The best way to go about it would be to sign you on as a private consultant to trace Molly's relatives for the purpose of disposing of the estate. That has to be done anyway. Then, if you uncover anything, we can make modifications to the case file. The estate disposition is the only part of the case that is still open, incidentally, though that could change with additional information."<br /><br />"What about her link to Grayling?" I asked him.<br /><br />"I haven't checked yet," he said. He bounced his inflatable chair around a bit to better get at his comm terminal. He flipped up the screen and it lit up to illuminate his face with gray light. He tapped a few keys and waited for the access. After a few moments, he said, "Okay, this is just a preliminary, but it looks like you were probably right. Blood type and the first few sequences match. From the first tests, there's a ninety-nine percent likelihood that Molly Laird was Grayling's daughter. That's enough to make the full sequencing mandatory."<br /><br />He looked over at me. "Let's go for a walk," he told me.<br /><br />We made our way down to the PD ready room, through the air curtain, and out into the main corridor. Calvin didn't say anything for a while. We were well out of sight of Police Headquarters when he spoke.<br /><br />"About six months ago," he began, "We had a couple of Lunars come through here. A man and a woman. Very heavy credentials. They came through Skyhook Authority and their papers said that they were on detachment from the Guard to the Special Cabinet to the Lunar Council. We were instructed to give them every courtesy and all the help we could muster.<br /><br />"They didn't want much, though. They asked some questions, got a full access data terminal, went at it for a couple of days, then disappeared. They're still on Venus, I think, but I have no idea where."<br /><br />He looked at me sideways. "Some of their questions were about you," he said. "I'm under orders not to tell you about it, though."<br /><br />"So why are you telling me about it?" I asked him.<br /><br />He ignored my question. "The man's name was Harmon Reed, the woman was Juliet Carlyle. Those names mean anything to you?" I shook my head.<br /><br />He continued. "She was taller than I am, and he was quite a bit taller still. About your height, in fact. Built a lot like you, too. In fact, he reminded me of you quite a number of ways."<br /><br />I shrugged, trying not to give anything away. Usually I don't have to try, but this was different. "They're both probably from one of the police families," I said. This produced a quizzical look from Calvin.<br /><br />"I was fourth generation police," I told him. "There are a lot of families like mine. It's a tradition of the high born, a higher occupation for the well-to-do. Our families eat better, get better medical care, all of it. It doesn't pay to mistreat your police force, and the Luna police families aren't mistreated."<br /><br />He nodded. "Anyway, they were very interested in the fact that you'd done work for us on the Mason case. They asked me if I could get you to work for us again. I told them that I doubted it, not unless you got personally interested in something. They let the matter drop, but ever since then, I've been getting subtle pressure from on high. Somebody important wants you involved in something, maybe anything. I don't think it has anything to do with this matter of Molly Laird, but they may figure that, once you're involved with us again, they can drag you in deeper."<br /><br />That seemed Byzantine enough to be true. I'd have to think about the implications sometime when I was more centered. "Any idea of what Reed and Carlyle were after?" I asked him.<br /><br />"Not really," he said. "They did ask a lot of questions about the shadow clusters, though. And they were tapping the medical records mostly, not the crime stats."<br /><br />I shook my head. Too much to think about. "So why are you telling me this?" I asked again.<br /><br />It was his turn to shrug. "Maybe I figure that you'll find out about it sometime, and I'd rather not hold out on you," he told me. He grinned. "I don't think I want you mad at me," he said. "Not even momentarily."<br /><br />"Am I doing that badly at hiding it?" I asked him.<br /><br />"Worse," he told me. "Much worse."<br /><br />___________________________<br /><br /><br />We went back to Calvin's office and filled out a few forms, and when we were done, I had a Police access card, a small expense account, and a stipend number for consultant billing. It made me marginally more official than a private citizen. The access card, plus threat and bluster, would open a few doors that might otherwise remain closed. More important, I could now tap into the normal police data banks through any protected comm unit.<br /><br />I said goodbye to Calvin, left PD Headquarters by the main gate and motored back to my hotel. Joey was back at his post when I returned, and his usual smile had a bit of a worried look to it when he saw me. "Have a rough night, Mr. Honlin?" he asked me.<br /><br />"It wasn't too bad, Joey," I told him. "It just lasted a lot longer than I expected." That softened his smile a bit, and I tipped him and went inside.<br /><br />Madame Fumio was in the lounge, having breakfast with her most recent play boy, a long haired blonde charmer named Bart. This one was a musician, of sorts, and might manage to stay around after Fumio got tired of his bedroom manners. Madame Fumio has a fondness for musicians.<br /><br />Fumio saw me from across the room and waved me over. "Leo told me you went out late last night," she said. "Anything I should know about? Or anything I shouldn't know about?" She motioned me to join them at their table. Bart forced a smile at me, too. What was it about me this morning that made people think they'd better smile?<br /><br />I sat down and tried to look nonchalant. "It's nothing much," I told her. "Somebody died and I've taken a short job with the City to track down relatives or other heirs of the deceased."<br /><br />She gave me a look that asked several questions and made several statements. "It's not like the last time," I told her. "It was a murder, yes, but they already know who did it. He's dead, in fact. The dead girl killed him before she died." I gave Fumio a brief account of the murder. I didn't mention that Molly was Grayling's illegitimate daughter.<br /><br />When she was done, she shook her head. "So you're looking for someone to inherit a gun?" Leave it to Madame Fumio to read the bottom line.<br /><br />"That's about the size of it, yes. Mostly it's an excuse to get out away from the City, for a while. In fact, I was going to ask your permission to ask Lewis to go along with me. And to rent a bloon, no use wasting a perfectly good expense account. The girl, Molly, who died, is originally from a cluster about a hundred kilometers north of here. The mother's dead, but I thought I might be able to get some leads where Molly and her mother used to live."<br /><br />"Couldn't that be done by comm?" she asked me.<br /><br />I shrugged. "Most of the time, that's the way it would be done. This isn't a high priority job, finding heirs, especially away from the City. But there's no rule against going in person, and I need a break, I think."<br /><br />"You certainly look like it," she said.<br /><br />I smiled back at her. "You, on the other hand, look as beautiful as ever, Fumio dear." She blew a raspberry and Bart suppressed a real smile. I got up and went over to the bar to talk to Lewis.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-five-atheist-in-church.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-85890413823040586642008-03-02T17:05:00.000-08:002008-03-10T13:32:45.065-07:00Chapter three: "You have begun to frighten me."<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/02/chapter-two-real-thingits-from-earth.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />We went down to the Trauma Center morgue where I identified Molly Laird's body. It was a gutting wound, and I was surprised that they'd even tried to resuscitate her. Her age probably had something to do with it. Medicals really hate to lose someone that young.<br /><br />"It was apparently a robbery attempt," Calvin told me. "She was walking down Corridor 23 just off of 325th on level G. The guy threatened her with a knife and she pulled the gun from her bag and shot him. Unfortunately for her, he didn't die immediately. He had just enough time for the kill, apparently; he was pronounced DOA when he got here. The noise of the shot brought a couple of people to the scene. The rest you know."<br /><br />I stared at Molly Laird's face, trying to make out some answers in her features. As if the dead could talk. Maybe they can, though. Sometimes.<br /><br />"What's her background?" I asked Calvin.<br /><br />"I just have a few preliminaries," he told me. "We don't have an address for her. Her mother lived in a cluster maybe a hundred kilometers to the north. Mother's dead though, and her comm number was canceled eleven months ago. Molly entered the City several of times in the past few weeks. We don't know why, or where she went."<br /><br />"She was at Robert Grayling's funeral," I told him.<br /><br />That got his attention. "Oh, yeah?" Calvin and I had met because of a homicide case involving Grayling. On that occasion, I'd wound up working as a special consultant to the police. That was when I'd told Grayling to shut down his illegal activities, and that was when Grayling's son and so many others had died. That case had started with a girl's dead body.<br /><br />Also. That case had started with a girl's dead body, also.<br /><br />"What do you think she was doing at Grayling's send off," Calvin asked me.<br /><br />"I think she was saying good-bye to her father," I told him.<br /><br />"Come again?"<br /><br />"Look at her face," I told him.<br /><br />Calvin stared at Molly Laird's face for quite a while. Then he looked at me. "You might be right," he said. "Can we check?"<br /><br />"Grayling was born on Luna," I told him. "He has a DNA sequencing on file there, at least. Probably one nearer to hand."<br /><br />"Okay," he told me. "Let's get a typing done for Miss Laird."<br /><br />"It might be a good idea to keep this under wraps," I told him.<br /><br />"How so?" he asked, but I could see the wheels turn and most of it came to him before I spoke. But I told him anyway.<br /><br />"If Molly Laird were Grayling's illegitimate daughter, then she might have some inheritance rights under Venus Law. She wouldn't under Lunar Law, though, so the whole thing could be messy. Maybe somebody didn't like the idea of that big a mess."<br /><br />Calvin looked at me and got a calculating look in his eyes. "You say she called you and asked for your help?" I nodded.<br /><br />"I'm not sure if I can keep a case open when we have the obvious perpetrator on that table over there," he told me. "I might be able to spring for another consultant's ticket, though."<br /><br />Calvin had asked me about doing more work for the Sky City cops maybe five times in the eighteen months since we worked together on the Sheila Mason case. I'd turned him down every time. Recently he'd hinted that there was a big one going down somewhere, maybe hoping to entice my curiosity. That hadn't worked either. Now we had another dead girl; maybe he thought I had a weakness.<br /><br />I shook my head. "I'm not that curious," I told him. "Where's the guy who killed her?" I asked him.<br /><br />He pointed.<br /><br />I walked over to another table and pulled back the sheet. He was dead all right. Two holes in his chest and two somewhat larger holes in his back. Exit wounds. Good thing that bloons are self-patching, the bullets probably went through the nearest wall and wound up on the surface of Venus, fifty-five kilometers below.<br /><br />"In the movies, they die from wounds like this," I said to no one in particular.<br /><br />"He died too," Calvin said. "He just didn't die fast enough for poor Molly."<br /><br />I ignored the "poor Molly" remark. Calvin isn't very good at manipulating people.<br /><br />The corpse on the table had been an ugly bastard when he was alive, and death had only worsened his condition. Close cropped blond hair, gray eyes. He'd been large, though not as big as me. He sported a couple of visible tattoos, not good enough to be sunsailor jobs and besides, they didn't cover enough to give any ultraviolet protection. His hands were mostly smooth, except for some characteristic callouses of the sort you get from holding a knife, rather than honest labor. He was some sort of muscle, a guy who actually spent time practicing his knife work.<br /><br />"So who is this guy?" I asked Calvin.<br /><br />"Nobody much," he told me. "Name was Costello, first name Bertrand. Not a City dweller, so our records don't show much. Comes from one of the free floating clusters 'way up north. Occupation listed as 'bouncer.'" He shrugged. "A tough guy by the look of him. Meant to scare the patrons of some dive into behaving themselves. Something like that. He came here three months ago, lived in Darkunder but came to the City two or three times a week. He fits the description of several robberies we've had during that time, but so do a lot of guys. For that matter, he fits the description of several robberies we had before he came to the City."<br /><br />Great, I thought to myself. A professional tough guy takes up a hobby. Why does that scenario seem like a paint job? I covered up the body again, and went back over to where Calvin was still staring down at Molly's corpse.<br /><br />"Any idea of why she wanted your help?" he asked me. I'd brought along a copy of my comm message from her and I'd given it to him on our way down to the morgue.<br /><br />"Not really," I said. "To help her claim her inheritance, maybe. Too late now." Calvin nodded.<br /><br />I thought the matter over for a few seconds and another thought came to me. "What happens to the gun?" I asked him. "If it's really an Earth antique, it must be worth a bundle."<br /><br />He had to think about that one for a bit. "For now, nothing much," he said at last. "The case has a loose end, because Molly might be the daughter of somebody important, so I can probably keep it open for another few days while we run the DNA tests and maybe check some background on the weapon. It's probably a registered antique, but there's no requirement that you have to change the ownership listing when the things are sold."<br /><br />"And then?"<br /><br />"Then we do a routine search for heirs, and if we find any, the gun belongs to them. If not, then it becomes City property, and goes to auction. That takes a while. Probably a couple of years, even."<br /><br />"What about Grayling's family?" I asked him. "Would they qualify as heirs? If she's his daughter, I mean."<br /><br />"I have no idea," he said. "Inheritance laws are weird."<br /><br />I nodded. "I think it's time for me to leave," I said. Calvin agreed with me and pulled the sheet back over Molly's face.<br /><br />"Sure I can't change your mind about consulting on this?" he asked me.<br /><br />I chewed my lip, fighting down an urge to snarl at him, to tell him to go to hell and take everything else with him. But I knew what the anger meant.<br /><br />"Just let me know what the DNA test shows," I told him. He had the good grace not to look too obviously pleased.<br /><br />______________________________<br /><br />There are any number of exercise clubs in Sky City. Most of the residents are first or second generation immigrants from Luna and special exercise is both a passion and a necessity for Luna dwellers. Ingrained habits die slowly, so most Lunar transplants stick to a workout schedule. I found a gym near to the Trauma Center, paid the fee, and went inside. The place was cheap; it smelled of sweat and had a faint film of charcoal dust over everything, detritus that comes from using charcoal for the weights, charcoal being the most plentiful commodity on Venus. Living bloons use it for ballast, and humans tend to used it for anything requiring bulk. It makes for outsized weights though; a one hundred kilo barbell is oversized enough to look like something that Samson might lift. But it gets the job done.<br /><br />I went at it for several hours, trying to sweat out the rage that threatened to break free from my grip and drag me into things that I didn't want to do. I tried to pinpoint the source of my anger, but it just wouldn't come. A dead girl who had asked for my help? The feeling that Calvin knew something that he wasn't telling me? Memories of Robert Grayling and all the events surrounding my dealings with him?<br /><br />Or was it just me, and the past I carried in a locked box, a box marked "Do Not Open" with vicious animals swarming all around it?<br /><br />After a while I gave it up and went out for dinner at some bar whose name I don't remember. The beer I had with my soy sandwich was bitter and did nothing to improve my mood. So I went back to my hotel. I avoided everyone I knew when I got there, got a book from the lounge, and went to my room to try to read by chembulb light until it was time to go to sleep.<br /><br />The winds of the upper air wouldn't move Sky City and the Darkunder clusters around into the light for another thirty hours or more. It was true night outside, and late night by the clock. I aspire to be a man of regular habits; I try to sleep at night.<br /><br />But night is when the horrors come.<br /><br />I do not dream the same dream over and over, nothing so trivial as that. The nightmare symphony comes to me as varied as the patterns seen in clouds, as manifold as patterns lurking in pools of hot, congealing blood.<br /><br />During the dark theater, the screams of those who are now long dead are my personal Greek chorus. The ghosts demand payment, retribution, but I never know of whom they make their demands. My own face melts in my dreams. I look into mirrors and see a stranger's visage, more alien to me than the sound of my own recorded voice. Friends look at me and fall away in fear. Lovers touch me with caresses that leave open wounds, yet each rip of flesh gives pleasure more than pain. I hear the pleas of those who are about to die. Morituri te salutem, Caesar. Then fall, Brutus. I yam what I yam, says the Sailor.<br /><br />I awoke drenched in sweat, my body rigid as a board. I hadn't had one this bad in many months. I'd hoped that I'd been given dispensation; it turned out to be only a respite. I lay awake in the dark long enough to know that I'd never get back to sleep that night.<br /><br />I got up, left my room, and made my way down to the lobby, where only the night clerk nodded at me as I passed, from recognition or drowsiness I couldn't say. Even Joey was off his post at that time of night. I made a curt gesture to Leo, the late night bloon attendant and he waved me toward one of the parked bloons. I climbed inside and headed for Sensei Mack's.<br /><br />His real name was McElroy, but everybody called him Sensei Mack. He teaches a form of aikido. I've heard some of his students claim it to be the original form, but then, I've heard other students of other senseis claim the same thing, and every style is different. But Sensei Mack has a way of practice and teaching that I find attractive. He never talks on the practice mat itself, and allows no talking from his students. To be one of Mack's students is to immerse oneself in pure movement.<br /><br />His dojo is open to his advanced students at all times, for practice or for meditation. Sensei Mack was not awake at that hour, and the dojo was deserted, lit only by a few everlite strips around its edges. I bowed to the shrine and stepped onto the mat, then sat down into meditation posture. "Before one does something, one must learn to do nothing." I tried to do nothing for quite a long time.<br /><br />Eventually my muscles began to unknot somewhat and I stood and walked over to the shrine, beneath which was a rack with practice weapons, wooden swords, and the meter and a half long wooden sticks called jo. I took down a jo and began to do a kata.<br /><br />I was at it for a long time, and I didn't notice when Sensei Mack came into the room -- that's one of his gifts, the magical appearing act -- so I don't know how long he watched me at my practice. Eventually he came over and stepped out onto the practice mat and I caught his motion out of the corner of my eye. He walked over to the weapons rack and took another jo and walked over to where I stood.<br /><br />Without word or warning he raised his jo and brought it down in a savage strike at my head. I moved slightly to get a better foot stance and blocked his strike with my own jo, letting the force of his blow drive my staff backwards in a curving arc that passed my left shoulder then continued to curve around into a strike directed back at him. He blocked my strike in a move that was a repetition of what I had just done, and we began a pattern of block-and-strike that became steadily more rapid and forceful. Soon the air filled with the sound of wood meeting wood, a ratatatat that recalled nature videos of woodpeckers in an Earthly forest.<br /><br />It went on for a long time. For me, the slowdown had begun, the sense I often get during practice or times of real danger when everything becomes dreamlike and the gravity of Venus seems no more potent than that of the Moon I had left behind.<br /><br />It felt good. Which was why the end of it was unexpected.<br /><br />"Enough!" Sensei Mack blurted at me. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak on the mat. It shocked me a little, I think.<br /><br />We returned our sticks to the weapons rack and bowed off the mat. Mack looked at me as if trying to make up his mind about something.<br /><br />Eventually he said, "Do not take this too badly, but I think it might be better if you refrained from coming here to practice for a while."<br /><br />I didn't know what to think of that, so I asked, "How exactly can I take that well? Why do you ask this of me?"<br /><br />He hesitated again. Then he asked, "How old are you, Ed?"<br /><br />"Forty-one," I told him. He nodded.<br /><br />"Men slow down as they age," he told me. "Even those who have taken the age retarding drugs. But your reflexes are still maybe ten or twenty percent faster than my next quickest students."<br /><br />I shrugged. "My family on Luna was well-to-do," I told him. "We did receive the drugs."<br /><br />He nodded. "You are also very big. Only Lar and Morton are bigger than you, and they are both a little clumsy. I think that you may be stronger than either of them as well."<br /><br />"I was a policeman," I told him. "Strength and size are at a premium for the Luna police."<br /><br />"I know," he replied. "Forgive me. This is difficult for me. I know something of the training that you underwent on Luna. I even know a little about the other things, the treatments that they give to those destined for the police. But that is not really what troubles me, either."<br /><br />He looked at me and took a deep breath. "You came to me in need of training for the higher gravity of Venus, and you've gotten that. You are big, strong, fast . . . all the physical things, you have. And you learn technique so rapidly that sometimes I think you are just remembering the things I teach.<br /><br />"The other things, the use of ki, the centering, the control of the self, you are also good at them. But there is something inside of you trying to break out. You have much more control than my other students because you need that control, even to walk and talk and live. I've seen glimpses of whatever it is that you have inside you and I don't ever want to look on it straight on."<br /><br />He looked at me and a look of sadness washed over his face. "This is my failing more than it is yours," he said to me. "I'm very sorry. But something is very close to escaping from you and it frightens me. Fear is something that a teacher cannot feel for a student. It is disruptive. It would not be fair to my other students."<br /><br />He held out his hands in a gesture of apology. "I'm sorry," he told me. "I have to send you away for a while. You have begun to frighten me."<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-four-lets-go-for-walk.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-89940335865874564442008-02-23T22:11:00.000-08:002008-03-02T17:12:17.630-08:00Chapter two: The real thing...It's from Earth<a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/02/chapter-one-last-time-i-saw-molly-laird.html">Previous Chapter</a><br /><br />The morning was dark, as it would be for the next forty-eight hours, or thereabouts, while the winds of Venus' upper air carried us around the planet. Of course, where I live is always pretty dark, since we have the enormity of Sky City floating above us, cutting off all but the barest glimmers of light. It's dark under the City, and that's how our motley collection of free-floating bloons got its name: Darkunder, Shadowville, there are more than a few other names for it. Darkunder suited my mood when I came to Venus, and here I've lived ever since.<br /><br />Each morning I get up and wander down to the lobby of Madame Fumio's, glance over the news screens and then I usually have breakfast. The bar doesn't open until clock noon, but the Madame hates wasted space and time, so the kitchen is open at all hours, and the lounge and bar serve as a coffee shop even when no liquor is available. That morning I'd gotten up late, like most people do on the first dark morning of the light night, so there were quite a few people in the lounge. As it gets close to clock noon, the alcoholics have claimed table space, waiting for the moment that their Virgin Mary's get carnal knowledge, and maybe slipping a few drops out of a flask. They do the flask bit cautiously, of course, since no one likes Madame Fumio to yell at them.<br /><br />Some of the newcomers even try to get Lewis to break the rules and give them a setup before the bar opens. Lewis is always polite, and will even take their money, but he still doesn't bring them their booze until noon. Lewis is Madame Fumio's sometimes lover, whenever she is between examples of the rich-voiced play boys that she has a taste for. He is also her full-time friend and employee. The likelihood that Lewis would break the booze dictum is about one in forty seven thousand, that being the probability of the dice combination that he uses to decide that particular question. Lewis is a Stochasticist, one of the Dice people, and you know what that means.<br /><br />I usually use breakfast to decide how to spend the day, whether to do a few sailing runs to bring oxygen to some of the Darkunder bloon clusters, do a bit of freelance trouble shooting, or devote my time to reading, or working out. Some days I'll go down to Sensei Mac's Aikido Dojo and continue my progress in the arts of nonviolent combat. Some days I do things that I don't talk about.<br /><br />That morning, I was about halfway through my tofu and eggs, when Lewis brought a comm unit over to my table. "Somebody calling for you, Ed," he told me as he handed me the comm. "Sky City Trauma Center," he answered to my raised eyebrows.<br /><br />"Hello, Ed Honlin here," I told the unit.<br /><br />"Mr. Honlin?" came the voice from the small tinny speaker. We're not big on amenities here in Shadowville. The comm was voice only, without even a text screen.<br /><br />"You're one up on me, pal," I told him. "At least you are until you tell me your name."<br /><br />"Huh? Oh, ah, it's Reynolds. Arturo Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds, actually. Ah, do you know a woman named Molly Laird?"<br /><br />My skin tightened a bit. Doctors don't usually track you down to tell them that one of their patients is doing fine. "I've met Miss Laird," I told him. "Only once, however, and briefly."<br /><br />"Oh," Reynolds said. "Well, I'm not sure . . . Uh, well actually, Miss Laird has died, and we don't have any next-of-kin listed for her. Her ID bracelet gives her mother as N-O-K, but apparently her mother is dead and we don't have a current address for Miss Laird. The only other thing that we found in her possession was a note with your name and number on it, so I called you."<br /><br />I thought about that for a moment, not liking those thoughts at all.<br /><br />"Uh, Mr. Honlin? Are you still there?"<br /><br />"Yes, I'm still here," I told him. "What do you want me to do?"<br /><br />"Well, uh, we do need someone to identify the body," he said.<br /><br />"I hardly know the woman," I told him. "Surely there is someone else. . ."<br /><br />"Mr. Honlin, I know that this is an imposition, but. . . well, I'm afraid that there is going to be some problems with this anyway. Miss Laird was murdered, so I expect that there will be an investigation, and since your name was found on her. . ."<br /><br />"Oh, Christ," I said. "All right, you've made your point. I'll be there as soon as I can finish breakfast."<br /><br />We clicked off and I put in a quick call to Calvin Lee, one of Sky City's three homicide detectives, and a friend of mine. He wasn't in his office, but his calls get routed, so I let it record, "Calvin, Ed Honlin here. You've got a stiff at SCTC by the name of Laird. She had my name on her when she died, so I'm on my way over there. You might want to check it out."<br /><br />I handed the comm back to Lewis, who had been eavesdropping. I made a face at him. "Shit," I said.<br /><br />"Sounds like it," he replied, then retreated to his post behind the bar. Lewis knows me well enough to know how I'd feel about this and that avoidance was going to be a good strategy for a while.<br /><br />I ate three more bites of my breakfast, just to show myself that my appetite hadn't been destroyed. Then I got tired of lying to myself, so I stood up and left.<br /><br />____________________________________<br /><br /><br />The hotel runs its own cargo and taxi service; Madame Fumio didn't rise from stripper to landlord and hotel owner by passing up opportunities to make a buck. I have my City flight and sail license, and I mostly do air runs, like I said before. But sometimes I'll take straight taxi service, and I've gotten to know the air lanes of Sky City pretty well. And as a valued and trusted employee, I'm allowed to take out the taxi bloons for my own use, at least during the quiet times, provided I pay for fuel. Dark time of Venus tends to make for quiet times, so that day I asked Joey for a spare bloon, and he had several to choose from.<br /><br />Joey is Fumio's nephew, or some similar, close relation, I've never asked specifically. His parents died in a bloon accident that also left Joey permanently fixed with a mental age of a ten year old. But he's a conscientious worker and good with bloons, especially the ones that are still alive. I like Joey a lot.<br /><br />"Here you go, Mr. Honlin," Joey told me as he off-loaded the ballast that corresponded to my weight. "I just checked her out and gave her engines a fresh fill of nitrocarb. Do you need the drag lines?"<br /><br />"No," I told him. "No freesailing for me today. I'm going to the City. Officially." I winked at him through my bubblemask and he grinned. Joey knows about my little surreptitious forays, though he's good about pretending that he doesn't if anyone asks. I can't actually think of many people I trust like I trust Joey, which says something, I guess.<br /><br />I opened the first layer of the bloon airlock and stepped in. Then Joey zipped the bloonskin behind me. Fumio's has an exterior docking bay so the entry has to be done outside, in the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Venus. It would kill any man who breathed it direct, kill him horribly in a only few seconds, so Joey wears a bubblemask pretty much full time, even when he's behind the air curtains. He feels more comfortable in a bubblemask, I think.<br /><br />I entered the taxi bloon proper and fired up the fans. They were a little old; Madame Fumio seldom buys the newest equipment either. But they worked fine, and I backed the squid away from the bloon cluster that was Madame Fumio's hotel, and my home. There are maybe a hundred linked bloons in the cluster, and the topsy look of it crouched in my running lights as I pulled away and headed for the City.<br /><br />The City looms above us always, a faintly glowing mass of connected bloons with shafts of light spilling down from the entry avenues. I aimed the squid for the nearest entry way and put the fans to forward thrust.<br /><br />Passing through a City entry portal from below is always a lot like passing into dawn. During the forty eight hours of Venus light, some of the illumination comes all the way down the kilometer long airshafts from the sunlight overhead. But there isn't really much left of the natural light by then. It's augmented by artificial lights on the avenues of Sky City, though, and that light never dims. There are a couple of ultra-high current cables running down the Skyhook from Anchorage, and they supply the City with enough power for any conceivable needs.<br /><br />Most of the clusters in Darkunder tap into this power as well. Once a week Madame Fumio pays to have a line dropped down from the City to recharge the batteries that run the hotel. Outside of the City's shadow they can use solar cells, but we dwellers in the dark are dependent upon the link to offworld.<br /><br />My destination was the Sky City Trauma Center, which is connected to Sky City General Hospital via pneumotube, just like a dozen or so other specialized clinics. Sky City General is very near to City Center; the Trauma Center is maybe a couple of kilometers further out, just inside the section of the City called The Maze. No need to ask why it's called the Maze, not if you've ever seen it. I'd gotten lost in the Maze more than once, even with a transponder and radio link to traffic control. But that was just after I had gotten my City pilot's license, and I'd made it a point to learn the thing since then. So I zigged and zagged at all the right times and I made it to the Trauma Center in about half an hour.<br /><br />I docked at the nearby public docking area, and entered the City. That involves an ID check and a thumbscan, which is why I don't like to visit the City very much, at least not officially. On Luna there's a checkpoint every hundred meters, it seems; that's one of the reasons why I came to Venus. One of the reasons I'm willing to give, anyway.<br /><br />I checked through the gate and promptly turned the wrong way down the corridor, so I had to retrace my steps to get back to the Trauma Center. I don't like to get lost, and I usually don't. I took it as a sign that something was bothering me, then admitted the obvious. I don't like looking at the bodies of dead girls, and that was what I was about to do.<br /><br />The information desk at the Trauma Center sent me up to the third floor to see Dr. Reynolds. When I got to Reynolds' office, Calvin Lee was already there.<br /><br />"Hi, Ed," Calvin said as I entered the room. "I got your message on the way over here, in fact. Bit of a coincidence, eh?"<br /><br />I scrunched my face a little, and shrugged. "Are there still only three homicide detectives on the force?" I asked him.<br /><br />"We have a fourth part-timer on since a month ago," he said.<br /><br />"Then that makes the coincidence about one in four, doesn't it?" I asked.<br /><br />"Same old Honlin," he told me, and looked at the doctor. Maybe the idea was to put Reynolds at his ease. God knows the sight of me wasn't likely to do it.<br /><br />"So how did she die?" I asked Calvin, who looked over at Reynolds.<br /><br />"A knifing, or so Dr. Reynolds has been telling me."<br /><br />Reynolds nodded. "Yes, Miss Laird died of a single knife wound to the abdomen, slicing up into the diaphragm and puncturing the heart. Someone came on the scene only a few moments later, as nearly as we can tell. The passerby sounded an alarm, and the parameds got there quickly, where they rushed Miss Laird here to attempt a revival. But it was no good; she'd been dead for too long. She died fairly quickly, so she didn't suffer much, if that is any help."<br /><br />"Maybe it is," I told him. "Any leads on who did it?"<br /><br />Reynolds blinked, and Calvin interjected, "We know who did it," he told me. "In fact, he's already dead."<br /><br />Now it was my turn to be surprised. "Uh, what?" I replied. Sometimes I just sparkle with wit.<br /><br />Calvin smiled at me. "Miss Laird killed her assailant," he said. "With this."<br /><br />I hadn't noticed it on Reynolds' desk until that moment. Maybe my mind had classified it as a decorative paper weight or something. But Calvin picked it up and handed it to me, and I could tell at a glance that it was either real or a phenomenal imitation. I turned it over several times in my hands, just staring. I'd seem a few like it before, of course. In museums. And you see a lot of them in the old movies and vids.<br /><br />"I'm not up on my antiques," I told him. "What is the make?"<br /><br />"That's a Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special," he told me. "The real thing. It's maybe three hundred and fifty years old. It's from Earth."<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/chapter-three-you-have-begun-to.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-44424928537946258692008-02-19T13:43:00.000-08:002008-02-23T22:18:16.178-08:00Chapter one: The last time I saw Molly LairdThe last time I saw Molly Laird alive was at the funeral of Robert Grayling, who had been rich and important before his death. I was there by invitation. In his will, Grayling had requested a number of people be present at his sendoff, and I was on the list. Why, I couldn't say. Maybe he thought that I would understand why he'd killed himself, or at least why he'd used the method he chose, an overdose of nicotine and strychnine taken by hypojet.<br /><br />Maybe I did understand. A year and a half before Grayling laid himself to rest, he and I had watched one of his employees kill himself that very same way. Maybe Grayling was showing me that he could be as tough as his underling, a man named Smith, who had what some would call an overly developed sense of responsibility. It's an ugly way to die; your own muscles convulsing so brutally that your bones snap and your insides hemorrhage. Whatever was eating at Grayling had to be pretty black for him to consider nick-and -strick to be an easier way out. But Smith had taken it as a gesture of atonement for his involvement in the death of Grayling's son, and Grayling himself bore some of that guilt. It's possible that Grayling never recovered himself after the incident.<br /><br />Grayling also had to dismantle an operation that he had been setting up to smuggle drugs like nicotine and cannabinol to Luna where they are outlawed, from here on Venus, where they are tolerated. That part can be laid at my doorstep. I told Grayling that if he didn't kill the operation then I would kill him.<br /><br />He believed me. Most people believe me when I say things like that. I'm a pretty believable guy.<br /><br />So there I was at Grayling's funeral, a relatively small affair, given his wealth and position. It was a simple Presbyterian service, though for obvious reasons, there is no burial on Venus. We inhabit living creatures called bloons, biological gas bags that float high up in the atmosphere, where the temperature and pressure are nearly Earth-like, at least according to the books. No one alive on Luna or Venus has ever been to Earth, of course, not since the Plague and the Silence that followed. So Grayling's body was laid to rest in a small growing bloon and set out upon the currents of the air. The bloon would extract the nutrients from the body and it would grow and probably bud, and return to the strange and artificial ecosystem that lives fifty-five kilometers above the planetary surface.<br /><br />I guess the word for the attendees at a funeral is "mourners," though I can't say as I held up my end in the emotion department. But there were some forty people in attendance and some of them at least were crying or otherwise looking sad through their bubble masks. Behind us the Skyhook elevator stretched up and vanished into the sky. The thing is something like eighty thousand kilometers long, but sometimes you can actually see the whole of it, even the little pinpoint of Anchorage at the upper terminus, where goods are shipped on to Luna. But it was daylight here on this part of Venus, and would be for another thirty-six hours, so now the Skyhook just vanished up into the light of the sky.<br /><br />Stretched out below us was Sky City, looking like a frothy carpet of green and silver bubbles that reached out for the horizon.<br /><br />After the dirge bubble containing Grayling's body was launched, the group of us returned to the chapel and removed our bubble masks and helped ourselves to the food and drink provided. Over to one side, a woodwind quartet played some tunes that I took to be Renaissance or a mimicry of it. Though I wouldn't have called it dance music, the music wasn't somber, and it seemed to have a calming effect on those who were actually grief-ridden. I was told that all the arrangements had been made by Grayling before his death, though he hadn't told anyone that it was his own funeral he was arranging. I thought the entire affair showed quite a bit of class, and I was in the process of revising my opinion of Mr. Grayling.<br /><br />"Hello, Mr. Honlin," said a man who did not seem to be one of the sadder people there. I'd noticed him earlier moving through the crowd, greeting people, shaking hands, and generally acting as a master of the ceremony. He was fairly young, no more than thirty at a guess, although he might be maybe five years older if he had been particularly aggressive with the age retardants. Blonde hair, medium length, high forehead on a square face made even more rectangular by small ears that lay flat on his head. His eyes were that indeterminate color between blue and green.<br /><br />I took his proffered hand and tried to remember if I'd seen him before, but the answer kept coming back "no." He saw my hesitation.<br /><br />"My name is Jesse Grayling," he told me. "I'm Robert's cousin, from Luna. I've been here on Venus for about six months, dealing with some family business. I didn't expect for this sort of family business to intrude, however."<br /><br />I nodded. There had been family links in Robert Grayling's drug smuggling efforts, just as there were in all his other business enterprises. I reminded myself not to jump to any conclusions about whether or not Jesse Grayling's trip to Venus had anything to do with the illegal activities, though. Then I reminded myself that it was none of my business. My business had been with the Grayling who had died, and I'm not a family curse, or something that goes with an inheritance. I'm not a cop anymore, either, and Luna can take care of herself.<br /><br />"So how do you know me?" I asked this new Grayling.<br /><br />"I'm responsible for the funeral and I went down the list of invitations and got the City Central file photos of everyone so I could be a proper host," he said.<br /><br />"So you know who everybody is and their relationship to Robert?" I asked.<br /><br />"Not really," he said. "There wasn't much time, and in many cases I have no idea why Robert wanted them at his funeral. It's rather bizarre behavior anyway, isn't it? Planning your own funeral?"<br /><br />"Maybe no more than suicide is bizarre behavior," I said. "Maybe more would try it if more thought of it. Or if they could afford it."<br /><br />He gave that a consideration. "Maybe so," he said. "Anyway, I don't know why my cousin invited many of the people here. You, for example." He seemed to hope that I would enlighten him.<br /><br />"Beats me," I told him.<br /><br />He scowled. "I thought that you had met Robert several times on a police matter," he said.<br /><br />I smiled. "Well there you go," I told him. "You don't need me to find these things out."<br /><br />His lips compressed to a thin line, then he thought the better of it and quashed his irritation. We made a little more small talk, then I turned to leave.<br /><br />As I reached the bloon portal leading to one of the City corridors, a woman stopped me.<br /><br />"Mr. Honlin?" she asked.<br /><br />I turned. The speaker was a young woman, probably not even twenty yet. Blonde, attractive, brown eyes, but in a cheap dress that didn't blend in with the rest of the funeral party any more than my clothing did.<br /><br />"Do I know you?" I asked.<br /><br />"No," she said. "But my . . . uh, Mr. Grayling once spoke very highly of you. He told my mother that if he were ever in trouble you were the man he'd most like to have on his side."<br /><br />I probably grimaced. "He probably meant that he wanted me working for him," I said. "Men like Mr. Grayling prefer giving orders."<br /><br />A little smile crept onto her face. "My mother said something like that at the time, I think."<br /><br />"Your mother sounds like a perceptive lady," I said.<br /><br />"She was," she said.<br /><br />"Was?"<br /><br />"She died about a year ago," she replied.<br /><br />"I'm sorry to hear that," I told her. "And you are. . ."<br /><br />"Molly Laird," she said, and held out her hand. I shook it.<br /><br />"Nice to meet you, Molly Laird," I told her. "Even under these circumstances."<br /><br />She smiled again. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Ed Honlin."<br /><br />Then I left. That was the last time I ever saw her alive.<br />__________________________________________<br /><br />The last time I heard Molly Laird's voice was about a week later, when I returned to my room in Madame Fumio's hotel, after spending the night before in the company of Marjori Low, a lady of high class and much money. Marjori had attended an early evening cocktail party the night before, and I had gone as her escort, partly to spare her the attentions of society gigolos and other would-be suitors. Marjori is older than I am, in her mid-fifties, but I find her attractive, and her voice makes my pulse accelerate. Also, because of her wealth, she finds my lack of interest in money a relief. I imagine that some of her more casual acquaintances think I'm after her for her money, or maybe they think I'm her hired bodyguard. She cares what people think about as much as I do, well, maybe a little more. She sometimes laughs about what people think. I often have to concentrate to notice that there are other people around.<br /><br />Normally we don't do society together, but the party had been thrown by an old friend of hers, and, as I said, she wanted me along for moral support. So we went to the party and made chit chat and ate enough hors d'oeuvres to skip dinner. Since I rarely drink and Marjori almost never does—she had a problem with liquor for a time after her husband died—we had to listen to society drivel without the benefit of anesthetic, something for which she later apologized after we had gone to bed.<br /><br />The evening was also something of a parting party for us, since Marjori was to leave the next day for a visit to see her daughter, who lived out on the Great Circle which loops around the equator of Venus and connects Sky City to itself in a planet spanning embrace. Marjori and I said our good-byes in all the ways we know, promised to miss each other, and otherwise said all the words appropriate to ourselves and our stations. I got little sleep that night, but that, for me, is often a godsend.<br /><br />I got home the following morning at about 3500 hours, with the sun slowly heading down toward its two clock days of night. There was a message waiting for me on my comm unit. It was from Molly Laird.<br /><br /><br />The voice said, "Hello, Mr. Honlin? My name is Molly Laird, we met at Robert Grayling's funeral. Could I meet with you sometime? I have a favor to ask, not a big one, I hope, and I'll probably be able to afford some kind of payment, if you think it appropriate. Anyway, I'm staying at the Constellation on corridor 234C West. I apologize, but I've forgotten the number, but it's listed, I expect. Anyway, ah, oh, that's about it for now. I'll call you tomorrow."<br /><br />That was the last time I heard Molly Laird's voice. The next time I saw her she was dead.<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/02/chapter-two-real-thingits-from-earth.html">Next Chapter</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535536076846636075.post-17393446710108159282008-02-19T13:40:00.000-08:002008-02-19T13:47:59.884-08:00Introduction to Blood RelationsI finished <span style="font-style: italic;">Dark Underbelly</span> and gave it to the writer's group, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Will Write for Food</span>, and everyone read it and pretty much liked it, but I kept getting this one criticism. "Hey," someone would say. "Sure, you solved the main mystery in this story, but there's still the backstory, and we get nothing. What the hell happened to Honlin on the Moon to make him the way he is?" And I'd say, "Well, I'm not exactly sure. Uh, okay, I have a pretty good idea of what it was, but I can't just tell you. If I did, you wouldn't like him anymore."<br /><br />Anyway, a couple of them kept at me about it. One of them pointed to various figures in fantasy and SF who were pretty monstrous, and he said, "So what could Honlin have done that was worse than that?" So I told him. And he said, "Okay, that's worse. You're going to have to tell the story though, one way or another."<br /><br />So I began writing the next book, with the understanding that, somewhere in it, Honlin tells at least the bare bones of what happened, but it had to be to the right person, in the right circumstances, and I was really going to have to sweat to make it work out. Somewhere in the first few chapters, another of the writers group got me to give her something about what was coming, and she said, basically, "Yuck! I'm not sure I want to read any more of this." But she did, and eventually came to the opinion that I'd managed to pull it off.<br /><br />Maybe the past ten years or so have coarsened our attitudes about some things, so maybe it won't be as much of a shock now. Some pretty horrible things have been done in our names in the past few years, after all, and some people seem quite comfortable with it. So maybe we were all just squeamish and now we're fuddy duddies. Still, it seems to me that there is a lot of effort being expended on rationalizations and excuses and all the other ways of avoiding the idea of personal responsibility for brutal behavior. But I'm interested in someone who did something without excuses, without trying to rationalize it as ultimately being "for the greater good," even if it were possible to make the case, even if there were people telling him all those things, to try to make it all okay. But he knows that it wasn't okay. There are some things beyond excuses; there are some things that may be even beyond redemption. However much one might yearn for it, and strive for it, eventually redemption fails. But one strives nonetheless.<br /><br />So the story of Ed Honlin is about the striving, and the recognition that he will probably fail.<br /><br />How's that for a teaser?<br /><br /><a href="http://dark-underbelly.blogspot.com/2008/02/chapter-one-last-time-i-saw-molly-laird.html">Begin Blood Relations</a>James Killushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265296146264452333noreply@blogger.com0