Gridlinked (8 page)

'Yeah,' Veltz replied. 'Every high tide their kin dispose of the evidence. The bones would be indigestible, but, of course, tüere are never any left.'

Pelter nodded. 'Otter bone still gets a good price?' he asked.

Veltz studied the mounded corpse. It was over six metres long and two wide. There had to be a good ton of hard copper-impregnated bone under that slick black skin. The price would have been something just over 10,000 New Carth shillings.
Would
have been. Veltz doubted Pelter would allow them time to proceed with their butchery. This corpse would be lost in the next tide. He looked at Pelter and wondered what the hell the Separatist was delaying for. Pelter returned his look for a moment, then turned away.

'OK,' he said. 'Cut it open.'

Geneve drew her chainglass blade and held it up in the watery sunlight for a moment. She then stepped up onto the ridge and walked to where the otter's huge and eyeless frog head lay sideways on the ground, its maw agape. She drove the tip of her knife into its baggy throat, then, taking the handle in bodi her hands, she walked backwards and drew the blade down the lengdi of the creature's body. The body unzipped with the pressure of its bulk, spilling blue and purple offal down the ridge and across the bank. The offal did not steam, as Pelter had expected it to. He turned and looked at Veltz. Without a word the captain drew his own knife and joined Geneve. He began sorting the offal with the blade of his knife, then swore quietiy. He had to ask, so he turned to Pelter.

'We really need to know what we're looking for,' he said.

'Who, not "what".'

It was all the reply Veltz needed and he continued his search. After a moment he said, 'This is the main intestine. Similar set-up to an Earth mammal.' Pelter just stared, only displaying any reaction when Veltz split the intestine and spilled its contents. Masses of bile-bound shellfish spilled across the bank. From these there rose a little steam into the air, and a coppery tang of decay.

'Not there,' said Veltz. 'Have to try its stomach.' He and Geneve pulled a long-veined sack the size of a sleeping bag from the offal spread at the head end of the creature. Geneve stabbed her knife into one end of this sack.

'Careful!' Pelter shouted.

They both turned towards him, men Geneve looked to Veltz.

'Not so deep,' he advised.

Geneve pulled her knife out so that only the tip was inserted into the skin of the stomach. She drew it down, men across in an L. Veltz stood on one side of the stomach to press its contents out of the slice. More shellfish squeezed out across the bank. Then the headless body of Angelina Pelter tumbled out with them. Her brother, his face seeming dead round its mutilation, stepped up onto the ridge and gazed down at her.

'Where's her head?' he asked.

Veltz and Geneve looked at each otüer.

'Was the transponder in her head?' Veltz asked hesi-tandy.

Pelter said nothing for a long moment as he stared at what remained of his sister. When he looked up, his expression was puzzled and vulnerable. 'I asked you where her head is,' he said.

'How me fucking hell are we supposed to know?' Geneve snapped. 'It could be at the bottom of the ocean, in another otter. Whoever killed her could have taken it as a trophy!'

Pelter's hand snapped out and Geneve screamed. Her boning knife spun through the air and she staggered back with both hands to a face now pouring blood. She slipped on intestines and fell. Pelter turned on Veltz.

'Where's her head?' he shouted. He had a short, wide blade in his right hand. Yellowish fluid was seeping out round his optic link. Veltz moved back, though careful where he stepped, his boning knife held ready at his side.

'You didn't have to do mat. Why'd you do that?' he said, ashamed of the whine that was coming into his voice.

'Her head!' Pelter yelled, and he waved his right arm almost in dismissal. Veltz buckled. It felt like he had been punched in the stomach. Pelter's knife was imbedded up to its hilt in his guts. His legs went weak and he went down on his knees.

'You took her fucking head!' Pelter raged at the sky. When he looked down again his expression had regained its avidity. Veltz tried to stand, but couldn't. He watched Pelter kicking at the spread offal, then striding over to pick up Geneve's boning knife. That Veltz knew what to expect was no comfort. The next high tide would take away what Pelter left there.

As he carried the body of his sister to the Meercat Pelter looked up again. 'You're dead. You're a walking dead man.'

His expression was flat and blank, and now the fluid ran clear from where his left eyelid was sealed to metal. Perhaps the fluid was tears.

The Cereb runcible installation had, over a period of sixty years, turned into a small city. Originally there had been only the runcible itself, sitting inside a fifty-metre sphere of mirrored metal, which in turn was clamped between the curved grey monoliths of the runcible buffers and sealed under an airtight dome a quarter of a kilometre across. These constructions remained unchanged at the heart of the city. The city itself had grown up to cater for the huge transient populations of travellers. As a consequence of this, it mainly consisted of hotels, hypermarts and leisure facilities. There was little in the way of residential building. All of these buildings had at first been linked together with tunnels; now the areas between them were roofed over. The main building material used for this roofing was chain-glass, so to any visitor it appeared they had walked into a giant conservatory.

Cormac stepped through the shimmer-shield airlock into a reception area hundreds of metres wide and floored with the cut stone of the moon. Walled off in the centre of this area were small groves of palm trees and other more exotic tropical plants. All around were shops, restaurants and more dubious leisure facilities. Some of the buildings were only a couple of storeys high. Those any higher than four storeys penetrated the diamond-patterned roof through which the Cheyne III sun glared down.

'You will of course need to register your testimony,' said Blegg, as they set out across the stone floor.

Cormac observed the slightly amused expression on Blegg's face. He considered commenting on the obvious implication, rejected it for a moment, then decided, What the hell?

'Would this be because there's a chance I might not be coming back?' he asked.

'That is a possibility, though I was thinking it would be an idea for the local police to deal with the cell here before it goes to ground.'

'Very neat,' said Cormac. 'Best I pay a visit to the local constabulary.' He altered his course across the stone floor to a gap between buildings, and to a moving walkway beyond, but Blegg clamped a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Cormac turned and looked at him. Blegg seemed to have changed. He no longer appeared so old and he now had a distracted air about him.

'I will leave you now, and you will make your way with suitable efficiency and logic'

'Going inscrutable on me again, are you?' Cormac asked.

'Do not accept things as they appear to be, Ian Cormac.'

'Have I ever?' Cormac asked.

'Yes, you
are
right for this.'

It was a parting statement. Blegg turned and walked away across the stone floor. Cormac watched him for a moment, then he sighed and rubbed at his weary eyes. When he looked again Blegg was gone. He swore to himself and set off again. It was all so bloody typical of him. Why couldn't he have just said goodbye and walked away normally?

The lading docks cut a swathe through the band of papyrus fields. Here the bales of compressed plant matter were loaded onto robot barges and sent inland by canal to the processing plants. Doug Pench had worked on Dock A for most of his life. He enjoyed it there. He earned enough to pay for his big apartment on the edge of the South Arcology of Gordonstone, and enough to run a Model 'I replica AGC and a cabin cruiser, for which, incidentally, he had a free mooring. He also did not have to put up with too much lip from his workforce, that workforce being a crew of five ancient auto handlers.

He was working on Handler Three again when he first heard it. He had the handler's casing open and was keying in, by hand, a control code, the original of which had corrupted. Fifth time that week. If it happened again he swore he would kick the thing into the sea and let it join the bales it had taken to tossing there as if intent on loading an invisible barge. The sound was a vaguely irritating buzz. He looked up and saw only the four bales that were now floating out to sea, swore, and returned to his task. The sound grew and became even more irritating.

Pench stood and stretched, walked to the edge of the compacted papyrus jetty and tilted his head. The sound was like that of one of the old shuttles taking off. After a moment he nodded to himself. Of course: Veltz's boat. Sounded like he was thrashing it. Perhaps one of those bastard ECS Monitors was onto his operation.

He squinted out to sea and scratched at his bushy beard. Nothing in sight yet. He walked to the end of his dock and looked back down the swathe of other docks. Parel had walked out on Dock B to see what was going on as well.

'Thrashing it a bit, ain't he?' Parel shouted.

'Monitor after him, guaranteed,' Pench shouted back, and then turned to squint out to sea again.

The drone was deep, with an undertone that told him something was working at its limit. Pench could only pick out the Meercat because of the flashes of white water behind it. It was really moving. It wasn't properly a boat, but a very low-flying aircraft, and it was now coming straight at him. Pench glanced along the cluttered dock, then back at the rapidly approaching catamaran. He should dive into the water and get down as deep as he could. That was his only chance, but somehow he just couldn't get his legs moving. Paralysed, he stared straight into the blurred eye of the turbine and knew it was just going to eat him up. His gaze flicked up to the cabin, and he knew for a moment that feeling of displacement that comes with nightmares. The Meercat, ten metres from Dock A, hit a floating papyrus bale and cartwheeled. Pench watched it scream above him and felt the draught of the turbine intake tugging at his overalls. He watched it take out Docks B to F as it disintegrated, and he watched the turbine, free at last, leap into the sky and arc out over the papyrus fields.

Pench walked back down his own dock, his legs weak, and a strange taste in his mouth. He went into his litde hut and called in an emergency. The police and various members of the emergency services that turned up ten minutes later found him sitting on his dock with his back against Auto Handler Three. None of them believed his story about the headless woman driving Veltz's boat, but it would become an oft-repeated legend.

Pulse-gun:
To call a weapon this is comparable to describing the wide range of pre-runcible weapons as 'bullet guns'. The name is inadequate and misleading. There are many kinds of pulse-gun. A laser could well be described as such because it fires rapid pulses of lased light. The pulse in all cases describes the packet, and not the form of the energy itself. Ionized gas or aluminium dust pulses are usually confined to handguns, and electromagnetic pulses - because of size constraints - to larger weapons. Some more esoteric weapons do fire microwave and ultrasound pulses. It is worth remembering that within these parameters there is huge variation in effect, ranging from level of stun to the size of the hole.

From
The Weapons Directory

Cormac assumed that the Cereb police station was a small affair because here so much was visible to the omnipresent runcible AI, and crime was, mosdy, not an option. A portico, with a hemispherical roof of ribbed ceramal, protruded from a building little different from those surrounding it, all with their mirror-glass windows and false-brick or stone facades. The portico was supported by pillars and completely open. Inside it, against the pillars, stood service consoles for those who did not want to take their problem as far as a human officer. As he stepped inside, Cormac noted telltale signs in the construction of the roof. There were armoured shutters up there, ready to slam down at any moment. Maybe small did not necessarily mean inefficient or unready; Cheyne III was, after all, a world that had seen a lot of Separatist activity. He walked to the mirrored door of the station and slapped his hand against it once.

'ECS agent Ian Cormac. Scan me and get confirmation from the runcible AI,' he said. It was only after he said it that it hit him: had he still been linked, this door would have been already open and everytfüng would be ready for him. But this was how it would be from now on. Could he take it? He was glad when the door slid open almost immediately.

Cormac walked into a foyer tiled with a local marble he had noticed before. It struck him as unfortunate that it was white with blood-red swirls across it. Along two walls were rows of decidedly uncomfortable looking chairs, and on the walls behind these chairs were active and inactive posters showing still and moving pictures of criminals, recorded crime scenes, proscribed weapons and, for some reason he could not fathom, some rather strange adaptations. At the back of the foyer was a large, apparently wooden, panel door. Cormac knew that the wood was probably a skin over case-hardened ceramal.

'Scan confirms that you are carrying a dun-gun and an active attack weapon. Please remove these items, place them on the floor, and move back four paces,' said a rather hoarse female voice. Cormac looked up at the ceiling and observed a curious light fitting. It was a bulbous disc with a half-metre diameter and flat edges on which complex patterns and small lights flickered. Swivelling underneath it was a short chrome cylinder with cooling fins all around it. The disc was attached to the ceiling by a dück rod of ceramal, and down this rod ran ominously thick cables.

'I take it you haven't had confirmation of my identity from the runcible AI yet,' he said.

'Place your weapons on the floor and move back four paces,' the security drone replied.

'I presume,' said Cormac, wincing slightly at the sound of security shutters closing behind him, 'that you wish me to place my weapons on the floor so you can make them safe - that is, melt them into slag?'