Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2013 (19 page)

"How come this never showed up on any of our screens?"

"Because nothing has become official yet. Because Ledbury is keeping everything hush-hush. Not unknown with new inventions, I wouldn't have thought."

"But you knew about it, all the same."

"Only found out about some of it last night. For God's sake, Inspector, stop marching up and down. Sit down and calm down."

"Call me Joe."

"What?"

"Call me Joe. Not Inspector."

"All right then, Joe. So I'm Renata. Now will you sit down?"

***

Ten minutes later they were drinking coffee and talking over the past week.

"So tell me. Tell me what is your hunch about all this?"

"I genuinely don't know. The only link I can find is with the crocodile factor."

"Go on."

"Both of our sadly departeds were filing patents for lethal devices."

"Could be coincidence."

"Could be. Can you think of anything else, though?"

"What is the agency? That's what I have to know. The agency. Something seems to be signing itself at the scene of the crime, and that presupposes agency. So who is the agent then? Who is acting and why?"

"Strange thing about agency in science," Renata said, sipping at her coffee. Drinking too much coffee these days. No wonder I can't sleep properly. "We often stare at the agency's effects for a long time before we can work out what the agency actually is. Both Pierre and Marie Curie had these terrible burn marks on their hands for years. So they hide their hands, wear gloves. The Curies always look distracted in those photographs, have you ever noticed that? Their eyes hardly ever look at the camera. No, as they fiddled about with their pitchblende, uranium, radium, polonium, the elements seem to be constellating in the air all around them. Writing with atoms in their mental atmosphere. The burns on the backs of their hands were just a more lethal signature, like our recent happenings. Radioactivity had chosen them as the recipients of certain crucial messages. Autotelic constellations—that's what old Frank used to call them. The human mind, he used to say, is always the recipient of such messages, never the creator. And all we have here at the moment are those burns on the hands of Marie and Pierre Curie. We see the signs but we don't yet understand the mechanism by which they are being produced.

"But maybe these autotelic constellations have been shining so brightly into our eyes they've blinded us. For once we might need to discover some light inside ourselves if we're to read them. The tradition about light since Newton is what's known as the lumen optic. The light comes from outside and hits our eyes. But the older tradition was the lux optic: the light shone inside us, and we directed it at what we needed to see. I think we might have to switch from lumen to lux if we are to shed any light on this situation."

"Any chance I could invite you to dinner tonight?"

"Not tonight, no. I'm flattered, but maybe some other time. I've done enough socializing for a week. Maybe a month. Let's take a rain check, Joe."

The weeks went by. The coroner's report said death by misadventure. Unknown substance introduced into body prior to death. Inspector Banks grilled Charles Ledbury for several hours. Any shared contacts between the two dead men and the CEO of Enscienta? Dr. Dibdin, of course. He'd had her as well, it seemed, and recently, too. She really did get about, that little number. Only one who hadn't had her yet seemed to be yours truly.

An investigative policeman is a cut-price biographer. He has to compile brief lives in all their salient details, and at very short notice. The more like a diagram the better. He remembered reading somewhere that Kierkegaard once said the problem with biographies was that they were written backward, where life had to be lived forward. He tried to bear this in mind. That was the only thing he knew about Kierkegaard, except that his name meant churchyard in Danish. What, he wondered, was the Danish for Pathology Lab?

Certain people are dead. But they didn't used to be dead. A short while back they weren't in the churchyard—they were in the lab. One of the hardest things for the diligent copper is to see through the mass of data to the living facts: the motivation behind the traces. Patents. Death machines. Someone with a grudge regarding science and industry. Briefly his mind lit up like a cave filled with candles.

And then nothing. The scientific investigations went on, inconclusively. The police investigation went on, inconclusively. The newspapers, after predicting a new and unknown plague that would shortly lay waste the whole earth, particularly the scientists upon it, forgot all about the matter in a couple of weeks. So two scientists had croaked. Probably cooked up the poisons that had killed the pair of them in the first place. Who cared any more? Even Joe Banks was starting to let his interest wander. There was another case that had begun to intrigue him. A death in the observatory in Greenwich. Strange venue to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Then, one evening as he was driving home, his phone rang. He knew the voice, all right. The lovely Renata. She sounded upset.

"Can you come over now?"

"To the lab?"

"Not my lab. Jeremy Stone's. You'll remember the venue, presumably. It's the place where you interrogated him for three hours."

"Give me a clue at least."

"Charles Ledbury."

As he drove he remembered the interview with Dr. Jeremy Stone. He had pushed hard, it was true, but that was his job, surely? And he did need to know if there was any sort of number between him and Renata. After all, this was a murder inquiry. And that was why he'd pressed. The only reason.

"Do you enjoy some sort of intimacy with Dr. Renata Dibdin?" he'd asked at the end. He'd been saving this one up.

"How delicately put, Inspector. 'Enjoy some sort of intimacy.' No, as a matter of fact, I don't."

"Quite sure, are you? You'd only be one more in the queue."

"Quite sure. My affections do not that way tend."

The allusion to
Hamlet
here had unfortunately been lost on Banks.

"You mean you don't fancy her?"

"No. I mean I'm gay."

Banks had not anticipated this, and had flustered briefly.

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry that I'm gay?"

"No. Sorry I wasn't a little more perceptive."

"Some of us are quite butch, Inspector. Hard to distinguish us from the real men sometimes."

And with that dart in his ear, Inspector Joseph Banks had called it a day, and had tried not to think about Jeremy Stone ever since. Now he was on his way to the man's laboratory. And why in any case had Ledbury been taken there, rather than to Renata's usual domicile?

That was the first question he asked when he arrived.

"No reason to bring him to me, Inspector." Thought we'd agreed you'd call me Joe. That means I've got to call you Doctor again. "Not at first, anyway. Have a look."

The sheet was pulled back, and Banks could see that, whatever other problems he might have had recently, Charles Ledbury's forehead appeared untouched by gossamer graphite. Whatever tangled webs he'd been weaving, there didn't appear to be any actual evidence of them on his suntanned skin.

"Cause of death?"

"Same as the others. Area above the brain stem turned to crystal."

"But no neutrino gauze?"

"Not that we can see."

"And tattooed letters on the right arm?"

Jeremy lifted up the green sheet on that side of the body.

"Nothing here. Not yet anyway. Would have been forming by this time if it were like the others."

"So what's going on?"

"We're stumped ourselves. We'll have to trust your inestimable investigative skills, Inspector."

That was Renata, and it was a sneer, wasn't it? Banks was already on his phone. Place of death. Status of crime scene. Any circumstantials. He rang off.

"So where did he die?"

"At the table in his office. In front of his computer."

"Is it restricted?"

"It's a crime scene, if that's what you mean."

"I need to see it."

"Look, Dr. Dibdin, with the greatest respect, you are a pathologist—a distinguished one I don't doubt..."

"Cut the crap, Joe. Do you want to solve this or not? I need to see it."

"Come on then. Let's go. All right if I call you Renata again?"

"As long as you don't give Jerry the third degree afterward. Oh, and call that IT bloke of yours—tell him to meet us there."

So it was that a little after thirty minutes later, Dr. Renata Dibdin stood with Inspector Joe Banks in front of the computer where six hours before Charles Ledbury had been found dead.

"Switch it on," she said to the IT man.

"Technically, this is a designated..."

"Tell him to switch the bloody thing on, Joe."

"Switch it on, Mark."

"If you say so."

Twenty seconds later they all stared at the screen. It was Banks who spoke first.

"I suppose it is pretty much at the level where his forehead would have been, sitting in front of the computer. But what is it?" Renata was staring at the image on the screen very carefully.

"It is a mummy bandage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The god Osiris in a tight-fitting shroud is sitting on his throne. He is judging the dead. Do you notice something on his thigh, Joe?"

"Yes, it's a spider."

"Make a note of it."

"Very keen on spiders, the Egyptians—I seem to remember. Spiders and cats."

"Make a note of it, that's all. I'm going home now. There's something I need to look at. I'll phone you later."

There was one good glass of Sauvignon in the bottle in the fridge. She poured it all out and went and sat on the sofa. She took the illustrated book from her shelf. She turned the pages until she came to the image, which she stared at it in astonishment, then put down her glass without taking a sip, got up, put on her jacket and set off down to the car.

Twenty minutes later she arrived at 20 Maresfield Gardens, the Freud Museum. She knew exactly what she needed to look at, and even though it was not on display that day, the curator invited her into another office where she could view the mummy bandage. She stared at it carefully. It merely told her what she already knew. She asked if she could use her phone to photograph it.

"Strictly, it's not allowed."

"Only for private study, I promise."

"All right then."

Click click. Then she gave her thanks and left.

She called Banks on her cell phone and asked him to come to her flat. There was something she had to show him. Is my luck finally changing, he wondered.

They both stared at the image in the book.

"The spider. It was on Ledbury's computer, and it's here in this book. Osiris has a spider on his thigh. Only thing is, it's not there in the original. I know where this particular mummy bandage comes from. I've just been to see it at the Freud Museum, and there was no spider on the god's thigh. I took a photograph on my phone to prove it—you can see it if you like. Did your IT man work out how that image got on to the screen anyway?"

"Mark spent twenty minutes, with his pencil flashlight and his optician's screwdrivers."

"And?"

"The screen was sealed. Seal's still intact over the original screws. Never been opened since it was made."

"And when was that, did he reckon?"

"At least a couple of years back."

"He had that computer when I first knew him," Renata said. "And that's certainly two years ago."

"There's something else," Banks said, looking seriously perplexed as he said it. "He was sure the image had been made—acid-etched, engraved, he couldn't tell—on the inside of the screen. And down at the bottom he found some letters, also on the inside."

"What were the letters, Joe?"

Banks took out his notebook. He spelt the letters out: "A-R-A-N-E-A. Mean anything? Certainly not the manufacturer's name."

Joe was watching Renata intently. She had walked over to the window and stared down at the gardens below. She remembered how he'd always liked to be high up and near a window, had Charlie. Harry Lime on the big wheel in Vienna, looking down on so many insignificant people. Suddenly she took the phone out of her pocket. She called Jeremy.

"Any marks yet?"

"Hang on, I'll just have a peep at the right arm. Did look twenty minutes back. But nothing. Nothing now either."

"He was left-handed."

"What?"

"Charlie was left-handed. Look at the inside of his left arm."

"Hang on, I'll go round the other side... Well well well."

"Do share, Jerry."

"The letters are there. TOS. Mean anything to anyone?"

"Well, I can think of a few relevant words regarding Charles Ledbury that might start with that syllable. Maybe it's an acronym. TOS. Terrifically overpaid sonofabitch. Have to get back to you later."

She turned to look at Banks.

"Finally got our letters."

"TOS. I just heard. No element I can think of with that abbreviation."

Renata had begun laughing.

"You're not joining things up, Inspector. You're paid to join things up, and you're not doing it. Leaving it all to the little lady here. Only connect. Come back in an hour. I need to be alone and I need to think. I'll make you a plate of pasta. Give you a glass of wine. We need to have a good talk, I reckon."

Once more they were staring at the image of the mummy bandage from the Freud Museum. In particular they were staring hard at the spider on the thigh of Osiris.

"And it's definitely not there on the original image?"

"Went back and double-checked this afternoon. It wasn't. It isn't. Look at the photograph on my phone if you don't believe me."

"Then how did it get here? There?"

"Answer that one, Joey boy, and you've solved your case."

The book open before them was an illustrated guide to Sigmund Freud's collection of antiquities. Gods and goddesses and psychopomps. Those who led you to the underworld, and those who judged you once you'd arrived. Renata had opened another bottle of Sauvignon. She was sipping her glass. She had offered some to Banks, but he had asked, a little shyly, if she had any malt whisky. As it happened she did. So she had given him a glass of it. A large one.

"So when did it arrive on the page then? This new spider?"

"Presumably around the same time that the image formed on the inside of Charles Ledbury's computer screen."

"And killed him?"

"And killed him."

"You're absolutely sure you couldn't have made a mistake about the one in the Freud Museum?"

She reached for her phone, clicked on to the images, and stared in silence. Banks leaned across and stared, too.

"It wasn't there when I photographed it this afternoon, I swear."

"Well it's there now."

"The letters on the three bodies. Have you got them there?"

Banks took his notebook out of his pocket and read the letters out.

"First THA, then NA, now TOS."

"Only connect. A word was being spelt out over three dead men: Thanatos. The Greek god of death. And the letters on the inside of the screen today."

Once again Banks read from his little book.

"Aranea."

"That's the Latin for spider." Banks took a serious gulp from his glass.

"Are you trying to tell me that we have some transcendental spider making this graphite gossamer? One that also speaks Latin and Greek."

"We don't have any evidence of speech, do we? Let's try to be precise here. All the evidence is graphic. We're dealing with a writer."

"Very well-read spider though."

"Yes, I'd like to meet her."

"What's Freud got to do with any of it, anyway?"

"I've been asking myself that." Renata paused and sipped her wine. "I'll put the pasta on. Fancy eater, are we? Allergies? Religious prohibitions?"

"Anything you serve up, I'll swallow. Promise. Wish you'd get a move on and serve up some answers, all the same."