House of Dust (52 page)

“Take them inside!” came a voice from outside the bulldog ring. I recognised it as Doctor Connington's.

They walked us inside the old library and through to the ornate Gothic hall where we'd been given dinner on our first night. It didn't look like a banquet was on the cards this time. There was a row of administrators at the long table on the platform, but no sign of any food or drink. Raphael had cleaned herself up and changed her blood-soaked clothes. I had a bad feeling about how she'd made such a rapid recovery. She was sitting between Dawkley and Wood-Lewis, Connington and some other individuals I didn't recognise filling the remaining seats on the side away from us. None of them had bothered with academic gowns. This was business, not cod scholasticism.

The bulldogs pushed us to the ground about five yards in front of the table and made us sit with our legs crossed like undergraduates in a matriculation photograph. They didn't have much luck with Billy on that count so they left him in his chair.

“Well, Citizen Dalrymple,” the chief administrator began, her expression neutral. “I must congratulate you and your subordinates.”

“Screw you,” Davie said.

Raphael nodded to the nearest bulldog, who stepped up and jabbed the butt of his weapon down at Davie's head. He got it out of the way but took a heavy blow on the shoulder. Again, he didn't make a sound.

“Keep your observations to yourself, commander,” Raphael said, her voice level, “if you want your head to remain on your shoulders.” She turned back to me. “As I say, you have done what I hoped you would do. You brought the Mark Two Grendel to us by a combination of luck and ill judgement.” She clapped her hands slowly. “Well done, Quint.”

“Don't call me Quint,” I said, staring at her. “How much of a machine are you, Raphael? Half? Three-quarters? Or have you no human characteristics at all? That would make sense. Only a robot could sanction what goes on in the House of Dust and what's done to the Grendel recruits.”

The chief administrator gave a bitter laugh. “As in so many things, you are quite wrong, citizen.” She glanced at her colleagues. “The House of Dust was developed by the senior proctor Frederick Wood-Lewis, while the Grendel programme was initiated by Administrator Dawkley. Both of them are one hundred per cent homo sapiens. Professor Yamaguchi was also deeply involved in the conditioning and fitting out of the Mark Two Grendels. He too was without mechanical enhancement.”

“Unlike you,” I said.

She nodded. “Quite so. I was one of the prototype Grendels, the only one to develop administrative as opposed to enforcement capabilities. As time has passed, I have received additional robotic implants.” She stretched out her arms. “The upper part of my body is now substantially synthetic. It was a simple procedure to replace the components damaged by the laser Number Three used on me.”

“Your head's full of wires and circuit boards as well as your heart, is it?” Katharine asked bitterly.

Raphael declined to answer.

“Here,” Billy said, rolling his wheelchair forward. “Why am I with them?” He glanced back at us disparagingly. “I'm the senior representative of Edinburgh here now that Slick . . . now that the senior guardian is dead.”

“Get back in line, Geddes,” Raphael ordered, her eyes locked on him. “Our plans for Edinburgh no longer involve you.”

Billy swallowed and put the wheelchair into reverse.

“What exactly are those plans?” I asked.

“I would have thought that was obvious, Dalrymple,” Dawkley said, after glancing at his boss. “We will be transferring much of our operation to your city before the toxins from the Poison Fields overrun us. The remainder will be relocated to Glasgow.” He gave a tight smile. “First Secretary Duart has been most accommodating.”

“Is that right?” I said. “And do your plans to relocate include the people you refer to as subs?”

Raphael looked at me like a professor who'd mistakenly wandered into a primary school class. “Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “As far as the university is concerned, the subs have reached the end of their useful life.” She gave me a blank look. “By the way, your friend Pete Pym met with an accident on his way back to Cowley.”

I felt my stomach freeze. “What?”

Her eyes, suddenly filled with pale fire and malice, burned into mine. “Yes, citizen. Regrettably he fell from a Chariot and cracked his skull on the parapet of Magd Bridge. He was dead before the medics reached him.”

I felt the blood course through my veins like battery acid. I hardly needed anything more to demonstrate the callous depravity that lay beneath New Oxford, but this final heartless act was almost unbearable. I clenched my fists and somehow managed to get a grip on myself.

“Try to understand, citizen,” the chief administrator said, her tone rational. “He was dead the second he entered the House of Dust. Subs who resist the Council cannot expect to survive.”

I still didn't trust myself to speak. Fortunately Katharine took up the fight.

“He was a human being, for God's sake,” she said, her hands at her forehead. “Maybe you can't understand what that means any more, Raphael, but surely the rest of you have some conception.” She looked down the table then shook her head. “Jesus, you're all sick in the head. You oppress the people, you carry out experiments on them, you lock them up, you kill them—” She broke off and stifled a sob. “You burn them, you . . . you grind their bones . . . I can't believe you do all that and then gather to drink sherry in the evening . . .”

I nudged her with my elbow and looked into her eyes, not that I could do anything to assuage the pain. I turned to the front again. “Is it true that you use the bone residue in hyper-conductors?” I asked in a low voice.

Dawkley nodded. “Indeed. In certain combinations human bone meal has proved to be extremely effective. Not to mention extremely profitable.”

Billy looked up when he heard the last word. “Haven't you got it, Quint? That's what New Oxford is all about,” he said with a mocking smile. “The university, NOX industries – they're all businesses. The transnational corporations make a mint from this place.”

Raphael glanced at her colleagues. “That is part of the story, yes.”

“What do you mean part of the story?” Billy demanded. There was nothing but profit in his embittered take on the world.

The chief administrator laughed. “There's no harm in disclosing this information to you people now.” Those words made sweat dampen my shirt. Christ knows what she was planning for us. “Although the global companies sponsor students and research programmes – for which they receive a handsome return – the bulk of the profits from New Oxford go to the offshore corporation which backed the re-establishment of the university.” She ran her eyes over us and held them on Billy. “That corporation is based in Cyprus. It has a particular interest in the study of crime. Whence the significance of the Faculty of Criminology, whence the development of advanced security operatives like the Grendels, whence the extensive research into incarceration methods.”

“Crime and punishment.” I muttered, thinking of the concrete blocks in the former colleges, the tented city in the university parks and the torture chambers in the House of Dust. The multinational element of the university also came to mind: senior academics from countries as far apart as Italy, Russia and Japan. Then I dredged something else from my memory of the years before Edinburgh's independence. “Billy,” I said, turning to the wizened figure in the wheelchair, “wasn't Cyprus a hotbed of criminal activity at the beginning of the century? Weren't there stories about international crime syndicates setting up on the island after the Greeks and Turks massacred each other?”

“Fuck, aye,” my former friend said, clapping his twisted hands. “That's right.” He looked up at Raphael. “Don't tell me,” he said, an avid smile spreading across his uneven face. “Don't tell me that this place is run by the Mob?” He let out a high-pitched laugh.

“It is many years since the corporation has been known by that appellation,” the chief administrator said disapprovingly. “But yes, your assertion is broadly true. Our parent organisation did originally stem from high-ranking members of the major American, European and Asian crime groups.” She was looking at Billy. “Of course, as you no doubt know, they had already started to diversify into legal activities such as banking, medical research, software development and so on.”

I laughed, even though what I'd heard wasn't even vaguely amusing. “I suppose it was completely natural that they subsequently diversified into crime control, prison management and criminological research.”

“Quite so, citizen,” Dawkley said. “The states that managed to regroup after the drugs wars have major internal security needs.” He looked at his leader, nostrum in his hand.

She checked her own device and nodded. “It is time,” she said.

“Time for what?” Davie demanded.

I had the distinct impression that we were about to go for a one-way walk, so I tried to buy us more of what Raphael had called. “Hang on,” I said. “You haven't let me explain everything that happened in the investigation.”

The chief administrator laughed. “What is there to explain, citizen? We knew a Mark Two Grendel was on my tracks after Hamilton was shot. When he left the message on your bedroom wall in Edinburgh, I saw that you would be useful to us here and assumed, correctly, that the Grendel would contact you again. We kept you on a drip feed of information – some of it less than reliable – so that you would find your own way to the assassin. If we had told you his identity from the outset, would you have led us to him? I don't think so.” She pursed her lips. “I have to admit you came too close to some of our most sensitive operations for comfort, but fortunately the Grendel aided us by kidnapping your woman friend.” She gave Katharine a superior look.

“You didn't imagine that one of your precious semi-robots would rebel against you,” I said, looking in disgust at the so-called enhanced human being who ran New Oxford. “You never thought that the urge for revenge could override all your programming and mind-altering drugs, did you?”

Raphael ran her tongue along her lips in a movement that almost looked natural. “No, we didn't, though I have just experienced that urge myself – a pity I succumbed to it. I'm glad to say that Mark Three Grendels will not be susceptible to unpredictable behaviour like that.” She gave Katharine a tight smile. “They will all be female and much more reliable.”

I thought of Hel Hyslop. What had she let herself in for?

Davie peered up at the chief administrator. “You said you wanted to see how Harry's systems had evolved, but all you really wanted was to terminate him.” I could tell that he was affected by his old colleague's death, but I didn't think she could; his face was as impassive as an Edinburgh guard commander could make it.

She returned his gaze steadily. “I did want Administrator Dawkley's experts to examine Number Three,” she said. “He attacked me before I could react, his combat conditioning being superior to mine, and I found myself more interested in trying out the new ultramax laser that was recently fitted in my arm.”

Davie was still staring at her as she got to her feet.

“As I said, it is time.” Raphael turned to Wood-Lewis. “Advise the House of Dust that the prisoners are on their way.”

The senior proctor nodded, his lips forming into a slack smile. “Your friend may have destroyed the bone mill, but the rendering unit is still operational.”

I saw Davie's arm come up. He was pointing to the area behind the dais where the administrators were sitting. “Look out!” he shouted. “Harry's still alive!”

Everyone craned to see, Raphael and her colleagues turning their heads. Almost immediately they – and I – saw that the space was unoccupied.

It was then that I realised Davie had grown an extra finger – one that was a dull silver colour. There was a sharp cracking noise and a line of blue light flashed from his extended arm towards the chief administrator. Her head exploded in a blast of sparks and liquid, lumpen red.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The acrid reek of charred tissue and melted circuits soon drove everybody from the former Divinity School. There was a tense period immediately after Raphael's enforced shutdown when we were at the mercy of the bulldogs. The way that Davie held the miniature laser on Wood-Lewis made them see sense. It soon became apparent that none of them, administrators included, had any stomach for a fight.

“She . . . it . . . I don't really know which applies, was becoming too autocratic,” Wood-Lewis said in the quadrangle. He was keeping his eyes off me.

“I didn't see you doing much to get her hands off the controls,” I said sarcastically. “What now?”