Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume (32 page)

Chapter 18

I got off
the mag-lev in Havana just under forty-eight hours later, emerging from the vast terminus to once again suffer a wave of disorientation as the sky unfolded above in all its bluey vastness. The ID Mr Mac had supplied named me as David Cross, International Security Consultant for Dynamic Protection GLC, a genuine multi-national he’d purchased an interest in a few years before. The company’s business included several government contracts which required select employees to carry concealed weapons on public transit. The ID got me through terminus security without a blip, then it was a short taxi ride through the archaically surreal streets of Havana to the airport and onto a flight to Barbados. Modern materials meant aircraft windows formed about thirty percent of the fuselage, affording spectacular views all around. The mag-lev had offered a relief from the endless sky, and an opportunity to plan my approach on reaching Salacia, but now there was nowhere to hide from all the
space.

“Nervous flyer, huh?” the woman seated next to me asked, presumably noting the sheen of sweat on my forehead.

“Something I ate,” I muttered back, voice deliberately gruff to conceal my accent and forestall further conversation.

“They’ll get you a sedative if you need it,” she went on.

There’s no pill to cure agoraphobia,
I didn’t say, grunting, “I’m fine, thanks,” before pretending to sleep.

By the time I stepped onto the tarmac at Barbados I was pretty much a wreck. The Caribbean heat was proving as hard to bear as the Arctic cold. I shambled to the airport hotel and checked in, the Dynamic Protection company credit card entitling me to a suite complete with hot-tub and a well stocked bar. I collapsed onto the bed fully clothed and slept for nine hours straight wondering how a species that called itself civilised could live like this.

Salacia Hab was moored two hundred klicks off the Barbadian coast, a three hundred metre tall by one hundred and fifty metre wide tube tethered to the sea floor by carbon-sixty cables and powered by an on-board fusion reactor. The total population stood at just over five thousand, mostly wealthy retirees who had chosen to remove themselves from the increasing crush on land and opted for a life beneath the waves. Getting there required a three hour sub-ride from Bridgetown, an experience I found infinitely preferable to flying. Instead of portholes the sub had external cameras, the feeds combined to project an image of the ocean on the inside of the hull. I felt the anxiety recede as we glided through shoals of fish, catching the occasional glimpse of a shark or a ray. It was as alien an environment as I’d ever experienced, but weirdly soothing in its serenity, and familiar in its comparative lack of gravity.

Salacia’s immigration control was entirely automated, the scanner accepted my ID and features without demur before the inner airlock door opened and I stepped out onto the main concourse. Perhaps unsurprisingly the atmosphere was fairly muted. There were a few dozen people about, but most of the shops were closed. I noted a carpet of flowers surrounding the base of an abstract sculpture in the centre of the concourse, ritual offerings to the recently departed. If this massacre had happened on the Yang-side level where I grew up, it would probably have been forgotten a few hours after the blood had been hosed away.

I took out my smart and sent an interview request to Phaedra Diallo marked ‘Re. Current Investigation’, then found a vending machine which dispensed a hot but uncertainly flavoured beverage. I found a bench and waited, sipping what may have been coffee and looking up at the ascending rings of Salacia’s levels, all balconies and hanging gardens, even some birds fluttering about. It reminded me of Yin-side but was more elegant somehow, less ostentatious.

“Mr Cross?”

I lowered my gaze to find a small but athletic young woman standing a few feet away. I was momentarily distracted both by her attire, a black lycra one-piece bathing suit with a gold police shield pinned to one of the straps, and the fact that she was a splice. Her skin was silver-grey and sparkled a little in the light from the UVs above, and her eyes consisted of white pupils set in black orbs. Her hair was cropped short and spiky and she carried a sidearm in a holster slung over her shoulder. From the beads still shining in her hair, it was clear she wasn’t long out of the water.

“Chief Diallo?” I said.

“That’s me.” She angled her head, eyelids narrowing so her ivory pupils resembled two slits. “Saw your face on a news feed a couple of days ago,” she said. “It belonged to a dead man.”

I smiled and rose, extending my hand. “Y’know, I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

“I count seven different violations of global statutes,” she said an hour or so later. She’d taken me to her place, a spacious mid-level apartment with a large window offering a view of the sub-aquatic world outside. I’d been impressed by her precautions, insisting I hand over my smart and weapon before instructing me to sit and start talking. I also found it significant that she hadn’t taken me to her HQ and made no effort to alert anyone else to my presence.

“Use of false credentials to cross international boundaries,” she went on. “Illegal transport of a firearm across said boundaries…”

“Yeah, but I haven’t killed anyone yet,” I said. “And I’m guessing you have some reason not to think I’m a paranoid nut-bar ‘cause we’ve been here for an hour and I’m not in cuffs.”

She sat perched on the arm of her couch, a towel around her neck, her gun and mine on the coffee table between us. “We got shut down,” she said after a long pause. “A bunch of Fed Sec suits turned up with a UN mandated order not long after I spoke to you. Took all our evidence, including Schiffler’s body. Left me in no doubt this was their case now.”

“Did they give you the slightest impression they’d actually do anything with it?”

“‘Course they fucking didn’t. Thirteen of my people dead and no one will ever know why.”

“You OK with that?”

She glanced at the window as a shoal of brightly coloured fish darted past. “This is a good place, y’know. People here made me welcome, never called me a freak or an abomination before the lord. That isn’t always the case down here. Different where you’re from, I guess.”

“We have our problems, but we mostly just rub along as best we can.”

She nodded. “There isn’t much I can give you. Like I said, Fed Sec took all the evidence.”

“The victims,” I said. “Them you can give me.”

Thirteen names. Five men, eight women. The oldest an eighty-three year old grandfather of six, the youngest a seventeen year old girl from Copenhagen who’d come to visit with her great-aunt. There were also two young men in their twenties, a married couple from Brazil here to compete in an upcoming sub-aquatic sports tournament. Just people, going about their lives, their stories forever caught in the amber of this atrocity.

“No links,” Phaedra said, now dressed in a less distracting police uniform. She’d cooked whilst I read, whisking up a mushroom broth from fresh produce grown in Salacia’s hydroponics farm. Apparently, self-sufficiency was part of the sub-aquatic ethos, insurance against the day the world above the waves finally went to complete shit. “No links to Schiffler. Most didn’t know each other, those that did only in passing. No one rich, more than the average I mean. No one famous.”

“Who was first?” I asked.

“There’s a mo-capped multi-angle re-creation in the vids folder, all victims tagged and events time-lined.”

I called up the file and ran it through, watching the stick figures fall one by one as Schiffler made an unhurried progress across the concourse, speargun jerking a little as he fired. It seemed entirely random, even typical for this kind of tragedy. Solitary loser blows a brain-gasket and seeks notoriety via mass murder. Psychologically speaking the victims were irrelevant, just extras in the movie playing in Schiffler’s head. I ran the sequence again at slower speed, freezing it just as Schiffler made his first kill. The victim’s tag named them as Roderico Lomos Vivar, one half of the Brazilian couple. I noticed Roderico had been shot in the back whilst in motion, he seemed to be diving to the side, arms reaching out to another figure. I advanced frame by frame, watching Roderico collapse as the spear skewered him. The figure he had been reaching for stood stock still as Schiffler lined up for another shot, making no effort to evade the killing spear. The name tag read Lisabet Holstrom, aged fifty-four, Salacia resident for just under eight months.

I reran the vid from the moment Schiffler first stepped onto the concourse, speargun held at his side in a relaxed grip, like he was carrying a fishing rod. Switching to a top-down view I saw that his initial approach contrasted with the latter part of the spree. Instead of wandering and picking off targets of opportunity he made a direct line for where Lisabet Holstrom sat at a cafe reading a book. He paused twelve feet away for several seconds. I watched Holstrom look up from her book, hesitate for a second then slowly get to her feet, standing in immobile expectation.

“That’s when he first said it,” I said to Phaedra. “Wasn’t it?”

“The ‘from light’ thing? Yeah.”

The ghastly cartoon played out, Schiffler raising his speargun, Roderico rising from the neighbouring table and diving towards the woman he saw was about to be murdered. “You might want to tell this Jed’s family he died a hero,” I said, freezing the playback and tapping Roderico’s body. “Holstrom was the target. Everyone else was just cover.”

“Biographical details are pretty thin,” Phaedra said a short while later. She’d accessed the Salacia mainframe and downloaded all data relating to Lisabet Holstrom. “Our investigation was only getting started by the time Fed Sec shut us down, so the victim profiles are kinda bare bones. Also, the sub-aquatic community is big on privacy and personal freedom. When someone applies to join a hab there’s a basic background check to ensure they don’t have a criminal record, plus confirmation their finances are in order, but not much else. Holstrom came up clean on all checks and paid the full amount for a ten year lease on a lower level apartment. Lower levels have the best views so they command a premium. Lived alone, no significant others. She did join a book group though, met every Wednesday in a neighbour’s apartment.”

“Open sources?”

Phaedra did some scrolling. “Doesn’t seem to have made any headlines, all hits are on corporate personnel sites. Seems she was an engineer, astronautics. Born in Norway, but spent much of her working life up the well.”

“Employer?”

“Most recent was…” She trailed off, looked up with a small grin. “Hephaestus Propulsion Systems, a division of Astravista Industries. Guess we’re not chasing shadows after all.”

I rose from the table, holstering my Colt and looking at her expectantly.

“What?”

“Police work one-oh-one,” I said. “Let’s go knock on someone’s door.”

There were only three apartments on Salacia’s lowest level. One was temporarily unoccupied and the other belonged to the organiser of Holstrom’s book group. The man who answered the door was clearly a fan of rejuve treatments, the face and body of a thirty year old with the hands and eyes of someone who probably remembered the first Titan landing. “Chief!” he greeted Phaedra with a broad smile, coming close to air-kiss both cheeks. “It’s been too long. You look even more marvellous.”

He stood aside and beckoned us inside. It took me a moment to fully appreciate the size and luxury of the apartment, putting even Oksana’s place to shame. The wall was one big window, curving around in a 120 degree arc to encompass a broad sweep of the coral reef surrounding Salacia’s tethers.

“Thank you for talking to us, Theodore,” Phaedra said then nodded at me. “This is Mr Cross, a private investigator. He’d like to talk about Ms Holstrom.”

Theodore’s face fell abruptly, raising a shaky hand to his lips. “Oh, that terrible business. I thought it was over. The hab-feed said your investigation was concluded.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Sorry to cause any upset, but the firm handling Ms Holstrom’s estate have asked me to look into the events surrounding her demise.”

Theodore stiffened a little, eyes taking on a judgemental cast. “Vultures gathering, are they?”

“We’re just trying to make sure the settlement is fair and equitable. But, yes, some of Ms Holstrom’s relatives are contesting the will.” I gave a reluctant wince, lowering my voice to a confiding murmur. “There are claims Ms Holstrom may have been suicidal. Even that she might have had something to do with the massacre.”

“That’s utterly ridiculous.” Theodore stiffened further. “To think that dear lady would ever hurt another soul. Preposterous.” I could tell he believed what he said, but I also detected a small tick of uncertainty amongst the outrage.

“How well did you know her?” I asked.

His face softened and he moved to take a seat at the breakfast bar. “Not as well as I’d have liked. She was an interesting person. I like interesting people, like our dear Phaedra here. Lisabet was well read, multi-lingual and highly intelligent, but also… very sad. Not suicidally so, but still, I could see her pain, though she did her best to hide it. There was one time, though, during a book group get-together. We were discussing Bleak House, her pick for the week. She so loved Dickens. In the middle of the discussion, she just burst into tears. I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t say, just kept on crying and saying she was sorry.”

“For what?”

“I have no idea. But it was strange, like she was personally apologising to all of us, saying sorry to each one of us. I got her a brandy and she calmed down, eventually. I think that was the last book group she came to. Three weeks later…” He shuddered. “Well, you know about that.”

“Did she ever talk about her work?”

“Not particularly. I remember her saying her retirement had come earlier than expected, though from what remained somewhat vague. I could tell from her accent she’d spent some years in orbit, though not as many as you, I’d guess.”