So Vile a Sin (25 page)

was violet, and half the buildings were under the ground.

There were just enough humans to reassure Roz that she didn’t stand out too much. She went from shop to shop, showing the tall reptiles the two photos she was carrying. One of the Doctor, one of Zatopek, just in case.

First chance she got she picked up a heat ray. It was a smaller version of the standard Martian weapon, designed for human hands. Nasty little bugger: you couldn’t set it to stun. Still, now she felt less underdressed.

Most of the shops had a symbol hung outside which she didn’t recognize, a stylized figure in clay or sometimes brass. The guidebook said it was a symbol of mourning.

After a couple of hours she took the weight off her feet in an almost empty bar. The menu was mostly Martian adaptations of human food, lethal curries and salsa and strong, bitter drinks. She ordered a coffee and a plateful of cakes to take the edge off.

‘Have you seen either of these men?’ she asked the bartender.

The Ice Warrior shook his lumpy head.

Roz sat down with her coffee. It tasted like dregs – she was surprised it wasn’t melting through the cup. She popped one of the little cakes into her mouth and took another look at the guidebook.

A Martian stepped up to her table, looming overhead. Big green man. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the book.

‘You’re an Adjudicator,’ said the Martian.

Roz looked up at the seven-foot hulk and decided to play dumb. ‘Huh?’ she said.

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‘Adjudicator,’ said the Ice Warrior. ‘But not a local Adjudicator. On the trail of a couple of suspects.’

‘You got it wrong, bemmie,’ said Roz. ‘Uh, no offence. I’m just trying to find my uncle.’ She took out the photos. ‘See, that’s him and his boyfriend. Have you seen them?’

‘An Adjudicator who isn’t aware of the local situation,’ said the Martian. He sat down opposite her. Damn, he was between her and the door. ‘But then again, who is?’

‘Look, friend,’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You see,’ said the Ice Warrior, ‘the local branch of the Adjudication force has made some very special connections.

That’s why I’m no longer one of them.’

Roz looked at him. ‘You were an Adjudicator?’

‘For ten of your Earth years,’ deadpanned the Martian.

She sat back. ‘They’ve got different hiring policies here than on Earth,’ she said.

‘Indeed. Don’t continue following this man.’ The Ice Warrior pointed at the photo of ‘the Doctor’. ‘An honest officer of the law will quickly be detected and eliminated.’

‘If there’s a conspiracy, how do you know I’m honest?’

‘If you were not honest, you would not need to seek this man.’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘No,’ said the Martian. ‘But I know that as soon as he arrived in this city, he made contact with the Adjudicators and their connections. Then he disappeared.’

‘You’re watching them.’

‘I am.’

‘Why?’

The Martian said, ‘I have connections as well.’

‘Were you sent to warn me off?’ said Roz.

‘To be truthful – I don’t want any more honest Adjudicators to be lost. But you have nothing to fear from my connections, I assure you.’

‘Who are you working for?’

‘No one. I am freelance, as are you. That is why you have nothing to fear from my connections.’

Roz nearly believed him. She pushed the photo forward. ‘Do you know where he is?’

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‘No,’ said the Ice Warrior. ‘I advise you again to avoid him.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ said Roz.

‘I also advise you to avoid the square, blue-coloured cakes.’

‘Why?’ Roz glanced down at her plate. ‘Are they poisoned?’

‘No,’ said the Martian, getting up. ‘But they’re terribly fattening.’

The Jeopard still hadn’t stopped shaking. Chris sat down on the bed next to him, wondering what the hell to say.

The room was small and tidy, with a single window facing out on to the street. From downstairs, the rich smell of coffee drifted up to the room.

The Jeopard clutched a mug of cappuccino, barely able to drink it for the trembling. He took another slug of the cooling coffee.

On the table, there were a couple of magazines, an alien artefact which was probably a vase, and two photos. The Jeopard reached out and picked up the picture of the Doctor.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘He’s after us again, isn’t he?’

‘No,’ said Chris. ‘Calm down, calm down.’

The Jeopard finished his coffee in a sudden gulp. ‘What do you want from us?’ he said.

‘Look, I’m just trying to find him,’ said Chris. ‘He’s not here because of the Jeopards. He’s not here at all. You see the other photo? That man is disguised as the Doctor.’

The Jeopard leant forward, stroking his ears with his hands. ‘I was there when it all happened, you know,’ he said. ‘I was in one of the landing parties. The Jithrai didn’t know what had hit them.

We’d sent a few ships over to explore, and they’d always managed to avoid us. We were just going to walk in and take over that planet.’

‘And then the Doctor arrived,’ said Chris.

‘And then he arrived. He didn’t do anything. But suddenly the Jithrai weren’t frightened any more, they weren’t confused. If we wanted their planet, we would have had to kill them. Thousands of them!’

Chris took the mug away before the Jeopard could drop it. The alien looked at him with haunted eyes, pupils dilated in the low 189

light. ‘And then you came, and you killed every last Jithrai.

Every last one of them.’

‘I came?’ said Chris.

‘The humans came,’ said the Jeopard. 'I’m sorry, I know you don’t all agree. When we saw what had been done to the Jithrai, we surrendered right away before they started killing us as well.’

The Jeopard put his face in his hands in a very human gesture.

Chris instinctively put an arm around the cat-man’s muscular shoulders. It seemed to be the right thing to do. The alien moved closer to him, the trembling starting to quiet.

‘How did you end up here?’ said Chris, after a few minutes.

‘I was indentured for five years,’ said the Jeopard. ‘I was a cook aboard the
Renoir
. They tried to train some of us as soldiers. But we can’t do that. We
can’t
.’

‘All right,’ said Chris. ‘It’s all right.’ He gave the alien’s shoulders a squeeze.

The Jeopard picked up both photos. ‘If any of my people had seen the Doctor – or this disguised man – believe me, I’d know about it. Everyone would be packing to leave.’

‘Why?’ said Chris. ‘What do you think he’s going to do to you?’

‘What did he do to the Jithrai? They were totally different.

Assertive
. He infected them.’

‘Maybe,’ said Chris. ‘Or maybe he just brought out something they already had inside them.’

The Jeopard looked at Chris. It wasn’t an angry look: it was bruised. Ten years spent serving humans, millions of miles from home, had left a mark that would never be erased. ‘You tell him,’

he said. ‘If you ever find him, the real Doctor. You tell him about the Jithrai. Tell him they’re all dead now.’

‘Right,’ said Chris, making a mental note never to mention it.

Chris was waiting in a shopping mall when Roz got back. He sat on a bench, totally absorbed in
Heavy Cruiser Weekly
. He looked up guiltily to discover her standing there. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Any luck?’

‘No,’ said Roz. ‘I’m glad we didn’t plan on enlisting the local Adjudicators, though.’

190

Chris put his magazine in his pocket. ‘Let me guess. They’re in on it.’

‘Zatopek’s gone to ground, apparently with their help.’

Chris said, ‘Acting under orders?’

‘Acting on behalf of someone… Everyone’s acting on behalf of someone. How about you?’

‘I’m acting on behalf of my stomach.’ He got up. ‘I didn’t find a thing. Let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.’

They walked back along the street. The dome was showing an early evening, the sky hologram slowly fading to reveal the real sky, pitch-black scattered with perfect, untwinkling stars.

‘There’s the Jeopard café,’ said Roz.

‘Um, maybe we better not go there,’ said Chris.

‘Whatever.’

As they were passing, the Jeopard ran out of the café. He loped up to them through the thinning evening crowd. ‘Hey,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ said Chris.

The Jeopard’s fur was standing on end. ‘Someone saw him. I could tell them not to leave Tethys, because it’s someone in disguise, isn’t it?’

Chris nodded. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Chris looked at the clock again. They’d been in the waiting room for two hours.

A pair of soft-spoken acolytes had met them in the Temple foyer. The floor and walls were marble – genuine marble, he bet, a rich brown colour shot through with white and grey. The light was muted, globes cupped in dark half-spheres at intervals around the walls.

There were no seats, only a statue of the Goddess, glistening in obsidian. The blindfold was so delicately crafted it looked as though it was made of real cloth. Her sword was real, the steel polished and sharp-edged. Chris had a strange urge to reach out and touch it.

In the silence the acolytes’ footsteps rang out for almost a minute before they appeared. Two of them, male and female.

They were wearing a modified version of the Adjudicator’s robes 191

– or was it the other way around? Chris suddenly felt underdressed in his street clothes, unworthy to be in the sanctuary.

It didn’t seem to bother Roz. She talked to them like they were desk clerks, which they were, really, and demanded to see someone who could do something about something.

The acolytes had led them through long corridors – more marble, more silence – and left them in this room. It was like a sort of ascetic version of a hotel suite, spacious but almost empty.

There was a clothes cleaner and a bathroom but Chris wasn’t surprised there wasn’t a bar fridge.

The clock was a hologram, activated by eye contact, which meant that whenever you looked it was there. Chris had been trying to look at it out of the corner of his eye, to see whether it really was gone when he wasn’t looking. Roz had been watching more news reports, flattened images sliding across the black glass of the coffee table.

‘Six wars have broken out in twenty-four hours,’ she said.

‘Like brushfires. Only one of them in the solar system – the Antarctic Alliance lobbed a missile at the Horne Collective.’

Chris got up and wandered around, getting a root beer from the kitchen unit. ‘You know, there’s a bed back here,’ he said.

Roz didn’t look up from the table. ‘I’m not that bored yet,’ she said.

‘Er,’ said Chris, suddenly not sure what either of them was talking about. ‘I meant that they might be planning to leave us here overnight. Even for a few days.’

Roz switched off the news, right in the middle of a report about the Youkali hostage situation. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t trust those acolytes as far as I could throw them.’

‘That’s probably how they feel about us.’ He sat down opposite her.

‘I’m sure it is. We’re just grunts, chipping away at the coalface of law enforcement, with no formal training in legal theory. Most of this building is a library, you know – including a major Centcomp node. Computers and theoreticians churning out new laws and new commentary on the laws they just made up.’

‘You’ve been here before.’

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‘Nope. No one comes here.’

‘So how come you know so much about it?’ Chris tapped the table top. ‘You’ve been reading up.’

Roz shook her head. ‘I considered becoming an acolyte, for a while. Once. I read up on the place then.’

Chris shook his head. ‘I can’t see it.’

‘Neither can I. But you know. It was one of those twenty-four-hour plans, where the solution to all your problems is perfectly clear for just one day… It was after I killed Martle.’

Chris looked at her in surprise, then quickly looked away, fingers drumming on the edge of the table.

‘It’s not a dirty word,’ said Roz.

‘You never talk about that,’ said Chris.

‘I dunno,’ she said. She called up the news again. ‘It doesn’t seem like such a big deal.’

‘Hey.’

‘All this history,’ said Roz. ‘Happening all around us.

Everything shifting. The Empire’s coming apart at the seams. It’s like all those possibilities spraying out of the Nexus.’

‘But –’

‘Anything could happen. So none of it matters.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ insisted Chris. ‘We do matter.’

‘It’s all so small. Don’t you see? Martle and me. You and me.’

‘Stop it,’ said Chris. He stood up suddenly, almost knocking the sofa chair over. ‘You’re getting her attention.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Roz.

Chris turned his head from side to side, trying to hear it more clearly. ‘She’s been watching us for hours,’ he said. ‘But now you’ve gone and gotten her attention.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Roz was up, wishing she had a weapon, looking around the suite to find something that would substitute. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

He knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t stop. ‘She’s on her way,’ he said.

Roz stood up. She could feel it too, now, getting closer. ‘Shit,’

she said. ‘The Brotherhood.’

Chris felt his head filling up. He sat down again. He knew they were being attacked, some kind of psychic attack, but he didn’t 193

care. That was part of the attack, of course, but it was hard to get excited about it. Probably they’d be here in a minute, or they might just keep pushing their way into their victims’ minds, looking for information. Or looking for the off switch.

He didn’t care. She was coming. And she wasn’t part of the attack. Oh no. They didn’t even know about her.

He blinked, wondering how Roz was doing. She was behind the other sofa, hanging on to it like a life preserver, and looking at something behind him. ‘Chris!’ she said.

‘Mmm-hmm?’

‘Chris! What’s the worst thing in the world?’

He thought about it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s different for everyone. What do you see?’