So Vile a Sin (7 page)

The robot beckoned them out on to the floor of the press – an expanse of dull pitted metal. ‘If I could draw your 52

attention overhead,’ it said, ‘you will be able to see the compression plate. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a metre-thick sheet of superdense matter, colloquially known as dwarf star alloy. Its total mass is one million tons and it is suspended, as you can see, by four AG-assisted columns at a height of a hundred metres.’

There was an uneasy murmur from the crowd; they didn’t like the idea of that much material hanging suspended over their heads. Roz glanced around the party and picked out a private wearing engineering flashes. ‘Wouldn’t like it to slip,’ she said.

‘Talk about your jam sandwich.’

‘Nah,’ said the private. ‘You can see the fail-safe clamps. The AGs are on a positive feedback from the weight. The mass differential drives the generators – any increase and the field intensity just rises to compensate.’

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Roz. ‘Providing someone doesn’t blow them.’

The private laughed. ‘You wouldn’t need to do that,’ he said.

He leant closer to Roz and spoke softly, as if not to alarm the other tourists. 'Two grams in the right place and we’d all be a molecular film.’

‘Jeez. You’re kidding me.’

‘It’s not what you’ve got that counts, it’s where you put it,’

said the private. ‘I’m Juha Susanti, Fifteenth Combat Engineers, Count Bauman’s Division.’

‘McShane,’ said Roz, ‘Sarah McShane. I’m a correspondent for Inawo media feed.’

‘I don’t suppose,’ said Susanti, ‘that you’d be interested in a drink later.’

Roz made a pretence of looking him up and down. ‘Actually,’

she said, ‘there’s a bar in town I’ve been meaning to check out.’

For an R-and-R pitstop, the Yellow Oasis was a pretty high-class kind of joint, with a neon-lit U-shaped bar that projected from the back, shadowy booths around two sides, and sturdy tables with rubberized tops so the dancers could keep a grip with their feet.

The service, mostly Skagettes and Argolins, wore abbreviated outfits, but at least they weren’t naked.

53

‘One of my dads was comptroller for the cooperative, so I went to the local school.’ Susanti was talking about his childhood, such as it was. Roz already had the specific information she wanted and was keeping him around to provide cover as she watched the bar. So far Tsang Mei Feng hadn’t put in an appearance.

‘It was a one-flitter town,’ said Susanti. ‘Real quiet. Until I got drafted, my idea of excitement was the monthly bop at the Young Agronomists’ Club.’ He paused to watch a Skagette in luminous blue skin-tights slink past the booth. ‘Nothing like this.’

Sensing his interest, the Skagette turned and smiled at him.

Like most of her race, she was tall and slender, with a peculiar kind of grace that always reminded Roz of the way willow trees moved in the wind. As she turned, her hand swept up and around as if to retain the symmetry of the movement. Roz noticed that the sixth finger had been surgically removed.

She warned the Skagette off with her eyes and the female bared her teeth in return – definitely not a smile, not if you knew Skag body language. Susanti gave her a sly look and then smiled, misinterpreting the exchange. Roz smiled back and poured him another drink. She was wondering how much alcohol it was going to take before he passed out.

‘
Slonshal
,’ said Susanti and drained his glass.

Of course he had a hollow leg; it wasn’t as if there was anything else to do on a backwater agro-planet except get drunk and marry your cousin. Still, no one could drink like an Adjudicator. There are old Adjudicators and sober Adjudicators, the saying went, but there are no old sober Adjudicators. Roz finished her own glass.

‘Another?’ she asked.

Mei Feng had startling grey-blue eyes with epicanthic folds.

Her hair was a wing of blue black that swept over her shoulder and across the back of her burgundy silk dress when she sat down.

Roz glanced at Susanti, who was slumped over the table 54

with his face resting on his arms. ‘I thought he’d never pass out,’

she said.

‘I’ve been watching you,’ said Mei Feng. ‘I’ve seen every kind come in here, from rubbernecking tourists to alien spies. You don’t fall into any of the usual categories.’ She extended her hand. ‘I’m the owner, Tsang Mei Feng.’

‘Sarah McShane,’ said Roz, shaking hands. ‘I’m a journalist.’

Mei Feng looked at her. ‘No, you’re not,’ she said.

‘All right,’ said Roz, rummaging in her handbag. ‘What am I?’

‘At first I thought you were a cop,’ she said. ‘But a quick call to my people in the Order was enough to convince me you weren’t. Then I thought, independent security? But our friend here could never afford a bodyguard.’ She patted Susanti on the head. ‘So here’s my guess: you’re an ex-cop.’

Close, thought Roz. Alarmingly close. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You must be a mind-reader.’

Mei Feng smiled, looking around at the crowd. ‘Thank Goddess I’m not. So what brings you to our humble little hell-hole?’

‘I came for the atmosphere,’ said Roz.

‘But Aegisthus is an airless moon.’

‘I was misinformed.’

Mei Feng laughed. ‘People who come here want something from a short list of things,’ she said. ‘Want me to guess?’

Roz was finished rummaging in her handbag. Her hand emerged with the first thing she could grab, which was a tissue.

She blew her nose and said, ‘No. I need a job. Can you use an unAdjudicator?’

Mei Feng looked her up and down. ‘Did they teach you how to mop a floor at that Academy?’ she said.

‘First you want gun; now bomb,’ said the Qink. ‘You up to no good for sure.’

Roz blinked. It was a different stall, with different merchandise (perfume and cosmetics) down the other end of the Boulevard Gagarin and, Roz had assumed although she 55

couldn’t tell from just looking, a different Qink.

‘Why you not buy this nice perfume, nah?’ The Qink held up a tiny fluted glass bottle. ‘Got synthesized pheromone, make you smell like real human woman.’

Roz resisted the urge to smack the Qink’s brain case back into its chest cavity. ‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘if I buy this perfume, do I get a little “gift” to go with it?’

‘Of course,’ said the Qink.

‘I also need a microdetonator,’ said Roz. ‘But I suppose I’ll have to settle for that eye shadow.’

‘Eye shadow and special non-stick lipstick, make mouth all slippery and bright-coloured,’ said the Qink. ‘Guaranteed to last all night.’

‘Well,’ said Roz, ‘how could I pass up on that?’ She handed over more of her bearer bonds and put explosives, detonator, perfume, eye shadow and lipstick into her carryall. Now she had enough equipment to stage a major terrorist incident. That or open a small brothel.

It was a simple matter to join another tour group, get back into the foundry and then slip away when they reached the main press.

Hidden behind a pitted metal stanchion she listened to the tour guide’s voice echoing in the large, machine-filled spaces, talking with synthetic enthusiasm about the economics and gross numbers of mineral rape.

The control box was just where Susanti said it would be. Roz opened it to find a series of cable junctions, their colour coding faded with age. It took her ten minutes to rig the charge and seal it up again.

She was sure Chris would have done the same job in three minutes. But would he have thought of doing it? The Doctor would have just browbeaten the controls into doing what he wanted. Or more likely, revealed that he’d been personally involved in the construction of the press and had left a back door for himself, because you never knew when it might come in handy.

She finished just in time for the second tour to arrive. After cleaning her hands with the wipes she’d brought with her she joined the back of the party.

56

Once again she listened to the robot reeling off the statistics of the top plate and describing how it had once been used to form the mega-ingots. A million tons of mass, crashing down, unbreakable and unstoppable.

She hoped, if it ever came to that, it would be enough.

The Doctor was waiting for her at a table outside a teashop on the Piazza Jemison. He was leaning back comfortably in his chair, an elbow propped on the arm, a book obscuring his face. A steaming teapot with two cups waited on the table. Roz sat down.

The centre of the plaza was a park with a sculptured playground. Children played, well-cared-for human children in brightly coloured dungarees and T-shirts. Their parents watching over them from the slatted wooden benches on the edge. This was the ‘respectable’ end of Fury, where the original inhabitants attempted to hold back the tide of tawdry exploitation that came with the military. Roz didn’t think much of their chances.

‘Any problems?’ asked the Doctor.

‘None so far,’ said Roz.

The Doctor put the book down. ‘Have you got it?’

‘Of course.’ Roz passed him the dataslip. The Doctor inspected it for a moment and then slipped it into his pockets.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘That should make things easier.’ He reached for the teapot. ‘Shall I be mother?’

‘How’s Chris?’

‘Fine. Looking for a suitable spacecraft.’

The tea came out a delicate colour. Definitely not a local brew.

Roz reached for the sweeteners.

‘Don’t do that,’ said the Doctor. ‘It spoils the taste.’

Roz withdrew her hand, took the cup instead. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

‘Do you want me to come?’ She sipped the tea.

‘Better that you stay here.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘If I’m right about what’s on Iphigenia, you could be in a considerable amount of danger if you came with us.’

‘More than Chris?’

57

‘Much more than Chris,’ said the Doctor. ‘His life doesn’t have nearly so many possibilities as yours. And anyway, I don’t intend him to get anywhere near it.’ The Doctor unwrapped a packet of Sainsbury’s digestives and offered her one. ‘Have you called your sister yet?’

Roz shook her head. ‘Too risky,’ she said. ‘Sensitive military zone like this, hyperwave traffic is bound to be monitored. We don’t want any complications, do we?’

‘No,’ said the Doctor and grinned at her. ‘At least none that we don’t create ourselves.’

They sipped their tea in silence for a while. The Doctor watched the children playing.

‘There’s an N-form operating in this city,’ said Roz.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, ‘I was afraid of that.’

He was just an ordinary-looking man, dressed in last decade’s fashionable cheesecloth suit, with a matching wide-brimmed hat and tooled leather brogues. Just an outsystem businessman idly window shopping across the street from her hotel.

Roz would have missed him completely if she hadn’t taken the precaution of making two passes in front of the hotel at ten-minute intervals. Mr Cheesecloth was in front of the same window both times. It couldn’t be coincidence – no window display was that interesting.

She’d been blown. The question was: was Mr Cheesecloth official, unofficial or freelance? Animal, criminal or vegetating?

Roz walked past the hotel for the third time; he didn’t react.

Which meant either he didn’t have a description of her, or they were already in her room and he was just there to give them advanced warning she was coming up.

Damn, the Doctor’s whatsit device was up there along with her emergency ID and the rest of her bearer bonds. She should have stashed them somewhere else but it wasn’t easy walking this side of the street – she used to be the one pretending to window shop.

One thing was for certain: she couldn’t keep walking around the block.

She stopped in front of a stall that sold beauty aides. The Qink looked at her and then quickly pulled its braincase halfway into 58

its chest. ‘Me different Qink, me don’t follow old ways – no favours, no guns.’

‘Relax,’ said Roz. ‘I want to buy a wig.’

The Qink’s braincase emerged cautiously. ‘Just a wig?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And while you’re at it, you can tell me where I can get some depilatory cream.’

She knew as soon as she stepped inside that her room had been turned over. It was a good job, a frighteningly professional job, with everything replaced exactly as it had been found. Too exactly – that’s what gave it away. They didn’t know who she was, then. If they had known she was an Adjudicator they would never have risked searching her room.

Roz put down her bag and checked the wardrobe door. The single hair she’d stuck across the bottom was intact. A very slick search indeed.

How had they tracked her? Not through the bearer bonds: they were untraceable. Not through the Qinks: they never squealed and you couldn’t use a mind probe on them. Private Susanti, assuming that Mei Feng had kept her word, would remember nothing more suspicious than a failed date. Besides, she’d given Susanti the wrong name. The last security check point she’d passed through, the last definite visual image of her, would have been the automatic simcord taken when she used the transmat to get down from Aegisthus Station. Two days ago.

Why had they taken so long to find her? It suggested that they were following an electronic trail. No matter how careful you were, no one moved through the Empire without leaving a trace.

The Order then? No, they would have just grabbed her at the first opportunity.

Hell, grabbed nothing – she’d have been shot while trying to escape. To the corrupt hierarchy of the Adjudicators she was a threat because she knew too much, and the honest ones thought she was bent. Either way you sliced it, she’d have been toast by now.

Roz stripped off her clothes and put the fresher on STEAM BATH

+ OPTIONS. She wrapped herself in a bath towel. The room had 59

undoubtedly been kinked for full EM spectrum visuals as well as audio. It was what she would have done.

Imperial Intelligence was too slick and well resourced to leave an operative exposed the way Mr Cheesecloth had been. Standard operating procedure dictated a team of at least six watchers with heavy electronic backup. So it wasn’t double-eye. Cheesecloth had to be a freelance working on his own – all his bugs were monitoring her room and probably the hotel’s own security systems.