The Abyss Beyond Dreams (44 page)

Slvasta looked at the body then hurriedly looked away, fighting the urge to throw up.

‘Sorry about that,’ Becker said in a detached voice. ‘The bussalores had chewed quite a lot of his face before we arrived. They’re getting bold right now. I guess
that’s what eating well does for them.’

‘Crudding Uracus,’ Javier grunted.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, gentlemen, I would like a formal identification, please. You were his colleagues.’

Slvasta clamped his teeth together and made himself look at the body again. The facial features – even with half of the skin missing – were easy enough to place. And the bussalores
hadn’t touched his hair. ‘Sweet Giu. It’s Bryan-Anthony.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’ Becker asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. And you, sir?’

‘It’s the mayor, yes,’ Javier said.

‘Officially confirmed.’ The coroner’s assistant scrawled something on his clipboard. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

‘What happened?’ Javier said.

‘As far as I can make out, it was a teekay violation in his cranium during sleep,’ the coroner’s assistant said. ‘There’s a small but noticeable tear inside the
frontal lobe, with no corresponding external trauma.’

‘But the stab wounds . . .’

‘Done immediately following death. Presumably to make a point. Whoever did this didn’t want us to write it off as a misidentified mod killing.’ He pulled back the blanket. The
words UNION WAGE had been sliced into Bryan-Anthony’s chest.

‘Crud,’ Slvasta exclaimed.

‘Did anyone sense his soul?’ Javier asked.

‘No, he’s ascended to Giu,’ the coroner’s assistant said. ‘I couldn’t find his soul when I arrived. If they can resist the song of Giu, then the souls of
murder victims tend to linger long enough to tell us who killed them. That’s why my profession has to have a very sensitive ex-sight.’

‘My station commander would like to meet you now,’ Becker said. ‘He wants to talk about giving all of you sheriff bodyguards.’

‘All of us?’ Javier asked. Who’s us?’

‘Democratic Unity councillors.’

‘I see,’ Javier said. ‘Tell him we’ll be happy to meet him later today. I must discuss this with my colleagues first.’

Becker glanced down at the corpse, then back at Javier. ‘As you wish. Do you have any idea who might have done this?’

‘No. but we both know a lot of business people aren’t happy with our party right now. Do you have any leads?’

‘No, sir, none. We only found out about the body a couple of hours ago. The bussalores made enough noise to wake a neighbour; she used her ex-sense and found his body.’

‘Body temperature gives me an approximate time of death around midnight,’ the coroner’s assistant said.

‘I see.’

‘Where were you at midnight, sir?’ Becker asked.

‘You can’t be serious?’

‘Murder is as serious as it gets, sir. It would help if we could eliminate you from our inquiries.’

‘I was at home. My partner Coulan will confirm that. As will Slvasta.’

‘Indeed. So you all live at the same address?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s very convenient. Did anyone else witness you going home?’

‘The neighbours, probably.’

‘Of course. I’ll check with them. Routine, you understand.’

‘Yes,’ Slvasta said. ‘I understand very well.’

*

Bethaneve was getting ready for work when Slvasta and Javier arrived back at the Tarleton Gardens flat.

‘Dead?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Bryan-Anthony is dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, great Giu.’ She clung to Slvasta, struggling to keep her grief and fear under control. ‘Who did it?’

‘The sheriffs don’t know.’

‘Ha!’

‘They don’t,’ Javier said. ‘Not the ones who talked to us, anyway. They were just the locals. The Captain’s police wouldn’t include them in
anything.’

‘You think
they
did it?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Slvasta’s ex-sense showed him Coulan hurrying up the stairs. When he burst into the room he was carrying three gazettes.

‘Bryan-Anthony—’ Javier began.

‘I know,’ Coulan waved the gazettes above his head. ‘They’re all leading with the story.’

Slvasta gave Javier a concerned look. ‘That was very quick. When do they print?’

‘Middle of the night, so they can get them on the racks by breakfast.’

Bethaneve had grabbed a gazette from Coulan. ‘This is awful,’ she said. ‘They’re saying it was poetic justice, that the anti-mod league mistook him for a mod-ape. What
anti-mod league?’

‘This one says that he was skimming union funds,’ Javier said. ‘And that the union is a gangster organization that murdered him because he wasn’t paying the gang bosses
their full cut. Bastards!’ He scrunched up the gazette.

‘The union doesn’t have any funds,’ Slvasta protested.

‘What did you expect?’ Coulan looked round at them. ‘Welcome to the opening salvo. You wanted the Captain’s attention, and you got it.’

‘They killed him!’ Bethaneve said.

‘And we want to overthrow them. Do you think that’s going to happen without blood being spilt? How did you think this would play out, that they’d just hand over the keys to the
palace? So far it’s all gone our way. Last night it didn’t. We knew it was dangerous being a frontman in this city; that’s why we pushed Bryan-Anthony out there. And it’s
going to happen to the next guy, and probably the one after. This is a war. You know that. So now it’s our turn to strike back. The pamphlets are on our side, so we get them to counter all
the crud Trevene’s people are peddling to the gazettes. People aren’t
stupid
; they’re going to realize there was something wrong about Bryan-Anthony’s death. And
next Tuesday we can use that to our advantage.’

Slvasta nodded, though he felt bad. They had known it would be dangerous fronting Democratic Unity. But this . . . It was shocking, being reminded just how high the stakes were, how serious this
was. He couldn’t even call it a game. Not any more, not now he had blood on his hands. ‘So are we still doing this?’

‘Fuck, yes,’ Bethaneve snapped.

The Eastern Trans-Continental Line was one of the four principal railway lines which stretched out from Varlan to cover most of the Lamaran continent. From Doncastor station in
the heart of the city, it ran north for nearly a thousand miles to Adice before heading due east for another two and a half thousand miles across the continent’s central lands to Portlynn at
the bottom of Nillson Sound – the vital spine of a hundred branch lines (themselves substantial) that nurtured the economy of the cities and towns that cluttered the provinces.

It wasn’t just Lamaran’s economy that was dependent on its railways; it was such a vast continent there was no other way the human society it hosted could hold together under one
governmental authority. As Slvasta’s cabal had discovered, organizing anything at a distance was tough. To date their influence didn’t extend outside the capital, and even there they
had no traction in the wealthier boroughs. As a result, Varlan’s beleaguered adaptor stables had only to travel a few hundred miles along the tracks to find stables with plentiful stocks of
neuts.

Those county stables that suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of bountiful orders to resupply the city with female neuts soon realized their advantage and hiked their prices up. It
was a seller’s market. Varlan’s Adaptor Guild gritted its collective teeth and paid. The guild president also insisted that the new stocks be guarded; he was very firm about that, and
the Captain’s private estate owned quite a few shares in the adaptor business. So all the roads around Doncastor station goods yard were closed at six o’clock on Tuesday morning. Every
sheriff from the surrounding five boroughs was on duty at the station to reinforce the barricades. More sheriffs were deployed at the station to escort the animal wagons back to their stables.

The Adaptor Guild had arranged a train of thirty cattle trucks, each containing fifty new female neuts. It was enough stock to refill every stable in the city, and to restart mod breeding.
Already the stables were being strengthened – fortified, according to the pamphlets – by surviving mod-apes and human labourers. Men with strong teekay were being employed as guards,
most of them brought in from outside Varlan to be sure they weren’t tainted by this new anti-mod fanaticism infecting the city.

Gossip ’path began as soon as the sheriffs started to put up the barricades. By seven o’clock everyone awake in Varlan knew the train was due in today.

Bethaneve sent a private ’path to five people. It was forwarded to eight more. Then seventeen. Forty-three . . .

Cell members began to agitate each sympathizer they knew to go and protest. People with newfound jobs. People who were now unionized and anticipating higher wages. People who’d realized
that their lives would have more opportunity without mods. And, as always, the ones spoiling for a fight, any fight. They all converged on Doncastor station as the sun rose over the city and the
night’s river mist burnt away.

Cab drivers outside the borough refused to take anyone there, no matter if they had legitimate train tickets. Cabs already in the borough headed out.

Bethaneve took up position a quarter of a mile away from the station, sitting in a little café on Rycotte Street. Her ex-sight located Slvasta, Javier and Coulan, all of whom were closer
to the station, but at the rear of the swelling crowds. She sent out quick private ’paths to each of them, checking they were in range. In turn, they were in contact with all the level two,
three, four, and five cells, and confirmed their location. Those cells were the cutoffs, inactive and unseen, they’d never be asked to perform any physical action, never do anything to draw
Trevene’s attention. They were the communications strata, in touch with dozens upon dozens of other cells scattered throughout the crowd, relaying orders and receiving observations. Her mind
held the beautiful geometry of inter-cell communications, positioning them in her ex-sense visualization of the area.

‘Are we ready?’ Slvasta ’pathed at half past nine.

Bethaneve sipped her hot chocolate and picked up a gazette, the perfect image of an innocent bystander. ‘We’re ready.’

‘Then let’s do this.’

The train pulled in to the goods yard at eleven minutes past ten. It was greeted by stable owners from across the city. All of them had caged wagons to transport the female neuts, most of them
hurriedly altered with planks of wood affixed to the bars, offering a flimsy level of protection and anonymity to the animals they were intended to transport. Waiting alongside the wagons were
guards, tough men whose loyalty was to the shiniest coin.

Bethaneve sent out some instructions, sensing them dissipate across the cells. Several mod-birds fell from the sky, striking rooftops with nasty thuds – dead long before they landed. The
remaining mod-birds started to flap hurriedly away from the area, withdrawn by their owners.

*

Excitement and animosity began to build in the crowd waiting outside the barricades – a psychic wave that washed across the station and began to unnerve the placid neuts.
As they were led out of the cattle trucks and into the boarded-up wagons, they began to buck about, anxious to escape this new and frightening environment. Handlers were hard pressed to cope with
them.

‘Is that a truck of mod-apes?’ Bethaneve asked in surprise.

Cell members (level twenty-eight) were close to the train, sharing their perception. Sure enough, two of the trucks seemed to be full of mod-apes.

‘Those stables are greedy,’ Slvasta murmured.

‘More like desperate,’ Coulan said.

Jeers rippled across the protesters jamming the streets outside the station as they picked up on the shared ex-sight. The new surge of antipathy made several neuts rear up and run frantically.
Stable Guild workers ran after them, trying to calm the terrified animals.

An insidious teekay began to open the locks on the cattle wagons. The neuts crammed inside, already frantic and oversensitive to the psychic storm boiling from the hostile crowd, burst out and
stampeded across the station’s marshalling yard. Amid the chaos, more truck locks were opened. The mod-apes broke free. The humans in the marshalling yard yelled wildly as the tide of alien
animals raced about chaotically, hooves kicking at anybody in the way. Guild workers tried to halt the mod-apes that were rampaging amid the neuts, but their ’path orders had no effect.

‘Oh crud,’ Slvasta gulped. ‘Did we do that? Did we set them free?’

‘We didn’t plan it,’ Bethaneve said. ‘But it looked organized to me.’

‘One of the cells innovating, maybe?’ Javier said.

‘Maybe.’

‘Irrelevant right now,’ Slvasta said. He was standing a little way up Cranwich Road, surrounded by the crowd. The atmosphere had begun to change from confident aggression to unease.
A hundred metres away, the sheriffs on the barricade across Knole Street, which ran along the side of the station, were turning round nervously. Behind them, one of the tall cast-iron gates leading
to the marshalling yard began to shake as neuts hurled themselves at it. Individually, a neut was a modest animal without a great deal of power, but now there were hundreds of them hurtling along,
goaded by their own fear. Herd instinct, enhanced by a shared crude psychic distress, made the flight imperative utterly dominant. The impact as they flung themselves heedlessly at the gate was
like a battering ram. Then a couple of hulking mod-apes hit the gate.

Slvasta was perceiving it with his own ex-sight, so there was no mistaking the force and coherence of the telepathic orders which frantic Stable Guild members were thrusting into the minds of
the mod-apes to stop. Yet they made no difference.

The gates burst open. Hundreds of panicked frenzied neuts burst out into Knole Street and began to run for freedom.

‘That’s
wrong
,’ Slvasta whispered. ‘Why can’t the wranglers get control of them . . . ?’ Bad memories began to percolate into his conscious
thoughts.

Anxiety started to flare through the crowd around Slvasta. Over by the barriers, the sheriffs were trying to combine their teekay before the onrush of hundreds of crazed neuts bearing down on
them. The neuts at the front of the rampaging pack were felled as the sheriffs lost discipline and sent spikes of teekay into the animals’ brains, shredding the neural cells. But it took
time, and the corpses were immediately swarmed by the rest of the inflamed herd. Several sheriffs broke and sprinted for the relative safety of the buildings on either side of the road.