The Collapsium (23 page)

Bruno didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled. “Surely you must have been in agony!”

Again, Shiao shrugged. “I assume so. By the time the city police arrived, I was dead, so I never did learn how it all
turned out. We didn’t have the kind of scene reconstructions that we do nowadays; it became something of a town mystery. All I can say is that one suspect was picked up at the scene, having been detained there by an injury, and the other was identified and arrested later based on the video I’d captured. No other associates were ever explicitly identified.”

Shiao’s voice had never once wavered from the precise, restrained, overpolite monotone that had marked good police officers for centuries, perhaps forever. There was no room for boast or modesty in that tone: the account was purely factual and devoid of emotional overtone, laid out plainly for Bruno’s evaluation. Shiao’s eyes had not looked clouded or sentimental as he told the tale of this major turning point in his life.

“I daresay these gentlemen benefited from the lesson,” Bruno ventured.

Shiao nodded. “I like to think so, sir. A policeman’s job is to chill and frustrate crime—merely punishing it is a symptom of failure.”

“I suppose so, yes. Very insightful. I’m surprised they didn’t promote you directly to captain.”

Again, a factual monotone. “I failed the aptitude, sir. I hope to grow and season with age, but today the Constabulary has dozens of better cops than myself.”

“Dozens? Really?” Bruno blanched inwardly at the thought. With forty billion citizens to choose from, the Queendom certainly had no shortage of compulsive savants to fill its payroll. Better than filling it with incompetents, obviously, but there was something frightening about a really gung-ho interplanetary police force. “I shall be very careful to obey the laws, I think.”

“That’s the idea, sir.” Then, catching something in Bruno’s look, Shiao said, “It makes some people nervous, this kind of concentrated authority. I understand the feeling. But I can assure you of the Constabulary’s complete intolerance for bad cops. Any crook or bigot in our midst, or even a well-meaning authoritarian, would be disowned and prosecuted
immediately. Of the seven thousand, six hundred, and eight applicants for the position of lieutenant, more than eighty percent failed the moral aptitude screening.”

“Seven thousand!” Bruno said, surprised. “Goodness, that’s a lot of applicants. What happened to all of them?”

“A few are taken on each year as sergeants,” Shiao replied, “and since local and regional forces have less stringent entrance criteria, they absorb a lot of our near misses.”

“Mmm. How many is a lot?”

Shrug. “Probably a few hundred, that year.”

“And the rest?”

Shiao considered for a few seconds before answering, “I would guess many of them found work in support roles: admin, theory, equipment testing. And there’s always a need for critics and advocates in the policy arena. And actors for the training demos, and I suppose for commercial movies as well. Actors who really
understand
the police are rare.”

“And the rest?” Bruno persisted.

Now Shiao began to look uncomfortable, and Bruno sensed he was edging into taboo territory. In a meritocracy, what happened to people who lacked merit? People who were lazy or impulsive or foolish could change, up to a point, but could they
want
to change?

“Neighborhood Watch is a respectable job,” Shiao answered finally. “And they’ll take almost anyone.”

“Almost,” Bruno mused. “Mmm. And the rest?”

Shiao sighed. “There’s always crime itself, sir. It’s not generally a career choice for geniuses.”

“Ah. I suppose not. Seems a bit unfair, though.”

Shiao, to Bruno’s surprise, seemed to find that funny. “
They
certainly think so, sir. But good and evil are choices, not fates handed out at birth. We’re talking, probably, about fewer than a hundred of those seven thousand applicants, and if you actually
met
them, you might find your sympathies reduced.”

“Ah. Maybe so. You’ve little hope of promotion, then? It sounds like an awfully rigid structure.”

“They all are, sir. To get promoted I’d have to displace someone more experienced, which is a huge effort even to attempt. And my own job goes open for recompetition every decade, so I could well be
de
moted if I start to get sloppy. In theory, we’re encouraged to see demotion as a positive career move—point of maximum competence, as they say. But that’s a fairly new idea. ‘Rigid structure’ is an accurate description. But of course, we’re planning for the long term these days.”

“Mmm. Indeed.”

Shiao had nothing further to say. Neither did Bruno. The conversation was at an end.

The actual docking and boarding were so uneventful Bruno nearly missed them; the cruiser simply pulled up alongside the suspect vessel, selected a standard docking adapter, and mated airlocks with nary a thump. Only when Shiao’s harnesses retracted and vanished and the SWAT robots started running in puppetlike synchrony toward the hatch, flicking on their optically superconducting outer jackets so that they vanished from sight—only then did Bruno realize what was happening. Hastily, he unstrapped himself, prepared to follow once the area was “secured.” This had been explained to him at length—whether he left a copy behind or not, he was neither to risk himself nor interfere with tactical or evidentiary procedures unless some very clear and pertinent reason presented itself.

It took a whopping forty-five seconds to secure the suspect spaceship.

“One occupant,” the human SWAT commander stated flatly as he materialized to usher the royal committee from their berths. “A modified human, male, deceased.”

“Modified?” Bruno asked, curious and a little afraid. “Deceased?”

“You’ll see.”

“Hmm.”

The inside of the ship was remarkably cramped and colorless, like a half dozen prison cells strung end to end. The ship was much smaller on the inside than the outside, since after
all it was mostly engine, fuel tank, and superconducting battery. But it was so
dim
, so
ugly
. There were no windows of any kind, and no effort had been made to smooth or pad the many corners, nor to hide the various plumbing and wiring that connected the ship’s systems. It looked like a utility closet, and would have been an inhospitable place even without the twenty black-shelled SWAT robots crowding it.

The “one occupant” lay on a kind of acceleration couch near the ship’s bow, from which all manner of hoses and cables radiated. The couch appeared to be the ship’s only actual furnishing. The “deceased” status of said occupant was obvious; Bruno’s external air pressure gauge read a flat 0.00, and the figure was naked, somewhat shriveled looking, and was both covered and surrounded by odd pools and knobs and jagged crystals of red-colored ice. “Male” was there for anyone to see, and as for “modified human,” well, that was unequivocal as well; there were wires and tubes feeding into every part of the dead man’s body. The ones running into his head looked blackened and scorched and melted, as if they’d carried a brief but enormous electrical surge.

The fact that he had six arms—each gripping its own joystick on the wide, gray shoulders of the couch—was actually one of the least disturbing things about him. People hadn’t done this much in Bruno’s day, wholesale modifications of their body forms, but even then, the absence had been recognized as a matter of fashion. The idea itself was hardly a shocking one, given that the capability was there in any fax machine.

What did shock Bruno was that the face, shriveled and bloody and burned as it was, looked painfully familiar. “I know this man,” he said, and his voice sounded unnerved even to him. “I’ve seen him. On my last visit to the Queendom, I think. On Maxwell Montes, on Venus.”

“It’s Wenders Rodenbeck,” Tamra agreed, and her voice sounded unnerved as well. “The playwright.”

“Activist against collapsium,” Deliah added. “Yes, we hear from him frequently at the ministry. I’ve never known him to
wear six-armed body forms, though, nor to travel in space. He’s the typical hypocrite: faxing himself daily through the collapsiter grid he claims to despise. He’s pleasant about it, though—a natural charmer. I actually like him. Can this be the same person?”

“Where are his injunctions and restraining orders now?” Marlon murmured, as if to the body itself. “Is this his final settlement, a head full of burnt wires? I’ll wager I know Wenders better than any of you. A happy prankster, yes. Now a killer? Now lying here with six arms, and blood all over his face? Is this a trick? God, excuse me, I think I’m going to vomit.”

And so he did, inside the bowl of his helmet. Familiar with the hazard, the SWAT robots slapped his purge valve, then whisked him away to the fax machine before he could move wrong or breathe wrong and suck down a choking glob. Crystals of purged, rapidly freezing vomit spun after him, as if terrified of being abandoned here without him.

“Cause of death,” Cheng Shiao said gently, looking down at a wellstone pad, “probable suicide. He left a note. An entire log, actually, detailing his activities for the past seven years. Assuming it’s accurate, this would appear to be our man.”

Vivian regained her maturity and summoned Wenders
Rodenbeck right there to
De Towaji’s Bane
for questioning. Did he know anything about this ship or its business? Did he wish any harm to the Queendom, or bear a grudge against any of its officials or luminaries?

Rodenbeck, bleary eyed, hanging there in zero atmosphere in a spacesuit he’d never been trained to use, could only stammer his replies: No, no, not at all. Never!

The Queendom recognized no right to remain silent under questioning; every response was compulsory, and subject to analysis by the finest lie detectors, stress analyzers, and personality emulators of the Royal Constabulary. If he was
innocent of the crime being investigated, all records of this conversation would be purged from the interrogators’ minds, leaving them to speculate about any other infelicities or malfeasances he might have revealed under questioning. And any distress he suffered would be measured with exacting precision, and a proper compensation calculated and dispensed. But in the meantime, the twin priorities of public safety and swift justice held sway, and his brain was theirs to pick.

Bruno had never imagined himself in such a position before; it troubled and embarrassed him, dirtied him in some ill-defined way. Perhaps the experience would be erased, though; Rodenbeck
did
appear both innocent and distressed. “I’m an artist,” he protested repeatedly. “I love the Queendom—I’ve gone to considerable pains to protect it against its own excesses. And always within the framework of the law! Well, nearly always …”

“Ah,” Vivian said then, with a knowing look. “Yes. Indeed.”

Bruno figured that would have been an unnerving thing under any circumstances, to be addressed that way by a Commandant-Inspector of the Royal Constabulary. Hearing it from an eleven-year-old girl, though, seemed to tip Rodenbeck into hysteria. “Hey, I watch the news!” he shouted. “I’m not stupid. I know why I’m here! You think this Ring Collapsiter thing has anything to do with me? Do you really?”

“You
have
spoken out against it on lots of occasions,” Vivian pointed out. “And against its creators.”

“Of course! Its creators are guilty of the grossest irresponsibility and negligence,
as demonstrated
by their current difficulties. I protest the use of collapsium
because
it’s dangerous,
because
it poses a huge safety risk. I’m on the side of the angels, here, little girl. Why
would
I, why would I
possibly
do anything to enlarge that risk?”

Vivian, examining readings of some sort on her little wellstone pad, frowned at that. “
Have
you done anything to enhance the threat?”

“No.”

“Have you harmed anyone?”

“No.”

“Do you plan to?”

“No!”

She sighed then, and clunked her hand against the dome of her helmet in a manner all too familiar to Bruno—she’d been trying to touch her face. “Come look at a body with me, sir. You may find the experience disturbing.”

“Why? Whose body is it?”

“Yours.”

They strode the length of the ship, slipping past SWAT robots and royal bodyguards until they’d reached the strange acceleration couch. It had been fitted with a crinkly black plastic cover, but at Vivian’s nod the attendant Shiao unhooked its fasteners and peeled it away, revealing the body beneath.

Rodenbeck recoiled. “Eew. Is that real? Is that supposed to be
me
?’ ”

“It is you, sir,” Vivian said. “Bioassay confirms it’s an accurate copy whose pattern began divergence from yours approximately seven years ago. It shows several fax markers in that first year, each with body modifications associated, and nothing at all after that. Reconstruction shows it’s been physically grafted to that chair for sixty-two months, nine days. Unfortunately, the brain suffered extensive damage in the surge that killed it, so its memories are not available to us. Do you have any idea what this … individual … might have been up to?”

Rodenbeck started to say something, but fainted instead.

Vivian sighed, and said to Shiao, “Get him out of here; take him home. He doesn’t know anything.”

Shiao straightened. “Right away, Commandant-Inspector. I agree with your analysis.”

“Relax, Lieutenant. Please.”

“Yes’m. Absolutely.”

When Shiao had gone, Tamra whirled around and pointed an angry finger at the body. “This creature did well to kill
itself—I’d see it jailed for a million years! Yet Rodenbeck, who
is
the creature, is innocent? Explain this to me, Vivian. Why did you let him go?”

“Because he’s innocent,” Vivian said simply, attempting a shrug inside her suit. “We see this sometimes: compartmentalization of intent. We all have copies running around, true? Sometimes, one of them will diverge, and decide it’s not part of the canonical individual anymore. Could be a traumatic experience, could be almost anything, really. All of a sudden, you have this person with Wenders Rodenbeck’s history and knowledge, but not his actual sense of identity. Maybe he’s smug, he figures he knows something that’s fundamentally changed him. So he changes his body, changes his name, stays out of fax machines—which would not only log his existence, but might eventually report his movements back to the
real
Rodenbeck and charge him transit fees for every step!