The Gordon Mamon Casebook (18 page)

The only advantage Gordon held was that of home territory. He knew the layout of this type of freight module in considerable detail, enough to know that there were plenty of hiding-spots throughout the twenty storeys of the elevator-car’s frame. He presumably just needed to survive the next seventy-two hours of the elevator-car’s ascent, and to hope that Skytop’s cops could find a criminal who’d managed to elude them on at least one previous occasion.

Against this, Haier held the predator’s advantage: he only needed to succeed once.

Think! How to survive? How to rescue Claudia Iyzowt?

For all that it was reassuring to think of this as a battle of wits, Gordon couldn’t deny some weaponry would assist his peace of mind.
If I just had something to help me make it through the night. Like a servo-boosted jousting lance, or something.

Weaponry?
Maybe he was thinking too literally. Maybe there was a way of using the freight-tower,
itself
, as his weapon. He was a Skywards employee, after all—he’d have access to all of the elevator car’s systems, in principle, through his handheld and his ident codes. He could monitor—

A shout from four storeys below him interrupted his chain of thought. Gordon glanced down. Far below, his armour-plated foe had just chanced to look up the escaladder.

Time to switch tracks
. Gordon stepped off the escaladder at the next floor, toggling the ladder from ‘ascent’ to ‘descent’ in an effort to buy himself a few more precious seconds.

The floorplan in this section of the tower was centred on the cylindrical column of the freight tower’s plastimarble cladding, which ensconsed the thick filament of the space elevator shaft itself; around the column, two moving rampways (one up, one down) spiralled concentrically; then there was an inner circular corridor ringed by storerooms and by four short points-of-the-compass passageways that radiated north, south, east and west; then an outer circle of corridor which provided, north and south, escaladder access to the floors above and below, and east and west staircases. There were plenty of blind spots, useful for evading pursuit: but it also left opportunities galore for an ambush predator like Haier.

Still, Gordon knew where Haier had been, just seconds ago. If he snuck along the corridor here, then took the passageway into the central section, he’d come to the rampway before Haier could come into sight. He hoped. From which point, the logical thing to do would be to put more distance between himself and his pursuer, which meant going up.

Or did it mean going down?
Quite aside from anything else, ‘lower’ sounder distinctly better than ‘higher’ in this particular situation.

Either way, it far surpassed getting cornered. He took the rampway down, moving as quickly as he dared.

When he’d descended eight floors, he opened a storage-room door at random and went in, pulling the door quietly closed behind him.

Time to get out his handheld, and see what he could achieve.

* * *

He’d messaged Security, groundside and Skytop, to inform them of Haier’s presence and Claudia Iyzowt’s disappearance. Or at least he’d tried to: the messages had failed to send. A comms blackout was worrying, but by then he had more pressing concerns, courtesy of the freight tower’s sensitive environment monitoring network …

He didn’t want to dwell too deeply on the significance of the handheld’s insistence that there were only two lifesigns detectable within the freight module, one in this storage room and one in the basement. If Haier had disposed of Claudia Iyzowt, while Gordon had been running scared … it was clearly conduct unbecoming. But what could he have done, unarmed against his armoured opponent?

Conduct unbecoming … armoured …

A thought occurred to Gordon. Hastily, he instructed the handheld to find the location of the freight-module’s main electrical controls. And learned, to his chagrin, that they were distributed in three places: in a cabinet on the obs deck, for the internal power supply within the top third of the tower; on floor eleven, for the freight-car’s central chunk; and for the module’s lower reaches, including the basement, the controls were … in the basement. Which was also the current location of the other detectable life-signal, presumably Haier himself.
Damn
.

Still, the basement was a fairly broad area, and according to his handheld the control panel was on the opposite side of the chamber to the Haier telltale. For his plan to work, he’d need to get his hands on the wiring behind the control panel, but he could dial the illumination down from here, and hope that the resultant gloom bought him enough time to put his scheme into effect.
If I dim the lights on these floors now, and wait until I’m almost at the basement before I cut the illumination there, my eyes will be better dark-adapted than Haier’s. I hope.

It was now or never. And, really, ‘never’ wasn’t an option, which only left ‘now’—for all that his pounding heart insisted that ‘later’ shouldn’t be ruled out of contention entirely …

He opened the storeroom door and peeked outside.
Coast clear.
And Haier was still showing in the same position, in the basement, several floors down. Gordon crept to the ill-lit rampway.

And walked straight into Haier, half a flight down. Before the reluctant detective could react, the armoured assassin grabbed hold of Gordon’s arms in a superhuman grip.

“Ha!” said Haier, in triumph, as Gordon flinched. “But why so spooked, Matron?”

“
Mamon
,” replied Gordon.

“Relax, detective. I need you alive. For the next couple of hours, at least.”

Gordon did not find the assurance particularly soothing. Another thing was troubling him, too.

On his handheld, the second lifesignal had been showing in the basement all this time.
What did it mean, that Haier was not displaying as a lifesignal?

* * *

The one positive aspect, Gordon decided, was that Claudia Iyzowt was still alive. Albeit for a given value of ‘alive’ that involved the short, grey-haired heiress’s apparent sedation and confinement, by the medium of a set of dispiritingly secure-looking straps, to an uncomfortably medical-looking trolley with an unwarrantedly extensive collection of blade-and sensor-wielding robotic limbs poised thirty centimetres or so above Claudia’s head.

Gordon could empathise rather too well with Mrs Iyzowt’s predicament. He was similarly fastened to a second medgurney with an even more comprehensive array of knife-equipped arms and telescopic eyestalks. The armour-clad Gunther Haier, who had briefly gone to search for something amongst the now-opened crates across the freight-tower’s basement, was now advancing with purpose towards Gordon, holding a small, bright and shiny circular saw that seemed to whirr with an enthusiasm which Gordon found quite inappropriate in the circumstances. To add insult to the extreme probability of impending injury, Gordon could also see that his precious handheld, lying discarded on the basement floor, was still switched ‘on’ and was steadily losing power. It might well be dead before he was.

And, for all that envy in the circumstances seemed the slightest bit inappropriate, he couldn’t help but notice that the knifey attachments on Claudia’s medgurney were about five centimetres further above her face than were those on Gordon’s.

At least he now knew what had been in the two mysterious crates that he’d seen in the basement with the suit of armour, when he’d first entered the building just a few short hours ago.

“Isn’t this the point,” said Haier, revving the motor on his surgical powersaw with, in Gordon’s view, altogether too much
joie de vivre
, “where you assure me I’ll never get away with it?”

Gordon twisted his head as far towards Haier as was permitted by the medgurney’s straps, looked the other straight in the visor, and said “For pity’s sake, Haier, you’ve got a beef with me, revenge and all that, but why drag her into this as well? Let Mrs Iyzowt
go
.”

Haier laughed: the direct antithesis of humour. “Doesn’t work that way, Modicum.”

“
Mamon
,” replied Gordon. “Why doesn’t it?”

“Because she’s got something I want, and it would be a crime to let all this planning go to waste.” Haier paused in his slow advance and made an expansive gesture with his arms. “And because I need you both for this to work.”

“What is this ‘this’?”

“What d’you think I am, Mutton?” asked Haier, as the basement’s lights flickered momentarily.

“
Mamon
,” said Gordon, mindful of the sharp power tool in Haier’s metal-gloved hand, “I think you’re a—er, a highly experienced career criminal with a speciality in—”

“In tying up loose ends?”

“I’d have put it differently.” Gordon swallowed a lump of unease. Or maybe it was reflux. “But yes, close enough. Still, it’s never too late to change.”

“Oh, I quite agree,” said Haier. “But not in the sense you mean. You two are my ticket out of here. Do you know the hit-man’s greatest enemy?”

“Interpol? Prison? Price hikes in ammunition?”

“
Recognisability
, Moron.”

“
Mamon
,” said Gordon. “I guess that would explain your fetish for disguise.”

“I don’t have a … well, maybe I do. But that’s by-the-by. And if you’re referring to the armour, it’s not just a
disguise
. It’s a
full-body environment suit
. Not that there’s any ‘body’ left, really, to speak of.”

“You’ve cyborged yourself?” asked Gordon, sharp-voiced, wishing he could do something about the sweat starting to adhere to his brow. But his arms, like the rest of him, were pinioned by the medgurney’s straps.

The lights flickered again. “I prefer to think of it as a maximum-impact makeover,” said Haier. “My brain, me, transplanted into an enduring, near-indestructible metal body.”

“But you were—”

“In jail? Yes. But it’s surprising what you can achieve in a weekend’s bereavement release. I haven’t looked back since. Until you try it for yourself, I don’t think you can properly appreciate how liberating it can be, to have your veins replaced by electrical circuitry, your muscles by battery-powered servoes. I now have superhuman strength and immunity from every disease known to man. Plus, of course, with all my needs met through artificial power sources, I no longer need to eat.”

“If you gathered us here just to gloat—”

“Oh, far from it, Maelstrom.”

“
Mamon!
”

“Whatever. Gloat? No, I have very special plans for you and the heiress here.” Haier started moving closer again. “Heh. Just thought of something. Bit late now, of course, but it
is
a pity you never cyborged yourself. It’d be a very useful feature, a detective who never needed to eat.”

“I don’t follow,” said Gordon. He didn’t like the way Haier had sniggered.

“I mean,” said Haier, “you could have called yourself ‘no-shit Sherlock’.” There were a few seconds of stony silence. “Somebody should write that one down.”

“If you’ll allow Claudia and me to live,” suggested Gordon, “I’ll make sure to pass it on to the Skytop cops for you.”

“No can do. But I’d better wrap this up now.” Haier thumbed the surgical powersaw’s controls: it gave a piercing, rising whine as its blade rotated.

“Wrap what up?” Gordon asked, speaking loudly and quickly.

Haier paused again. “See, there’s only one drawback to this all-metal getup. It’s too perfect.”

“How d’you mean?” The lights flickered again, and a desperate hope occurred to Gordon.
If he could keep Haier talking
 …

“Every time I pull an impossible hit, they know it’s me,” replied the hitman. “Because the other pros … they’re all too fond of the meat, know what I mean? So there’s ten or eleven take-outs I’ve performed over the last few months, and I mean real class performances, no trace whatsoever … but nobody else on Earth could’ve pulled them, so the cops, they know it’s me. Even though I left no trace. I ask you, does that seem fair?”

“Well—”

“So it’s pretty useful, I guess, that I don’t need to sleep no more, because you get the cops of eleven or twelve different countries on your trail, comparing notes, they’re not going to sleep on the case, either. They’ve been relentless, absolutely relentless. Clueless, too, for the most part, but that’s not going to last. So I need to pull something special, to throw them off the trail. Took me long enough to figure out how to do that. Now, if you don’t mind—”

“Wait!” called Gordon, futilely struggling against the straps. “You still haven’t said—”

“It’s maybe one of those things that’s easier to demonstrate than to explain.” Haier was now standing beside Gordon’s medgurney. “Only that won’t work too well, in your case.” He lifted the powersaw above Gordon’s head.

“Brain surgery!” Gordon yelled, in desperation, and then felt his insides turn to jelly—metaphorical jelly—while the lights extinguished themselves for one-and-a-half interminable seconds. “I’m right, aren’t I, Haier? You’re going to pull a brain transplant, aren’t you?”

“
Two
brain transplants,” said Haier. “One for practice, so the medgurneys get a feel for what’s involved. And one brain left over, out in the cold. Yours.”

“I don’t follow.”

“OK, it goes like this,” said Haier, in an easy conversational style which, in other circumstances, might have seemed relaxing. “First, the gurneys hack out your brain, prep your body for its new brain. It’ll be a bit rough, but they pick up skills very quickly, if the brochures are to be believed. Then, they’ll remove old lady Iyzowt’s grey matter, handle it carefully, prep her body for
its
new brain, and transfer her brain to your body, rewiring it so she retains the mental ability of a two-year-old. Probably not much change there, far as your body’s concerned.”

At the mention of her name, the heiress finally stirred, mumbling something as she struggled against her confines.

“Excellent,” said Haier. “I need her to be conscious. So, once the medgurneys have practised on her-brain-into-your-head, they’ll wait fifteen minutes, check that the transplant has taken, and then push through with my-brain-into-her-head. It’s perfect. It’s foolproof. Purely a temporary arrangement, just for a few years until the heat is well-and-truly off. I mean, it’s a pity to have to give up all
this
, but Iyzowt’s not that old, she’s healthy, and she’s rich as. And nobody in the worlds is going to look at her, to look at
me
, and think of Gunther Haier.”