Oddly, they were getting some dark looks from the humans, although there were a few races who were intermingling quite happily with the humans, including one with a blue warty skin, four blank orbs that might have been eyes and a ruff of coa.r.s.e red hair around the neck.
"What race is that?" she said, nodding towards the alien.
The Doctor followed her gaze, and frowned. "I"m not sure," he admitted, squinting at the being as it pa.s.sed them by. "I don"t recognize it at all." His face suddenly cleared, and he cried: "Of course! It"s not an alien at all. It"s human!"
"Human?" Bernice wasn"t sure that she had heard correctly. "What is it, Mardi Gras?"
"No." The Doctor watched the alien"s receding form. "Genetic alteration. I think the trade name is "body-bepple". Quite easy, if you know what you"re doing."
"But why would you want to?"
"Why would you want to wear high heels?"
"I don"t."
"No, but if you did."
"Haven"t got a clue. Fashion, I guess."
The Doctor nodded. "Exactly. Fashion."
"So how does it work?"
"Well," he mused, "on the basis that all cells in the human body except for brain cells are replaced every three months or so, if you can stick a specific mutagen onto a targeted virus, you can alter your body quite significantly.
Within the general design limitations of the human body, of course. Interesting: I hadn"t expected humanity to be quite this far advanced. Probably the Wars."
"The Wars?" Bernice asked as the walkway took them out of the tower and into the open air.
"Indeed. Earth is in an expanding Empire phase at the moment. The Wars of Acquisition only ended a few years ago, when the Sense-Sphere finally capitu-lated. After a few years of austerity, there was an economic and technological upsurge. The current era is characterized by an intense hatred of aliens in person exceeded in intensity only by a desire for anything actually alien food, artwork, fashion, et cetera. It"s a common pattern. Impose sanctions and restraints on a growing culture for a few years, then suddenly take them away and watch the culture expand rapidly. Bacteria do the same."
Bernice looked around at the forest of elegant, needle-like buildings sprout-ing from a dark jumble of shadows and cloud. "Yes, but bacteria don"t build floating skysc.r.a.pers and moving walkways," she said.
"Ah, well, the Minorith of Barrab Major "21.
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Bernice?"
"Shut up."
Adjudicator Secular Rashid"s office occupied the whole of one raft. Never one to ignore the opportunities offered by technology, she had perfected the twin arts of computerization and delegation to such a degree that her job involved no physical paperwork at all, freeing her to plan her office for comfort rather than efficiency. In her current form one beppled to resemble a cla.s.sical musician named Elvis Presley she seemed to spend most of her time striking poses and waxing her quiff.
When Forrester and Cwej entered, she was standing beside the sofa, blowing up a small inflatable ring. With no noticeable embarra.s.sment she sat down gingerly, shoving the cushion beneath her robes. She curled her lip with pleasure.
"Justice . . . " she said in greeting. "Piles are giving me gyp. Must be the heat.
You wouldn"t believe." She looked Forrester and Cwej over. "You"re late."
"And fairness be your friend. They moved the " Forrester started to say.
"Don"t want to know." Rashid gave Cwej another glance, and frowned. He smiled sunnily back. "Who"s this?"
"This is Cwej."
"Reporting for duty, sir!" Cwej said cheerily.
Rashid and Forrester exchanged glances.
"Keen, isn"t he?" Rashid said.
Forrester decided to get out while the going was good. "Adjudicator Secular, if there"s nothing you want to see me for, I"ll mosey across and grab some breakfast "
Rashid smiled. "Not so fast. Glad you"re here. Saved me calling for you."
Forrester felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
"Cwej here is your new squire," Rashid continued.
Forrester glanced across at Cwej. To give the guy his due, his expression fell slightly at the news. Just slightly, but it made Forrester feel a lot better.
"Oh good," she said.
"Nice to know you," Cwej said, recovering his sunny smile and holding out a hand. Forrester looked at it for a long moment, then shook it.
"Now that the pleasantries are over," said Rashid, "get your a.r.s.es across to District Five. Been a murder. Only an offworlder, but we"ve got to go through the formalities. Securitybot happened to be pa.s.sing by on patrol just after it happened. Suspect"s being held."
Forrester frowned. "Another one? What"s going on?"
"Just get over there. Centcomp"ll have the details."22.
"Adjudicator Secular, we must be batting way over the stats here. How many murders have we had this month? Fifty? Sixty? We usually average ten a month, max. Something"s going down."
"All solved, though. Even the offworlders."
"That"s not the point."
"Tell me about it," Rashid grumbled, shifting position on the cushion. "Ul-cers are playing merry h.e.l.l. Not just the Undertown, either. Lodges up top are reporting an increase in crimes of violence. Had another one this morning: some company executive cut a guy"s head off with a laser. The killer"s hysterical now: claims she doesn"t know why she did it. Centcomp says we"re dead on the percentages, though. Nothing unusual. Probably a freak statistical spike. Just get out there and pull in the suspect."
They got.
The room was dark, apart from the glow of a desk-screen. A pair of fat hands was clasped across the surface of the desk, appearing to hover above the stream of images and data that spurted, too fast for the human eye to follow, within its crystalline depths.
The hands suddenly jerked, the fingers separating convulsively. Slowly they caressed the surface of the desk.
"So," a voice crooned smugly in the darkness, "you return again to our little planet, Doctor, with a new face and a new friend. You must find us very interesting indeed. Almost as interesting, perhaps, as I find you. You and your fascinating and, I must say, refreshingly anachronistic craft."
The voice"s owner chuckled.
"After all," it continued, "I must be the only man alive who still remembers police boxes."23.
Chapter 2.
"I"m Evan Claple and this is The Empire Today The Empire Today , on the spot, on and , on the spot, on and off the Earth. Today"s news: Imperial fleets devastate the planet Jal-lafillia, bringing the insurrection to a close. We have live footage of off the Earth. Today"s news: Imperial fleets devastate the planet Jal-lafillia, bringing the insurrection to a close. We have live footage of the execution of the alien ringleaders. Also: controversy as a leaked the execution of the alien ringleaders. Also: controversy as a leaked Imperial report recommends that the Undertowns be razed to the Imperial report recommends that the Undertowns be razed to the ground, and their inhabitants with them . . . " ground, and their inhabitants with them . . . "
While Cwej powered up the least battered flitter on the raft, Forrester accessed centcomp for the location of the murder and programmed their destination into the vehicle"s navicomp.
"Roz Forrester . . . " Cwej mused as they lifted off and skimmed close to the sc.u.mmy surface of the water. His furry, snub-nosed face was screwed up into a caricature snarl. "I know that name. I know know that name." His face suddenly brightened. "Hey," he said, "you"re not the Roz Forrester who eats idents, are you?" that name." His face suddenly brightened. "Hey," he said, "you"re not the Roz Forrester who eats idents, are you?"
Here we go, Forrester thought. They"ll never let me forget it. "Yeah. The same."
"Wow!" It"s one of the stories they tell us about at the Academy. I couldn"t believe it when I first heard. Is it true? Did you really eat a guy"s ident?"
"Yeah."
Cwej brought the flitter round in a tight curve, his paw-like hands easily handling the controls. The gravitational stabilizers sent spray arcing in a rainbow to one side, catching the light of the fires. The old, stained walls of th buildings surrounding the plaza zipped past, dark windows gaping at them.
Faces watched them go, most of them with more or less eyes than the norm, all of them ducking out of sight if they thought they had been spotted.
"Would you tell me about it? Please?"
He sounded so eager that Forrester didn"t have the heart to refuse. Besides, she"d told the story so many times that she could remember it word for word.
"It was just after the Hith Pacification," she said. "I was squired to Fenn Martle.
We must have spent fifteen years together. Good years. Anyway, we were on traffic duty one day, up in the Overcity. We were trolling along in a flitter, just like we are now, and Mart spotted a guy throw a ditz off a walkway."
"A ditz?"24.
"Yeah. Centauran animal. Like a bee, only it"s the size of a poodle. "Bout as intelligent as a three-year-old. Expensive to keep as well: they need some special kind of food from their home world. Buzzing"s supposed to be soothing.
Anyway, this guy threw it off the walkway, thirty floors up. Ditzes can"t fly on Earth, something to do with the gravity, or something. This one just dropped like a stone. Mart swore he could hear the thing"s frantic buzzing through the flitter canopy till it was out of sight. We landed by the guy and Mart gave him an earful, but he denied it. Said he didn"t own a ditz, and even if he did, why would he throw it off a walkway? Well, we knew what we"d seen, but it was our word against his."
"Didn"t you have the cameras on?"
"By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. And we"d never have recovered the body. Even if anything survived the drop down to the Undertown, the underdwellers would have had it barbecued by the time we got there. So, the guy"s got bored with his pet, and throws it away, and we can"t do anything about it. Except that I like animals, and I don"t feel like letting him get away with it."
A large building with a gaping hole in its wall was coming up on them fast.
Forrester winced as Cwej aimed them straight for an alley between it and its neighbour and notched the speed up from FAST to TOO FAST.
"Shouldn"t you leave that to the navicomp?" she hissed between clenched teeth.
"More fun flying by hand," Cwej said, his eyes shining with exhilaration. "So what did you do?"
"About what?"
"About this guy and his ditz?"
"I asked for his ident, but he was one of these wackos that didn"t believe in the biochips. Some kind of religious problem. Had special dispensation from the Empress to carry a plastic ident. When he handed it to me, I ate it. And then I busted him for not possessing any identification."
Cwej laughed. "Didn"t he tell anyone?" he asked.
"Of course he did, but who"s going to believe that an Adjudicator goes around eating IDs? Centcomp fined him once for not having any valid ident and again for perjury."
"Brilliant!"
"You"re new to this. Tell me again in a month that it"s brilliant and I"ll buy you a drink."
"You"re on."
Cwej swung the flitter through narrow gaps and skimmed close to the blank faces of decaying houses and crumbling office blocks. Glancing to her left as a wall loomed large in her field of vision, Forrester caught sight of her own 25reflection in the shattered remains of a window. She looked nervous. She felt nervous. G.o.ddess save her from rookies.
"So what happened to Mart?" Cwej asked. Forrester wished that he hadn"t.
"He died," she said, the words like ashes in her mouth.
"How?"
No tact. Didn"t they teach them tact at the Academy?
"Badly," she said with enough bite in her voice to shut even Cwej up.
The flitter began to lose height, looping around a topless church spire and descending towards the dank alleys and festering slums at its base. The sun couldn"t penetrate that deeply, and so Cwej switched the simcord screen to infrared and aimed the vehicle towards a glowing shape. Flurries of dust were kicked up as they came in to land on a low roof next to a sluggish ca.n.a.l.
An armoured form lumbered over towards them, shielding its sensors. It was clutching a woman in its restraining arm. She was just hanging there as if unconscious.
"You discovered the body?" Forrester said to the bot as she clambered out of the flitter.
The bot swung to examine her. It was one of the latest INITEC models: humanoid, four-armed and eight feet tall. The company logo an eye in the palm of an open hand was embossed discreetly upon its carapace. "Ident?"
it asked in its uninterested voice.
She held her arm out. A low-intensity laser flicked across her wrist.
"Ident confirmed," the bot continued. "Forrester, Roslyn Sarah. Adjudicator, s.p.a.ceport Five Undertown Lodge." It turned to Cwej. "Ident?"
Cwej glanced at Forrester, innocent puzzlement upon his face. She mimed holding her arm out. He followed suit, and laughed as the laser played across his fur.
"It tickles!" he said.
"Ident confirmed," the bot said. "Cwej, Christopher Rodonante. a.s.signed to traffic squad, s.p.a.ceport Nine Overcity Lodge."