"No buts, Forrester. What do you want, a commendation? Only an underdweller, for G.o.ddess" sake."
Forrester shook her head. "But what about the death?" she said. "I mean, a death in custody? Like, I don"t want an investigation or anything, but aren"t you even going to check the mind probe for faults?"
Rashid shook her head. "No point. Centcomp"s happy with the way you handled the case. I"m happy. The whole Empire"s happy, apart from you two."
Forrester kicked surrept.i.tiously at Cwej"s ankle, but he didn"t react. "We felt, ah, that is, Cwej here felt that there was some kind of irregularity in the mind probe readings," she ventured.
"Rookies," Rashid sighed. "Look, if it makes you happier, I"ll review the mind probe evidence myself. Now get."
Forrester opened her mouth to protest, but Cwej snapped, "Yes, sir!" and turned smartly on his heel. She had no choice but to follow, cursing beneath her breath as she did so.
"What the h.e.l.l was all that about?" she snapped as soon as they left the office. "I thought you were on my side."
"I am," he said. "Didn"t you notice?"
"Notice what?"
"The Adjudicator Secular"s simcord was on all the time. She"d turned the picture off to make it look like the whole thing was inactive, but the commlight was green. Everything we said was being heard by someone else. That"s why I had to get us out before you said too much."
Forrester frowned, opened her mouth to say something, then slowly closed it as the implications. .h.i.t home.
"You mean . . . ?"
"I mean that the Adjudicator Secular"s being leaned on. Someone"s told her to close this case down."
52.
Bernice had spent long enough aboard s.p.a.ceships to be able to feel and understand the subtle vibrations of warp engines. The Imperial Landsknechte shuttle Arachnae Arachnae was no exception. After all, Bernice had spent the formative years of her adolescence drifting around the universe in a clapped-out trader, swapping transuranic elements for alien art on one planet and alien art for transuranics on another, but always managing to shave a little profit off the top. She still remembered McFee, the trader"s bluff Irish engineer. He"d taken a shine to her, and she had spent hours by his side while he coaxed another few light years out of the old, battered engines. She could read those sounds in her sleep now. For that reason she was already waiting in the main viewing gallery when the communication system chimed twice. was no exception. After all, Bernice had spent the formative years of her adolescence drifting around the universe in a clapped-out trader, swapping transuranic elements for alien art on one planet and alien art for transuranics on another, but always managing to shave a little profit off the top. She still remembered McFee, the trader"s bluff Irish engineer. He"d taken a shine to her, and she had spent hours by his side while he coaxed another few light years out of the old, battered engines. She could read those sounds in her sleep now. For that reason she was already waiting in the main viewing gallery when the communication system chimed twice.
"Gentlebeings," it said in a comforting artificial voice, "the Arachnae Arachnae is about to leave hypers.p.a.ce and enter orbit around the planet Purgatory, home of the Imperial Landsknechte. Please do not eat or drink anything in the next ten minutes, and secure all loose articles. Any pa.s.sengers who wish to observe the event, please be advised that the main viewing gallery is now open. For human pa.s.sengers of a nervous disposition, medication is available by pressing b.u.t.ton A on your autodoc. Any " A slight but noticeable hesitation. " is about to leave hypers.p.a.ce and enter orbit around the planet Purgatory, home of the Imperial Landsknechte. Please do not eat or drink anything in the next ten minutes, and secure all loose articles. Any pa.s.sengers who wish to observe the event, please be advised that the main viewing gallery is now open. For human pa.s.sengers of a nervous disposition, medication is available by pressing b.u.t.ton A on your autodoc. Any " A slight but noticeable hesitation. " off off world world pa.s.sengers wishing medication should contact the medical orderly. Will those pa.s.sengers who wish to disembark please ensure that their doc.u.menta-tion is valid. Thank you." pa.s.sengers wishing medication should contact the medical orderly. Will those pa.s.sengers who wish to disembark please ensure that their doc.u.menta-tion is valid. Thank you."
Within moments, a number of pa.s.sengers had scuttled into the viewing gallery, ready to oh! oh! and and ah! ah! and take simcords of the entire event. The wide-eyed, eager ones in the lead were tourists, taking in a quick tour of the Imperial Landsknechte facilities. Purgatory was, after all, one of the Eight Wonders of the Universe. The majority of the funding for the Imperial Landsknechte came from tourism; that and the taxes paid by the worlds that they had conquered during the Wars of Acquisition. It kept the tax burden on humanity down, and helped the Empire to grow in power and prestige. That was what the guidebooks said, anyway. and take simcords of the entire event. The wide-eyed, eager ones in the lead were tourists, taking in a quick tour of the Imperial Landsknechte facilities. Purgatory was, after all, one of the Eight Wonders of the Universe. The majority of the funding for the Imperial Landsknechte came from tourism; that and the taxes paid by the worlds that they had conquered during the Wars of Acquisition. It kept the tax burden on humanity down, and helped the Empire to grow in power and prestige. That was what the guidebooks said, anyway.
The dead-eyed, crew-cut ones with the matt-black, sh.e.l.l-like skins saunter-ing on behind the tourists were Landsknechte returning from furlough. Although the journey had only lasted a few hours, Bernice had already had to lay three of them out in the bar. The rest had left her alone after that.
The tourists were taken aback to find Bernice in the best position. She could hear them, murmuring and muttering as they jostled for position, but her attention was absorbed by the spectacle.
The viewing window was twenty metres long and ten high. It wasn"t a real window, of course, just a virtual screen, but the effect was the same. From where Bernice was standing, she couldn"t see the edges, it was as if she was standing in hypers.p.a.ce itself.53.
Hypers.p.a.ce was a blur, a blind spot that covered her entire vision. Tendrils of grey writhed against a grey background, but out of the corners of her eyes Bernice could see colours flashing and spiralling everywhere apart from where she was looking. The minute she turned her head, the colours vanished. The longer she looked, the deeper she could see into the unreality, and the more hints of colours she thought she could make out. It was hypnotic.
"Impressive, isn"t it?"
She turned her head. The ship"s purser was standing beside her: a bot of relatively advanced design, slim and elegant, with an un.o.btrusive logo embossed upon its carapace. Bernice tried to recall which company used the logo a hand with an eye in the centre but there were so many of them around that she couldn"t distinguish one from another any more.
"Is it?" she responded, surprised at its forwardness. Bots didn"t usually initiate polite conversation.
"It always fascinates me. You know the mathematics behind it, I presume?"
Its voice struck her as being oddly rich in tone: plummy, rather overbearing, slightly old-fashioned. Bad choice for a bot whose main duty was rea.s.suring hysterical tourists who"d left Earth for the first time.
"A multi-dimensional realm of which our ordinary three-dimensional s.p.a.ce is only a part," it continued. "A s.p.a.ce bigger than s.p.a.ce through which we take our short cuts, ignorant of what else might be there."
"Very poetic."
The constant thrum of the engines altered in pitch. Bernice could tell to the nearest millisecond when they would break through into reality.
"We"re leaving hypers.p.a.ce," it said. "Should you not tell your companion?
He might wish to see the sight for himself."
"He"s off in the bar with a group of high-powered Landsknechte on their way to a conference. I"m sure he"s seen it all before."
The bot nodded. "Perhaps he has," it mused. "Perhaps he has. Have you been travelling with him long?"
Something was wrong. Bernice could feel a chill run up her back. The bot was too familiar, too chummy. If she didn"t know better, she would swear that she was being patronized.
It gazed at her for a long moment. She could feel the tension building up.
Before Bernice could reply, stars were twinkling through the grey nothingness. She watched as the tentacles of chaos withdrew, retreating before the advance of the material universe.
"You ask a lot of odd questions for a purser," she challenged.
Although nothing about the bot changed, it gave Bernice the impression of amus.e.m.e.nt. "Knowledge is power."54.
Before she could respond, the ship turned slightly around its primary axis, and Purgatory spun into view. Bernice couldn"t help blinking. Surely no planet could look like that. It just wasn"t . . . natural.
Purgatory"s surface was a patchwork of hexagons, each hundreds of kilometres across. The ochre of a scorching desert and the lush green of forest were separated by straight boundaries. The blue depths of an ocean and the glowing white of an icebound landscape sat beside each other, ignorant of the incongruity. Towering mountains and level plateaus, urban wastelands and jumbles of volcanic rock, glittering cities and cultivated fields: a disparate a.s.sortment of landscapes set randomly together.
"And that"s Purgatory?" she said.
"That"s Purgatory," it confirmed. "One step away from h.e.l.l."
The bot suddenly twitched as if a short circuit had momentarily overridden its balance sensors. It gazed around in what looked suspiciously like panic.
"Dear me," it said in a high-pitched, fussy voice. "Dear me, so near to disembarkation, and I have pa.s.sengers to attend to. If you will excuse me . . . ?"
It scurried off, its posture radically different from moments before. Bernice watched it, amazed. "They didn"t tell me that the tickets included a cabaret as well."
The rain hammered steadily down upon the armoured roof of the Adjudication Chapel. It was getting on Forrester"s nerves. It reminded her of the time when she"d been caught in a projectile weapon shoot-out. She"d thought that they were an historical anachronism, but the Therenids still used them, and when a group of mercenaries from a Therenid hive-ship went off the deep end in one of the entertainment towers, a lot of damage had been done. Blasters and lasers cauterized where they didn"t kill. Projectile weapons caused a lot of messy and unpredictable collateral damage.
She opened her mouth to tell Cwej the story, but one look at his face persuaded her otherwise. He was slumped morosely in a form-fitting seat, pushing its adjustability to the limit, hands clenched around a cup of coffee. She"d offered him scotch, but he didn"t drink on duty. Of course he didn"t drink on duty; what had she been thinking of? He didn"t do anything else against the rules, after all. Why should he drink on duty?
Forrester knew that she was getting more and more wound up. She"d already snapped Cwej"s head off a couple of times. It wasn"t his fault well, all right, it was his fault; after all, he did play the "wide-eyed and innocent" card too often but she didn"t want to hurt his feelings. Not too much, anyway.
In a vain effort to distract herself Forrester looked around the ready room.
It was late in the afternoon, and the place was almost empty. Most of the other Adjudicators were out on patrol.55.
The rain was getting to her. She had to say something, even if it did get up the kid"s nose. "I can"t believe it," she snapped. Cwej flinched, startled. His chair tried to adjust, overcompensated, and ended up almost folding in two.
"I know I"m new here," he said, switching the chair off in disgust, "but does this sort of thing happen on a regular basis, or am I just privileged?"
Forrester remembered the times when Rashid had supported her, despite the innumerable rules and regulations of Adjudicator life. The times when Forrester had shot first and asked questions afterwards, used the mind probe a bit too freely or arrested innocent citizens by mistake. The sorts of thing that any eager young Adjudicator did.
"I"ve never known Rashid to back down under pressure," she said finally, shaking her head in disbelief "She"s always supported her people before. G.o.ddess, this one must be really important."
Cwej nodded. "I"ve had a thought," he said. "If the mind probe record has been faked, then the old bird we pulled in is innocent."
"The old bird?" Forrester had the impression that a blush was spreading beneath the golden pelt.
"The lady. The underdweller."
"Hah! We"ll make an opinionated, bigoted Adjudicator of you yet!" He just looked at her, and smiled slightly. She found herself smiling back. "So, how do you work out that she"s innocent, then?"
"It stands to reason. If somebody wants us to believe that she"s guilty, she must be innocent."
"Philosophically flawed . . .
". . . But street-true."
She raised her eyebrows at him. That kid was getting to be a smart-a.r.s.e.
"So what are we saying?" she said. "That every one of these spur-of-the-moment murders is actually an a.s.sa.s.sination in disguise, covered up by the Order of Adjudicators?"
He shook his head uncertainly. The way the light caught his golden fur distracted her momentarily. "No," he said. "Too many people involved for that.
For some reason, it"s just this murder. Just this one murder."
"So why was the low-life b.u.mped off?" she challenged.
Cwej leaned forward insistently. "To prevent us questioning her any further.
Somewhere inside her underdweller skull, she knew who drugged her and who carried out the murder. She saw them. The chances are we could have dug a clue out of her mind. With her dead, and the mind probe record faked, we were supposed to accept the whole thing, fins, fuselage and retro-tubes."
"But you spotted that the record was faked . . . "
His gaze was sombre. "Yeah, and got us thrown off the case."
Forrester pounded the desk again. "It"s so d.a.m.ned unfair!"56.
Cwej winced. "Unfair?"
Something in his tone made her look up. "You think it"s more than that?"
"Think about it," he said. "Doesn"t it strike you as a little bit suspicious that somebody tries to sell us a set-up and then, when we look like penetrating their little game, they pull us off the case?"
Forrester felt a tiny cold bud begin to flower in her gut. "Paranoia," she said dismissively, but even she could tell that she was unconvinced.
"Is it?" he asked. "When we brought the body in, I asked for a tissue-type check to be run."
"Tissue-type?" She tried to read his fresh, innocent face for clues, but it was like reading a blank sheet of paper. "But the bot said that the mollusc was unidentified. No biochip."
Cwej grinned.
"Wrong murderer . . . " he said.
". . . And wrong victim," Forrester finished. She felt a sudden desire to forget everything, to get up and walk over to the refectory raft and have a couple of beers with the guys.
No, she thought. That"s not the way Martle would have played it.
"Let"s check," she said. "The results might be in by now."
Cwej grinned.
It only took a few moments for Cwej to link with centcomp and type in the query. Forrester watched impatiently as he ran his finger down a list of information that only he could see.
"We"re in luck," he breathed. "The tests are complete."
"And?" Forrester didn"t know why she was holding her breath, but she was.
"And we"ve got an ID for the victim."
"How can you do that without a biochip?"
"He had a biochip." Cwej quickly scanned through the information. "The genetic code matches one Waiting For Justice And Dreaming Of Home. Record as long as your arm and most of your leg as well. Mainly petty thievery, a.s.sault and begging."
"Address?"
"The Undertown. That"s all it says."
Forrester looked grim. "That"s all there is," she said. "You should have learned that by now. Question is, why did the bot tell us that the victim didn"t have a biochip when he did?"
Cwej"s face was serious. "Because the bot didn"t bother checking. Because the bot wasn"t expecting the victim to have a biochip. Because the bot got the wrong offworlder."
"What do you mean, "got"?" Forrester asked.
"What do you think."57.
"You can"t mean . . . ?"
"That the bot killed the offworlder thinking it was another offworlder?" His face was set. "Yes, I do."
"Well," she said, leaning back in her chair and sighing, "I guess they all look the same. So, we"ve got a murderer who isn"t a murderer and a victim who isn"t a victim. What else can go wrong?"
"You"ve forgotten one thing."
"Oh yeah? What"s that?"