House of Dust (53 page)

The senior proctor raised his shoulders. “That's up to you, Quintilian Dalrymple,” he said, glancing at the weapon in Davie's hand. “You're calling the shots.”

I glanced at Dawkley. “How long before Raphael acquires a new head?”

“You needn't worry, citizen,” he said despondently. “As you saw earlier, replacing Grendel body components is straightforward. But it's different with the head. We retained the complex structure of the human brain, relying on drugs and psychological conditioning with only a minimum of implants to enhance capability.” He ran a hand across his forehead. “You won't see the chief administrator again.”

I believed him about as much as I believed in divine justice. We needed to move fast.

“We're going home,” I said. “And Wood-Lewis? You're coming with us to make sure nothing happens on the way. Get a helijet warmed up.”

The senior proctor's eyes opened wide then he nodded slowly. “Very well.” He spoke into his nostrum.

“Next,” I said, “get one of your minions to pick up our gear from Brase.”

He dispatched Harriet Haskins.

“And next,” I said, resisting the temptation to floor him, “I want Lister 25 on the plane with us.” I glared at him. “And if you tell me that his body's already been sent to the House of Dust, you'll be taking his place in the coffin.”

There was a hurried conversation on the nostrum, resulting in a look of desperate relief on the senior proctor's face. “It's all right,” he said in a faint voice. “The body's still in Worc. It's being collected now.”

“Just as well,” I said, even though what I felt about the old blues freak's death was still threatening to break out.

“Quint?” Katharine was at my side.

“Aye.” I smiled tentatively at her but didn't get a similar response.

“We need to tell the Council what's been going on down here.” She looked at Frederick Wood-Lewis with open disgust. “We need to make sure they remove every piece of New Oxford shit from Edinburgh before anyone else is hurt.”

She was right. There was also the matter of the ex-senior guardian. Someone had to tell his colleagues, not that I imagined they would declare a day of mourning. Slick wasn't anyone's favourite person.

I turned to Dawkley. “Can your people patch up a mobile phone link between here and Edinburgh?”

“Use my nostrum,” he said, starting to remove the device from his neck.

“No, thanks,” I replied. “I've had enough of Nox technology.”

After a few moments my phone picked up the long-range connection. I walked to the other end of the old quad and rang Sophia's number. When she answered I heard the sound of a toddler burbling in the background.

“How's Maisie?” I asked.

“Quint? Is that you?” Sophia sounded both surprised and relieved. “The Mist . . . the public order guardian told the Council yesterday that you and your team had been reported missing by the New Oxford authorities.”

“I wouldn't believe anything Hamilton's successor says. She's been following instructions from the bastards in New Oxford. Are you all right, Sophia?”

“On the mend, thank you. The dressing is off my eye.” Sophia paused. “I'm not bothered that I'll have a scar on my cheek.” Her attempt at indifference wasn't totally convincing.

I gave her a précis of what we'd been through. She listened in silence, the only noise at her end coming from the little girl.

“I'm appalled,” she said when I finished. “I'll advise the Council immediately. I'll propose the severing of all links with New Oxford forthwith. In the light of what you've discovered, I don't think there will be many objections.”

“What about the Mist?” I asked.

“Don't worry about her. Citizens have already been demonstrating against the prison. I'd hazard a guess that by this time tomorrow she'll be the only person occupying a cell.”

“Very good.” I was aware of Katharine at my side. She spoke to me in a low voice. “Oh, and Sophia? What's the status of Dead Dod?”

“The one-armed Leith Lancer? He's all right. Psychologically traumatised by the loss of his arm, but on the mend. The other victims have regained consciousness.”

“At least they didn't end up in the House of Dust,” I said.

There was a long silence. “Unbelievable,” Sophia said finally. “To think I used to dream of studying medicine under the dreaming spires when I was a girl.”

“You were well out of it,” I said. “Out.”

Katharine was staring at me. “Well?” she demanded.

“Don't worry,” I said with a laugh, “Dead Dod isn't dead after all.”

She turned on me. “This isn't a joke, Quint!” she yelled. “What's the matter with you? People are mutilated, people are killed, people are ground to dust and you go on in the same facetious way as if it's all some kind of game. I'm sick of it.” She raised her fists as if to lay into me, then dropped them and strode away.

If I'd been quick enough, I'd have told her that being facetious was the only way to survive the horrors we'd witnessed – except I knew that was a cop-out.

My job is hell if you allow yourself to feel too much, but it's even worse if you don't feel enough.

We were standing inside the blast shields on the helijet apron at what used to be called Magdalen College. Harriet Haskins had arrived with our bags. She handed them over with an embarrassed expression on her shapely face. Maybe she was expecting me to give her a hard time for bullshitting about the drug compound, but I let her off; what she'd done was nothing compared with the crimes perpetrated by her leaders. A pair of bulldogs in orange overalls was loading Lister 25's steel coffin into the hold. Before that they'd rolled Billy Geddes up a ramp into the passenger compartment.

“At least the old chemist's remains will go up into the air back home,” Davie said, the pencil-shaped laser still trained on Wood-Lewis.

I nodded. “Aye, I suppose that's some consolation.” I turned to Dawkley, who was a few yards away. “In any other state you'd be tried as mass murderers, all of you.” I glanced back at the senior proctor. “What gave you the right to destroy so many people's lives? What gave you the right to harvest their organs – Christ, and their flesh? You even made a profit on their bones.”

The science administrator looked uneasy, but not for long. “You're wrong, Citizen Dalrymple. In most modern states we would never be brought to trial. People like us have the power to transform society. We are beyond laws, never mind your feeble ethics.”

I felt my fists clench by my sides. “That's because your bastard parent corporation runs most modern states, isn't it?”

He nodded. “And more are being taken over every year. Even if Edinburgh won't take us, it will be easy enough to establish Nox in Glasgow.”

“No, it won't.” Andrew Duart had appeared behind Dawkley, briefcase in hand and suit carrier over his shoulder. Hel Hyslop was with him. “Earlier I heard from Katharine Kirkwood on my nostrum,” he said. “She told me about the House of Dust, among other things.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a clear plastic bag, which he opened and tipped up. “This is all that remains of the contract I misguidedly signed with New Oxford. I burned it before I left Wad.”

I watched as the stream of grey ash poured out into the still, floodlit air. It dissipated quickly in the breeze, flakes scattering over the science administrator's highly polished shoes.

Ashes to ashes, I thought. And boarded the aircraft.

The lights of central Oxford fell away beneath us as the helijet lifted up with a restrained scream. I looked beyond them and saw only the occasional streetlamp out in the suburbs. What would happen to the residents of Cowley and the outer areas? Maybe Dawkley and his experts would manage to develop an anti-toxin now they were being forced to stay in the city – if there was time. Maybe they would extend the benefits of their research to the so-called subs. I tried to make myself believe there was even a minimal chance of that.

Katharine was sitting across the aisle from me, her eyes closed. I could tell by the rise of her chest that her breathing was slow and regular, but I didn't think she was asleep.

“I'm sorry, Katharine,” I said in a low voice, leaning towards her. “I know you think I wasn't serious enough about Dead—Shit . . . about George Faulds.”

She opened one eye and fixed it on me. “And?”

“And I know you think I haven't been taking the things we saw back there seriously enough.” I touched the hand that was on the armrest. It wasn't withdrawn. “But I was affected by them, I really was. I hate what they drove Dirty Harry to and I despise what the bastards have done to the ordinary people.”

She turned full on to me. “I know you do, Quint. I just think you need to show it more sometimes. After all, this case was all about human emotions. I always thought there was something unnatural about Raphael. If you'd picked that up then maybe we'd have caught on to what she was doing more quickly.”

I nodded. I'd picked up something about the chief administrator all right but, to my shame, I'd allowed myself to be seduced by it. I always did have a thing for powerful women. Christ, I'd let myself be strung along by a middle-aged semi-robot.

I felt Katharine's other hand on top of mine. “Don't worry,” she said. “I haven't given up on you.” She smiled. “Student's end-of-term report: Much impressive progress. A particularly fine criminology project. More attention needs to be paid to interpersonal relations, especially those with the opposite sex.”

“Very funny,” I said ruefully. “One thing, Katharine. What was the long shot you were pursuing before the Encaenia?”

She laughed. “Long shot? What long shot? The Grendel got into my rooms and tied me up in a service shaft off the mole run beneath Brase. It was Dirty Harry who wrote that message.”

“It wasn't the first time he took you prisoner,” I said, thinking back to the case we'd worked in 2025.

“No, it wasn't,” she said, shaking her head. “But it was the last.”

I pulled my hand away gently and went forward. Davie was still watching over Wood-Lewis in case he or the pilots tried to pull a fast one.

“All right, big man?”

He looked up. “Oh aye.” The laser was on his knee. “This thing will grill the old bastard's kidneys through the seat no problem.”

The senior proctor shifted nervously in the seat to the front.

“We'll be over Edinburgh soon,” I said.

“Thank Christ for that,” Davie said. “I need a shower, a large meal and a selection of barracks malts.”

I laughed and left him to it. He seemed to be getting over what we'd been through in New Oxford. I went back to my seat via Billy Geddes, who was still ignoring me, and stopped off at the Glaswegian contingent.

“So you decided against becoming a Mark Three Grendel, Hel?” I said.

She gave me a weak smile. “The first secretary put me off that idea.” Her eyes flashed. “Not that the basic idea of enhanced human beings is a bad one. Maybe another time.”

I glanced across the aisle at Andrew Duart. “Sending her back to Barlinnie, are you?”

He shook his head emphatically. “I've seen enough of prisons.” He looked at Hel with blatant lust. “And I think I can find room for the inspector in my private office. Among other places.”

I wasn't impressed. “Just keep her away from Edinburgh,” I said. “Remember, she's got a criminal record the length of my arm.”

That put a dampener on them, not that anything I said would stop them getting stuck into each other when the helijet took them home after Edinburgh.

I sat down and put my hand on Katharine's. This time she was definitely asleep, so I removed it and left her in peace. I looked out into the darkness and felt something hard in my ribs. I pulled out my father's guide to Oxford that was in the pocket of my donkey jacket – I'd discarded the remains of my formal suit in the toilet earlier – but I didn't open it. Although New Oxford bore only a passing resemblance to the city Hector knew, I'd still had enough of the crenellated colleges with their solid gates to keep out the masses.

Then I found myself considering Dirty Harry and Raphael. They were a new species, an amalgam of human being and machine, of biological and synthetic materials; but they'd turned out to be even more flawed than the real thing. Despite what he'd said, Dawkley had probably started working on rebuilding them, improving them the minute we left New Oxford. In that case mankind would be one step closer to immortality, the oldest, most seductive dream of all. I twitched my head. That was a bucket of shit. My long-lost lover Caro died back in 2015 and her face was clearer in my mind than those of the chief administrator and Dirty Harry. There are things you can't buy – or develop in a laboratory.

As the noise from the helijet's engines dropped and the fuselage sank into the final descent, I found myself thinking about Edinburgh. The Council's city was a lot less perfect than the guardians claimed, but it was where I was born, it was the place I understood best. I looked out over the darkened suburbs towards the blaze of light coming from the castle and the central tourist zone around it. The incarceration initiative had failed, but the youth gangs would still be giving us plenty of trouble. That thought didn't exactly fill me with joy.

Then, suddenly, the strains of an old master's guitar began to race through my head, strains that I'd first heard on a film when I was a kid before the Enlightenment's regulations banned all so-called subversive music. Alvin Lee was the performer and “Going Home” was the number – the epic performance at Woodstock when the world still retained a few reserves of innocence.

Going home. That would have to do.

For now.