Organo-Topia (11 page)

He looked around, ripped from his moorings.

Detective Maris Peterson wasn't anymore. Fugitive Maris Peterson had taken his place.

Further, the careful façade of civilization had been scraped off his backside, exposing the raw deceit of his anal society and the excrement being ejected in diahrresis.

“I was lucky to find this place,” Ilsa said.

Detritus of a hasty move littered the floor. Cracked glasma behind blinds hanging askew snickered at cobwebs strewn in haphazard profusion between wall and ceiling. Doors stood half-open, suspended in perpetual indecision. The abode reeked with long abandonment, its emptiness filled with the lonesome echoes of people who'd left years before.

He blinked at her, his mind blank. His body was a bundle of aches, victim to two high-velocity impacts cushioned only by the guards he'd landed upon, consciousness lost on the second impact. “What was that place?”

The stare was eternal, it seemed.

The possibilities swirling through his mind in the absence of an answer presaged the one he did get.

“A sanctuary.”

For Ohumes out of contract, on the run from their indentures, huddled in a cave somewhere, hundreds of them, somehow surviving at the edge of the wilderness near an Ihume incubation facility whose sperm, ovum, and embryos had all been consumed by nanochines not two weeks ago. No, not surviving. Waiting. A waystation on the journey to somewhere else.

It was neither ironic nor sardonic. Their presence was as much a blow to his prosaic existence as his transition from detective to fugitive.

“They'll have relocated by now.” Her stare was as hollow as his.

“Who are you?” And as Maris asked the question, he realized he was asking it as much of himself. Her transformation from Ofem guide at Plavinas Incubation to her current incarnation had done more to destroy his existence than the other two impacts combined. His mind was a bundle of bruises, victim to three high-velocity impacts cushioned by nothing more than the fact that he continued to exist, that his heart continued to beat, that he hadn't died. He'd lost his life but continued to live.

Sardoni, a plant which when eaten produced convulsive laughter ending in death. Hilarious torture.

“I gave myself away to help you, and now I've lost it all.”

“You thought they would help us.” He felt no empathy for her losses. She'd deceived him from the outset. She'd never been an Ofem guide at Plavinas Incubation at all. She'd been an Ohume resistance operative, smuggling fugitive indentures to the sanctuary nearby, a link in an underground railroad. Helping to undermine the very society whose laws he'd sworn to uphold.

He knew what he needed to do, and yet he hesitated.

“Turning me in may not help you much.”

A prison cell beckoned, his turning her in unlikely to mitigate the extrajudicial sentence imposed by the Coalition, that self-same society whose laws he'd sworn to uphold. It'd betrayed him and wouldn't hesitate to do so again. Its only purpose was to preserve itself.

He was a fugitive from extrajudicial justice. She was a fugitive from the resistance.

We lie on mattresses of illusion between sheets of lies, pull up blankets of deceit, snuggle our faces into pillows of pretense. And for some reason we're surprised when we wake up inside an elaborate fantasy.

“Where will you go?” he asked her.

Her gaze narrowed and then dropped to the floor. “I…Can't I…? You won't…?”

Maris shook his head, and Ilsa burst into tears.

The inconsolable display meant to move him, he stared, unmoved. He had no caring left in him. No, he wouldn't turn her in, but neither would he take her with him, her betrayal leaving him cold, nearly insensate. Wooden, he stood.

“But I saved you from prison!”

Her plea didn't touch him. As long as his bruised and battered body could take him from her presence, he was leaving. He stepped toward the door, expecting more hooks to sink their barbs into his back, its flesh too shredded to anchor any more emotional spears, a walking patty of pseudo ground beef.

None came, and he continued walking.

* * *

Filip Dukur of the Crestonia Capitol Beat looked at Maris from across the table. “You don't really expect me to believe all that, do you?”

Maris shook his head. For five days, he'd been meeting with the reporter for an hour each morning and an hour each evening, each place different, each place public. “I expect you to verify every event, check every fact, and publish every word.”

Other patrons blithely sucked up their food, swilling the pap fed to them by their Coalition mush pushers. The restaurant stood near the Crestonia spaceport, flares of inbound and outbound ships spilling through glasma in jarring, soundless incongruity, a deep rumble like a distant earthquake to accompany each. Maris wished he could insulate his mind so well from the cacophonous blather of society.

They didn't seem to be searching assiduously for him. No media splashes across the neuranet, no holoboards offering rewards for his capture, no lurkers stabbing him in the back with their stares.

He'd kept the cadre of alter-idents he'd obtained from Undercover, leaving at least one jacked into his mastoid at all times, remaining off the neuranet when he had to change idents. The small caches of cash embedded in each ident were nearly spent now, and Maris wondered whether he'd have to tap into his clandestine accounts—if the Coalition hadn't found them and confiscated them, that is.

“It'll take me weeks to verify. You know that, right?”

Maris nodded, wondering what he'd do in the meantime. Keeping a low profile had never been part of his persona. Skulking about under cover of night through boiler rooms and alleys for the last five days had taken its toll. Sleeping during daylight and meeting Dukur in between had put a shadow on his soul like a beard on his face. The low-down hotels were crawling with people he'd arrested. Disguised or not, he still cleared corridors, something about his manner blaring “detective.” Fine by him, since he didn't want to be bothered, pariah wherever he went in body and mind. Sleeping away his days was the worst.

“She's been asking about you, you know.”

He knew. Somehow, he'd known Ilsa was keeping him in her sights. Dukur had asked him about her twice in the last five days. Maris had sensed she'd asked the reporter what he was saying. He'd kept her name out of his narrative to the best of his ability. He tried to tell himself he didn't owe her a thing, but love like hers couldn't be valued, its loss inassessible. Worst in the last five days had been her absence, a black hole in his life so big that his galactic core had fallen in. He'd never feel whole again. And yet…

Maris looked at Dukur. “They say it's better to have loved and lost, don't they, kid?” He snorted and shook his head. “It's the rotten rubber nipple to a bottle of hollow human kindness.” He winced as if in pain and looked around. “I gotta use the head.”

He got up and shambled toward the men's room, holding his hand clenched at his waist, shoulders hunched, face pinched. Some astute architect had put the restroom near the door, apropos for an establishment this near the spaceport. Maris went in, straightened, threw his shoulders back, smoothed his face, and walked out the door a different person.

He strode purposively down the street, purposeless. Here, liftoffs and landings assaulted the senses, the plascrete tingling under his feet, the roar obliterating his thoughts. If only they could obliterate his past and the pain he held at bay. A spitting dawn sun salivated on him with cold ribbons of drool, the towers of Telsai taunting him to tease out their secrets.

Maris summoned a magnacar he couldn't afford and took it to a seedy motel he wouldn't remember. He slept away a fitful day, doors slamming on either side, voices of normalcy invading his abnormal hours.

He woke in the afternoon, dispelling dreams of her. Ilsa had saturated the aquifers of his soul, seeping through to the bedrock of his subconsciousness. He knew what would happen if he didn't do something. Down that road lay dissolution and dissipation.

Begin at the beginning, he told himself.

Sabile Nanobio Research on the outskirts of Telsai looked no different now than it had a month ago. Maris wondered at the temerity of the establishment to resist change.

Ms. Jurgis raised her gaze from her desk at his approach, the cube ranch behind her empty of its corporate herd. “Forgive me, but Mrs. Sarfas is still on leave. Perhaps someone else in genetics can assist you?”

“Leave? What kind of leave?”

“You may inquire with personnel for that information, Sir, my apologies. Did you have personal business with her?”

“Her husband,” Maris said.

The woman hesitated. “I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?”

“ 'Just a puddle, is all we found,' ” he said. “Tell me, Ms. Jurgis, any comings and goings to the laboratory that day? With every moment of delay, we lose a little evidence, don't you think?”

Her gaze narrowed, her glance going up and down his rumpled suit. As if she might recognize him by his rumples.

He didn't grin at her, but he might have.

“I don't know. It's…difficult to recall, all that's happened.”

“You've kept the surveillance vids?”

“Of course, Mr.…?”

“Didgalvis. Maris Didgalvis.”

“Let me set up access at this workstation, Mr. Didgalvis.” She gestured at a cube nearby, where potted plants and tropical stills gave some hints as to its earthy occupant.

In a few moments, he was browsing secuvids from the day Sarfas died.

While he browsed, Ms. Jurgis brought him the visitor log.

Slowly, he ticked them off, viewing the vids.

Abols from Broceni Laboratory Supply, Freimanis from Grobina Chemical, Bertans from Ligatne Electrical, Darzin from Mazsalaca Instrument, Eglitis from Piltene Pharmaceutical, Janson from Plavinas Incubation, Skrastin from Valka Industrials.

Maris was scratching his head at the number, which he thought unusual. He looked again at the list of names. “Ms. Jurgis, get me Doctor Briedis, please.”

“Certainly, Mr. Didgalvis.”

Rihard Briedis came strolling up the aisle a few minutes later, his brow furrowed. He ran his gaze across Maris as though inspecting a shipment.

“Why so many visitors, Doctor Briedis?”

The hesitation was likely due to the absence of introduction. “He supervised the unit, Mr. Didgalvis. Stocking and restocking was one of his duties.”

Maris pointed out the oddity on the visitor log. “Why Plavinas Incubation?”

The eyes narrowed and the brow furrowed further. “I don't know, Mr. Didgalvis. Ms. Jurgis, what did Plavinas Incubation deliver that day?”

“Let me get the invoices, Doctor Briedis.”

Maris sorted through the secuvids to pull up Janson and froze.

Ilsa.

“What is it, Mr. Didgalvis?”

Maris struggled to pull his eyes away from the vid. She carried a cryo case down a long corridor and turned into the laboratory anteroom, where she was greeted by Eduard Sarfas, a biohazard sign on the door right behind them.

“Invoice says live biologic materials,” Ms. Jurgis said

“Probably for nanochine testing,” the Doctor supplied.

Janson gave the case to Sarfas, who signed for it, spoke with him for a few minutes, took a seat and slipped off her shoes.

“What's she doing?” Dr. Briedis said.

She stood, stepped forward, rubbed her feet on the carpet, and then slipped her shoes back on.

Sarfas lifted his own foot, gesturing at the sole.

“No sound to this vid, is there?” Maris looked at the secretary.

She shook her head.

“He ever report any problems with his feet?”

“As a matter of fact, he did,” Doctor Briedis said. “The job required a lot of standing, sometimes eight hours per day.”

Ilsa stepped back and gestured at Sarfas, her hands open. Sarfas took off his shoes and stepped forward, as if at her gesture.

Maris thrust his hand at the vid, stopped it and rewound it to the place where Ilsa took off her shoes. “Marker,” he said over his shoulder. A holopen was thrust into his hand. He circled the place on the carpet where Ilsa rubbed her feet, and then Maris fast-forwarded to Sarfas's taking off his shoes.

Holopen markings circled the feet of Eduard Sarfas.

Holopen circles floated across his vision. Ilsa swung from the carpeted ceiling, holopen ropes around her ankles, a puce puree of proto pouring from her pockets. What hit the floor wasn't splashes of proto but gigantic nanochine assemblies, their spider arms snatching the heads off children at the Plavinas Development Crèche. Hordes of children fled the building, nanochine spiders chasing them and growing larger with each child they consumed.

Maris sat straight up in bed, sweating and gasping. He rushed to the window and thrust aside the blinds.

Normal mid-day traffic clotted the avenue three stories below, magnacars and pedestrians moving through their prosaic, diurnal normalcy.

He realized he was naked, glad he was on the third floor. An arrest for indecency wouldn't look good on a resume already beyond redemption.

He stumbled into the cleansall, keen to cleanse the smirch from his mind. Yawns wouldn't clear the fog from his brain, and he wondered if coffee might help.

Coffee.

With cream.

He flew out the door. The downtown restaurant where he'd met Doctor Juris Raihman seemed to bustle with unabated business, as if no one had died on the premises from nanochine attack a week ago.

“Sure you can look at the secuvids,” said the proprietor, Betty of Betty's Breakfast Diner fame. The Betty on the marquee was significantly slimmer and younger than the Betty gesturing Maris into the kitchen through the back door.

Don't we all doctor our avatars to suit? Maris wondered.

“Matter of fact,” Betty said, “I got one on the cream dispenser to keep my light-fingered girls from snackin' on the merchandise. Ain't that right, Charlie?”

“That's right, Betty,” said a passing Omale around a mouthful of food, a tray full at his shoulder. He plunged out a pair of swinging doors, and the cacophony of a restaurant at peak afternoon rush flooded into the kitchen.

She led him to her office, a broom closet in need of a good broom. “No place for you to sit, sorry. What'd you say your name was?”

He hadn't. “Peterson, Maris Peterson.” He hadn't jacked in an alter-ident, so hurried to get to the restaurant. “How long do you keep your secuvids?”

“About a month. I figure if I haven't caught them by that time, I won't anyway.”

“The location in downtown Crestonia keep theirs a similar amount of time?”

She nodded and adjusted the controls on a holo above her desk, her jaw working. The holo flashed through several cams at her traked commands, the timedate stamp in the corner reverting rapidly to the appointed hour. “Here's the vid.”

The view depicted was the face of a cream dispenser from above, the secucam mounted in the ceiling, capturing both the dispenser top, where the cream went in, and the front, where the spigot dispensed it. Above the spigot was a retinalock, beside it a dial.

Choppy vid showed the Ofem waitress who'd served Raihman spin the dial, thrust a steaming cup of coffee under the spigot, and put her eye to the retinalock. A dollop of cream glopped into the coffee. The waitress stepped away, and a gloved hand reached into the field of view and dumped a vial of silvery fluid into the coffee.

“Stop.”

The vid froze.

“You have other secuvid?”

Ashen-faced, Betty nodded. In a moment, she had the rear-door cam on screen, showing Maris coming through minutes ago. The timedate stamp in the corner reeled backward.

A slim figure in fedora and trench coat slithered up the alley to the door. The hat obscured all but a glimpse of the straight, dainty nose above the full rosy lips. The door yielded to a gloved caress.

A vid from inside the door showed the shadowy figure make its way toward the cream dispenser. The waitress gave the interloper nary a glance as she stepped away from the creamed coffee under the spigot.

A gloved hand dumped a vial of silvery fluid into the coffee, and the person turned, head up.

Quickly, the head went down, and the fedora once again obscured the features.

“Stop.” He couldn't feel his cheeks, and sparkle clouded the edges of vision.

“You see a ghost or something?”

“Thank you, Betty. I'll need those vids.”

“Where do I send them?”

“Lieutenant Balodis, Commander, Central Telsai Precinct, but don't tell her who asked you to send them.” He stumbled into the corridor, stopped himself. “Any way to access the Crestonia secuvids from here?”

“No, afraid not, it's all on internal servers, no neuranet access, Mr. Peterson. Or is that Detective Peterson?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Betty looked him up and down, as though the compromise to his soul were visible for all the world to see. “I'll send a com to the manager, name's Brigita Baltakis.”

“Thanks.” Maris staggered into the alley, his mind stuck on the fedora coming up to reveal the face.

A garba-servo whined at the load it dumped into its bin. A business suit hurried away from an unshaven, disheveled man, both shoving a hand into a pocket to obscure what was in the hand. The necrosis eating through his mind matched the stench in his nostrils of rotted food and marinating urine. Both chased him from the alley. Crowded sidewalks denied him sanctuary. Rushing magnacars and magnatrucks offered him nothing more comforting than the oblivion of death.

He pulled a handful of jacks from his pocket. They offered him no disguise from his despair. He chose one at random and jacked it into his mastoid. Maris Petras, Liaison, Adolescent Angst Division, Bureau of Gestational Integrity, Department of Child Support Services. Burial in bureaucracy gave him no respite from his angst.

He booked a suborbital with the last of cash in that ident's possession and hailed a magnacar to the spaceport. The three-hour flight took him half-a-world away but couldn't wrench him from wretchedness.

He slept fitfully on the suborbital, oozing into the empty seat beside his own.

The Crestonia spaceport looked as desultory as the last time he'd visited. The air smelled of corruption, the venal stench growing stronger the closer he got to the capitol. Tendrils of influence cracked the staid, stately building, money spilling out its doors like sewage from clogged toilets. The taint nearly polluted him before he got to the restaurant.

The Omale waiter had said, “A woman brought in a package. 'Put the vial contents in his food.' ”

Brigita Baltakis had the secuvids up on the holo already. “Betty told me you were coming.”

“Thanks.”

A slim figure in fedora and trench coat slithered up to the counter, the jaw working as if the person were talking on a trake. A small package remained when the person had gone, a package the waiter then picked up.

A second secuvid above the entrance showed the fedora coming in, head down, just the chin visible. A third vid showed the fedora leaving, the head coming up, exposing full rosy lips under a straight, dainty nose.

“Stop.” Tornadoes roared in his ears, and cyclones blotted out all but the frozen vid in front of him. “Please send these vids to Lieutenant Balodis, Telsai Precinct.”

“Certainly, Mr. Peterson, or Petras, or whatever.”

He gave Brigita a brief smile, his internal storm subsiding briefly. “Thank you.”

On his way out the back entrance, the proprietor stopped him. “Who was she, Mr. Peterson?”

“An Ofem of no particular notoriety,” he said. “Not to worry. We'll be apprehending her soon.”

Maris thanked her again, hoping he'd covered his discomfiture, and turned to the street. A descending sun declined him its warmth. Late afternoon crowds harangued him with impassive faces. Vehicles on the avenue hurled taunts at him with their passing whines. The wind buffeted him with accusations. Cumulus clouds arraigned him for conspiracy.

* * *

Maris looked at a bank of secuvids and watched a replay of the night the Chinese food was delivered to their door at the Holtin Hotel.

It was all there, but there was nothing there. From the moment the food entered the hotel to the moment it arrived at the tenth-floor door, it was all on vid. Moments after it was left at their door, Maris and Ilsa got off the elevator and approached. But at no point was the Chow Fung tampered with.

The ident of the delivery woman was easy to obtain, enough hotel vid for a full facial metric. Further, he got the neuracom records for that night and located Ilsa's com to the Chinese restaurant. The Crestonia PD homicide squad owed him a few favors.

Golden-tasseled lamps hung from curved eaves. As he entered the restaurant, a cyber dragonhead turned toward him and roared with all the power of a kitten.

The proprietor was an Ifem of Caucasian descent. “You expected Fu Manchu?”

He told her what had happened and what he needed.

“Yeah, your brothers in blue asked me about her. Indenture contract firm, Vilaka Temp. You know, one of those contradictory names?”

“An oxymoron?”

“Yeah, one of those. A temp service of permanent slaves.”

Vilaka Temp operated out of a seedy warehouse in the industrial district, the rumble of magnafreighters shaking the reception area every few minutes. The Omale secretary stepped through an inner door to retrieve the person Maris had asked to see. The spare reception area held few comforts, a pair of chairs, a holomag from three years ago, an empty water dispenser.

Maris knew the racket. They bought up the indenture contracts of Ohumes who'd flubbed several assignments or through misadventure had found themselves repeatedly returned to their original manufacturer as defective. Vilaka Temp then bought up the indenture contract and doled out the workers to businesses requiring cheap, fast, abundant, unskilled labor at rates way below the wage floor.

Ohumes indentured to firms like Vilaka Temp earned little, were charged placement fees for every assignment, and found themselves accruing “membership” and other miscellaneous fees, all of which made their working themselves out of indenture a near-impossible task. Further, firms who contracted with Vilaka for the temporary labor shorted them hours, levied fees for even a modicum of work supplies, subjected them to the harshest environments, most hazardous conditions, and most dangerous tasks. Mistreatment, beatings, and rapes were routine. Since the Ohumes weren't employees, contract firms were immune to labor violations. Ohumes with the temerity to complain were told to take those complaints to Vilaka, who promptly told them their complaints needed to be taken up with the contract firm.

He decided he'd waited long enough and followed, going the way the Omale secretary had gone.

The door was locked. Other than the entrance, it was the only door off the reception area.

His kick splintered the jamb, and the door slumped to the side on a hinge.

Beyond was a small, empty warehouse, at the back an open door.

Worse than I imagined, Maris thought, smirking at the sight. The business code required all firms to have a physical address but didn't specify the minimum amount of business to be conducted at that address. They could've rented a boiler room, he thought.

He called in another favor from Crestonia Homicide.

“Vilaka? Yeah, slippery bunch,” his contact told him. “Let me see what I can do.”

In a few minutes, Maris had the name and address of the Vilaka Temp Ofem who'd delivered the Chinese food.

The magnacar pulled off the thoroughfare and into a neighborhood that'd seen better centuries. Hovels had been scraped together with scraps of glasma and spare sheets of plasteel, pastiched together with baler wire and imagination. The streets looked like a rummage sale, the haphazard piles of junk free for the taking. Desperate eyes watched the magnacar maneuver between piles, most of the Ohumes here likely delinquent on their indentures. Maris suspected the magnacar wouldn't leave the neighborhood intact.

“What do you want?” the half-bent crone screeched half-clothed from behind a half-open door.

“I'm looking for Agnese Vanag. Don't tell me she's not here.” He had her location pinpointed, a map on his corn.

She pulled her robe closed and pulled the door open. “In back.”

“Back” was the next space over, barely separated from the front by a hanging cloth.

Agnese was sitting on a grimy cot under a low ceiling, light streaming through the boards making up the patchy roof. In her hand was a mastoid dongle. “You got lucky—about to jack out of here. You gonna recycle me?”

“Why? Delinquent on your indenture?”

The woman nodded. “I ain't paid in so long, I don't know how much I owe.”

“I just want to ask you about a Chow Fung delivery the other night.”

“Yeah? That's all you want? You don't want to jerk me?”

Maris shook his head. “Just information.”

“Cost ya.”

Maris shrugged.

“Lady stops me as I'm coming out the back door, says she'll give me a fifty if I open the bag and look the other way. What the jerk, right? You gonna arrest me for that?”

“Lady?”

“I don't know who she was, I swear. Really, I don't. That'll be fifty lats.”

“Fifty for no help at all?”

“I'll throw in a jerk. How about it? I'm the best jerk you'll find around here.”

“How about you do a worm?” He knew he could strong-arm her.

“Down at the station, right?”

He was surprised she came with him so willingly. In a precinct interrogation room, the neuraworm snaked down from above, a shimmering coil of braided tubing. At the end was a skullcap, its insides smooth and black, as featureless as a timeless void.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” he said, not knowing whether it would or not.

“All right,” Agnese said. “As long as it doesn't hurt, you can jerk me afterward.” She didn't seem to understand he wasn't interested.

The skullcap molded itself to her head, and her gaze began to glaze, the worm inserting nanotendrils into her brain. The interrogation room wall lit up, aswirl with chaos.

“Concentrate on the night you were called to the restaurant.”

Lumps of light coalesced into golden-tasseled lamps hanging from curved eaves. A cyber dragonhead turned and squeaked.

“Pickup for Ilsa Janson?” asked the cashier.