Organo-Topia (8 page)

“Sure.” He blanked his corn and muted his coke, then commed Lieutenant Balodis.

“ 'Bout time you got back to me, Peterson. What the jerk you been doin'?” Behind her, a holorealist masterpiece from the last century graced her living room wall.

“Infantide Interstellar, Plavinas Development Crèche, Balozi Neurobiotics. Report will be on your neuramail in the morning, Lieutenant. No new leads of any substance.”

“The boy at Plavinas Development, you were there for that?” Her eyes searched his avatar, as though she might see past a blanked corn.

“Saw him liquefy, Lieutenant.” Not a sight he'd soon forget. Eleven! The boy was only eleven!

“Sorry you had to see that. I thought the two missing bureaucrats might be you and your jerk. Undercover's complaining you're sucking up all the idents. I sent Captain Greshot over to jack 'em off my back. Listen, Maris, Valmiera Nanobotics just announced the departure of Doctor Raihman, their lead researcher. Something about breach of protocol. Know anything about that?”

His denial was knee-jerk. “Not a thing.”

“Find out from him. Valmiera's not talking to us. What's next, Maris?”

Detective Peterson didn't know what to tell her. He excreted some bovine answer and cut the connection. The magnacar wobbled to a stop in front of the hotel.

He got out and stretched. The dusty night sky was littered with stars and strewn with helopod streaks. Baking day heat simmered off the cooling asphalt. Pedestrians in mixed attire moped furtively along the crowded street. The whine of magnacars still sang about perennial servitude, their double-seater zipping off to join its fellow slaves, free for now, as Ilsa joined him on the curb.

“Raihman got dismissed, eh?” she said.

He grunted, heading for the lobby, his butt tired from sitting, his mind tired from thinking.

Filip Dukur, Telsai Daily News, ambushed them at the lift. “Detective Peterson, the Governor and Legislature are demanding answers. What have you got to tell them?”

He cursed that he wasn't wearing his disguise. “A bit out of your doghouse, aren't you, Dukur?”

“Promoted to investigative reporter at the Crestonia Capitol Beat. What about it, Detective? Any leads?”

“Just one,” Maris said, pointing out the door. “See that pillar there? Better go piss on it and claim your territory.” He stepped backward and the elevator doors closed between them.

“Pretty dogged, isn't he?” Ilsa sniffed. “Smells like Chinese already.”

Broccoli quasibeef scented the air. Peterson rubbed the spidery nanotector clinging to his finger.

A woman got on when they got off. “Oh, it's you,” she said to Ilsa, and then pointed down the corridor. “I set your food outside your door.”

The scents were stronger as they approached the corner. They turned it and saw the package thirty feet down the hall.

A high-pitched screech filled the corridor, the spindly nanotector pulsating red.

Maris shoved Ilsa behind him, dropped to a knee and whipped out his blasma pistol.

Fake fung chow splattered the corridor walls and began to sizzle as nanochines consumed it. Nanotector alarms added their piercing pings to the screech and foam sprayed from nozzles, coating the corridor. Misty white snow turned tawdry hotel hallway into winter wonderland.

“Well, jerk it all, anyway. My favorite dish!” he said, blowing on the glowing blasma pistol tip.

Faces began to poke into the corridor from rooms.

“Nanochines contained, folks,” he said. “Go back into your rooms.”

“We'd better find another place to stay,” Ilsa said, staring at the wintry hallway.

“And something else to eat.”

The noodle bar stayed open late. Maris ate standing, eyes scouring the streets.

Now it was personal. Now they'd come after him and Ilsa.

Firefly helopods subsided slowly, each one an assassin, Maris tracking them all for the telltale veer toward them. Pedestrians grew fewer, each one an assassin, Maris tracking them all for the telltale glance toward them.

Somehow the assassins had intercepted Ilsa's order, compromised the delivery, introduced the nanochines, and set it outside their hotel room door. All within fifteen minutes.

They'd been ready. They'd been planning it. Why? He wasn't even officially on the case, hadn't been since coming to Crestonia. They wanted him off the case. I must be close, he thought. Somewhere, I hit a nerve. One of the last three places he'd gone, he was sure. Plavinas Development Crèche? he wondered. Balozi Neurobiotics? Infantide Interstellar seemed an unlikely place to have offended someone. Further, he'd been alone, Ilsa at the hotel, recovering from the nightclub attempt. Plavinas or Balozi. Which?

“You're awful quiet,” Ilsa said. Her noodle bowl in front of her was empty.

He'd devoured his bowl after eating all his noodles. “You don't like the bowl?”

She shook her head. “Extra calories.” She pushed it toward him.

He devoured that too. Couldn't have been Plavinas, because no one saw them leave. At Balozi, he'd pissed in the CEO's face. She could've easily put a tracer on their magnacar, its encryption system having multiple known backdoor keys. He'd used it multiple times to track a suspect, with or without a warrant. She might have even jacked their destination. En route, he and Ilsa had unjacked from their fake idents. How had Lizabet Balozi intercepted their order? The timing wasn't right. How had Dukur found him at the Holtin? Was that where their cover was blown?

“You gonna make me stay open all night?” the proprietor said.

“You gonna jerk me 'til the sun comes up?” Maris looked at Ilsa and swung his glance down the street. As they shambled along the shabby boulevard, he traked the Telsai Precinct computer. The neuranet system had its own encryption flaws, but public demand for privacy had spawned a proliferation of security products.

“I'm getting us both a new ident,” he said. “Until then, it's not safe for us to use a magnacar. And rather than a hotel, why don't we rent a flat?”

“You sure we're going to be here that long?”

“I'm not sure of anything, sweetie.”

“Twice someone's tried to kill us.”

That look was back. Two wives had had that same look, and unlike Ilsa, they hadn't been in the field with him. Maris had seen the same look in colleagues' eyes, a look that presaged either disability or an OJA, on-the-job-accident. First came the preoccupation, the silent questioning, the trauma-induced fear. Then the fatigue, the black-rimmed eyes, the yawns, the sleepless nights. And pretty soon, that person found an exit, either some small trigger that set off an explosion, the sudden onset of a medical issue, sometimes gastro, other times cardio, or an accident, a slight lapse in attention, a fall, a step into the line of fire, a step off the curb into oncoming traffic.

Maris, he'd learned to live with it, the constant stress, the terrible hours, the long nighttime vigils, the loss of partners in the field, the loss of wives from the home. Two of the latter hadn't been able to cope with the reality of daily danger. Shortly before leaving, they'd each begun to look the same way as those colleagues who'd begun preparing their exits.

“You got that look.”

“Huh?”

He stopped and turned to her, pulling her close. “This ain't for you, I can tell. I'm gonna put in for witness protection, get you a new life. They can't buy out your indenture, but at least you'll have a safe place to live.”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “I don't want a new life. I want a life with you.” She was warm against him, her spirit wrapped around his heart.

His last two wives had wanted the same, the second one even demanding he give up his fifteen-year career on the force. She hadn't understood, hadn't had the capacity to understand. He doubted Ilsa would either. A life with him was a difficult road.

Maris turned Ilsa's face up to his, and he kissed her deeply. “I want a life with you. It's moments like this that make such a life, but there's other moments, like that one back at the Holtin. They're part of it too. You can't have one without the other. Every day you'll wait in dread, not knowing when I'll come home.”

“Or if you will. I know that, Mare, and I know you'll come home some days without ever leaving the office. I've seen that, too.”

He nodded. “Weeks, sometimes.”

“But when you're here, with me, right now, it's all worth it.” She yanked his body to hers with his rumpled coat, her face turned up to his.

He lost himself in her lips, and his mind succumbed to her embrace.

“Get a jerkin' hotel, fa godsakes!” a passerby yelled.

Maris thought it was a reasonable suggestion, never mind its unreasonable delivery.

* * *

The dawn was bright, his night had been brighter. The glow of the dark washed into the light. The heat of the cold warmed him through the chill.

He chose a spot without giveaways, convinced someone was watching, and then commed Doctor Juris Raihman.

“I can't say anything, Peterson. Non-disclosure.” Raihman looked beat, cheeks sagging from darkened sockets, stare haunted beneath wrinkled brows, jaw slack under frowning lips.

“I don't give a jerk what they made you sign, Raihman. A thousand kids in crèche. A quarter million embryos. A half-a-million ova. How high does the number have to get, Doctor?”

The eyes averted. Doctor Raihman looked to be sitting in a restaurant, based on the background Maris could see, bright morning light splashing the far wall, some neighborhood diner where the waitress knew the customers' names, what they did, how they were doing. Surly but beloved. Maris had met his first wife that way.

Raihman sighed and shook his head. “I know it's bleak, but if I talk, I'll never work again—anywhere.”

“I'll take you to a back room, work you over. Then you can say you were coerced.”

“With the scars to prove it, right?”

“Extra measure of veracity, a talking point on your resume, a bruising you can brag about.”

The Doctor snorted and shook his head. “You jerk everyone this way? I got you that nanotector and got fired for it. Now you threaten me with a back room under bright lights.”

“Threaten? I didn't threaten, Doctor. I offered. It's an option. You give up the information and any responsibility for disclosing it. What's so special about that spider-tector, anyway?”

Raihman looked first to the left, and then the right, as if to check for surveillers. “Can't say.”

Bingo, Maris thought. “Well, think about it.” While speaking, he composed a neuramail and slathered it with encryption. “I'd even consider a bareknuckle job, leave the instruments in the autoclave. And who needs bright lights? It's all about choice, Doctor. No pressure from me. What do you say?”

“Sorry, Detective, I'm not talking. You're being very nice about this. Didn't know you had any nice in you. But I just can't. You understand, don't you?”

He sent the neuramail. “Yeah, I get it. I know you'd help if you could, Doctor. Let me know if you change your mind. Thanks for taking my com.”

“Good day, Detective.” The neurachannel closed.

Maris brought out the creature. Its spindly legs wrapped themselves around his finger. The slim, stick-like body shimmered, as though in microscopic motion. Antennae sprouted like dandelions from one end to the other, fine tendrils sampling the environment. Auditory, pheromonal, optical? he wondered, betting on all three. Made of nanochines, it was powered by a microfusion reactor, a tiny glow midway along its stick body. Carbon nanotubes gave it structure. A composite of nanochines for detecting other nanochines.

He rose and stretched, snorted the alley stench from his nose and made his way to the street.

The mad rush, the daily plunge of law-abiding citizen to get to work, was in full headlong progress.

Maris envied and pitied, wishing his were such a blithe, mindless existence and grateful he wasn't a slave to anything but slouch, the fashions of normalcy holding a desirable repulsion for him.

Ilsa met him at a breakfast diner, looking fresh as a sunrise. “What to, today?”

“Some leads I want to follow on my own, if you don't mind.”

“Just bring your ass back intact.”

Right out of his own lexicon. He grinned and took her hand across the table. “That's what I like about you, zapping me with thunder you stole from me.”

The Omale who served them looked at his feet the whole time. Maris dropped his fork experimentally, and the waiter nearly wet himself and almost dropped their food.

The syntheggs and baconfake were delicious, but the hashblands were terrible.

“Can't synth a potato worth beans,” he said, shaking his head sadly over the fried muck.

“That's what they are, right? Genosoy recombinant. Beans.”

“It ain't potato.” He pushed his plate aside. “You gonna follow up today with Infantide Interstellar?”

Ilsa nodded. “Find out who their new supplier is. Mare, what if Plavinas Incubation was just a little corporate sabotage?”

“A quarter-million embryos, just a little sabotage?”

“Maybe not 'little.' No, I mean, who's their nearest competitor?”

“Why don't you look into that too? I'm off to the auction, see what's selling. And I gotta take a suborbital to Telsai.”

She frowned. “You won't be back until late.”

“About nine,” he acknowledged. “Pretty late.”

Ilsa squeezed his hand, frowning. He knew she'd come to hate his hours and hoped she'd adjust. His two ex-wives hadn't.

Outside the restaurant, the high-rise glasma and steel looming above them, he kissed her briefly. “See you tonight.”

Her look of longing lingered in his mind long after she'd left.

Going the other direction, he saw the Omale waiter quivering in the narrow embrasure between buildings.

Gesturing him to follow.

Sunlight blistering off plascrete building front, the alley was shrouded in darkness. Cockroaches thrive in the dark, he thought.

He followed, having to turn sideways. Bare block walled both sides. Objects crunched underfoot, and squealing accompanied sounds of scattering. The musk of long-concealed secrets wafted up from around his feet. He might as well have fallen into the crevasse of oblivion.

The Omale squeezed around a set of pipes.

His eyes adjusting, Maris glanced down at his perfectly rumpled slacks and sighed. The things I do for my job, he thought in disgust, and he forged ahead.

The Omale disappeared into an alcove.

He eyed it. Ambush or sanctuary? he wondered.

The recess was ten feet deep, five feet wide. A pallet covered with carpet remnant made a floor. The bed was a stained cot mattress, just two feet wide, something from a jail cell. Narrow shelves above it contained the bare necessities of a kitchen.

Maris couldn't wait to see the bathroom, until he realized that the covered bucket in the corner served exactly that purpose.

“Farther this way, so they can't see you. I'd offer you a seat, but I don't have one.”

Nor room to put one. He looked at the Omale.

The man wouldn't look at him, his gaze on the meager accommodations. He wore his hair shorn short, a self-administered hand-trim. His restaurant smock was stained with food and sweat. His shoes complained they were too small for the feet, which leaked out the split sides. The slacks sagged slackly, the fine material having long since abandoned its creases.

“You're him,” the Omale said. “They told me you were here. They wanted me to add something to your food.”

“Who?” He could already guess what, the way they'd spiced up the Chinese delivery.

“I don't know. They mailed me when you walked in. One of those anonymails. I'll send it to you. Please, they'll get me because I refused.”

“How do you know that?”

“I'm non-compliant.”

With his indenture, Maris knew. Either several months behind on his payments, or on the run from the indenture holder. “Again, who's 'they'?”

“You know,
them
! I don't know, but I do know. The only reason they haven't found me is I'm offnet. They're already looking for me, out front. You'll see them. Please, help me. There's only one way in here. As soon as I reconnect, they'll swarm in here after me.”

The Omale stank with fear. He had from the moment he'd approached the table inside the breakfast diner. He believed he would die.

Maris reached into his pocket. “Here, jack this.” He handed the Omale a mastoid dongle with an undercover ident, and then he got on his trake. The Telsai precinct computer took a moment from half-a-planet away. “Protective custody needed, Betty's Breakfast Diner.” He traked the address and the undercover ident he'd just handed to the Omale.

“Vehicle en route, Detective. Eight minutes out.”

“You know who I am, what I'm doin?” he asked the Omale.

The man shook his head. “No, I don't know anything. They didn't say. A woman brought in a package, left it on the counter. 'Put the vial contents in his food,' the message said.”

Distant sirens lamented their approach. Activity at the alley entrance increased.

Plasma pistol to his shoulder, Maris slid the safety off with that slick double click, the sound distinct and satisfying. He peered toward the street and saw a shadow retract.

“Where's the package?”

“At the wait station. I opened the package. There was a vial inside.” The man began to weep softly. “I almost put it in. I'm sorry.” The Omale was shaking uncontrollably, and Maris realized the bucket wasn't the only source of the fresh urine smell. A stain umbrellaed down the front of the man's slacks.

He armed the pistol, and its tip began to glow. “Hang on, kid. They're almost here.” Maris leaned into the alley again, the white hot tip at that shoulder. Nothing like a little warning glow.

The sirens were loud now, and strobes reflected off the far buildings. A flashing red light pulled up in front of the narrow alley, and a side hatch opened.