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Two and the Same
27.833/::/14.5
Yinst stood next to the door in the dead woman's tiny cubicle of an office, homicide detectives and inquiring bystanders jostling past. The attention was not undue: investigations were scant in the investigative offices—especially murder. Yinst stood frozen, removed from the morbid activity around him.
Why any person would want to kill Scarlett was beyond his imagination. Yes, he had always repeated to himself those three words—"Kill her please"—but that was a joke. For all her annoying habits, she was a harmless person, a glint of optimism in this dead lightbulb. She was a devoted, if unreliable, friend. Or she had been.
In all his years of work here, from the day she had been promoted by a fluke into his department, he had snubbed her. He had always been the first to insinuate cruel jokes about her and the first to openly reject her proffered help; but there had also been an unspoken agreement between them, a pact giving him duties of protection.
He had not loved her in any sense of the word, for that was against his creed. He had, however, come very close to it, despite her status as a member of the opposite sex and a coeval. His feelings for her were far from marital. There was no such thing to him. The feelings were much closer to paternal, though that too was forbidden. Wasn't there a sect with different-sex Tenders and Trusts? If he could have found it, he would have split off and joined in order to have Scarlett for a Trust. Unfortunately, there was no way to search for such a sect as far as he knew, and Scarlett's reaction would have been far from compliant given the time and place...but for a proper Trust...
"James Porter?"
For a moment, Yinst thought his mind had spoken aloud. Was this a message from extraterrestrials, hinting to find a Trust with the specified name? He had never put much stock by the extraterrestrial fanatics, but perhaps...
No. Two of the detectives on Scarlett's case were conversing on the far side of the room.
"How could this possibly have anything to do...? Can you imagine this has to do with what she said?"
"Ask her superior, over there."
Yinst was beckoned past the holo-tape and over to Scarlett's desk.
"Mr. Moorst, can you tell us what this has to do with the work the victim was involved in before her death?" The man gestured at the comm-puter screen behind him, displaying an old news-streamer for a school newspaper. The paper featured a picture of a dark-haired boy, serious and confident, firmly gripping a violin by the neck—
The screen went black as the other investigator switched it off before forcibly leading her colleague away to a corner of the room.
"What do you think you're doing? Let me ask the..."
Yinst let the detectives fade out at this point. He was fully caught by the sight of Scarlett's desk, dominated by messy stacks of comm parts and...
His folder.
He could see some of the papers sticking out of the side, lying conspicuously on the table, and it was definitely his, complete with the ReachGon info. Scarlett must have wanted to help lessen his workload, so she had started investigating...
And she saw too much.
The words came unbidden to his mind, but he knew they were true. This was a dangerous game he was playing, and Scarlett had paid the price for tripping up.
Attached to the front of the folder was a fluorescent pink magnet, on which, in Scarlett's blockprint, an address was scrawled. Yinst wanted to take it with him, but the detectives obviously wouldn't allow him to read it. They were finished with their conversation and returning to the desk. There was only one thing to do...
He stuffed it in his mouth.
"Tell me, did any of the deceased's jobs..." The woman reconfigured her question. "None of the cases handled in this department are more than few months old, are they?"
Yinst shook his head no, trying not to draw attention to the drool leaking out of the tiny opening at his mouth's corner, or the twisted position of his lips over his half-open jaw.
"We'd appreciate it very much if you'd keep any information you might have under wraps," the woman oozed unctuously. "Any security breaches could compromise our knowledge, and...well, it wouldn't be pleasant, for you or me." She frowned as though imagining such consequences, whatever they might consist of.
"Did you notice the deceased acting strange in any way in the days leading up to the crime?"
The man had spoken, and the woman seemed to restrain herself from berating him, since it was a reasonable question. The two of them turned together to look expectantly at Yinst...they wanted an answer...
He swiftly whipped out his lunch container, opened the top, and spewed the magnet into its silvery depths, accompanied by appropriate gagging noises. The woman's expression was pricelessly horrified.
Wiping his mouth on a handy sleeve, he smiled apologetically.
"Don't try the cafeteria food. I have to talk to the chef when I get a chance..."
No matter that he was holding a lunch container.
"We'd better be going now," the woman said briskly, grabbing the man by the arm and turning to leave.
"Why is this case 'under wraps'?" Yinst composed his best innocent face. "Is it very important?"
The woman gave him a withering glare. "Every case is important to us, and this one's no different. That's common work policy."
With that, she was gone, striding through the holo-tape in the direction of the risers.
Yinst recovered the sodden, crumpled pink magnet, gazing thoughtfully down at his lunch container; its twin red eyes demanded to be recharged.
It would have to wait.
Five minutes later, Yinst was on the street, making his way down to the nearest subway entrance through the soaring heat and muddled crowds.
He suddenly noticed the two investigators farther ahead of him, signalled by the woman's engagement in a fiery lecture.
"Are you trying to get us fired? Our guidelines were to avoid leaking info! If you haven't already realized, that article was evidence!"
"It was just some older newsstreamer from a middle school," protested the man weakly. "Does that really count as ev? I was trying to get input from Mr. Moorst so we could figure this all out."
"We don't need to figure it out, we need to keep our heads low and get out of this mess alive." The woman's voice cracked on the last word. "One slip-up and Apexx will swarm us. Let's review the guidelines she gave us: suppress ev, misinform if necessary, and keep all mention of Hoffskeit—" She didn't bother to finish her sentence; she was captivated by the sight of a news video streaming on a billboard. An anchor was relaying a report of interest.
"In other news, Scarlett Urvine, twenty-five, was found dead in her transport early this morning around two-ooh on Sixth Street. Police found DNA traces coating her and her transport, leading to the arrest of Mechil Hoffskeit. Hoffskeit is best known for his recent election to the Department of Transportation as Chair of the Commission for Special Projects. In the few months since the March elections, he has passed four laws against corporate control of public travelways. When pressed for a comment today, all he would say was, "I did it." Hoffskeit's lawyers have issued a statement proclaiming his plead of innocence, but reports indicate that Hoffskeit is clashing with his lawyers on this point, insisting that he plead guilty to first-degree murder. Investigators are still—"
"WE'RE DEAD, IT'S YOUR FAULT!"
The woman had grabbed her partner by the collar, screeching in his face and shaking him ferociously.
"WE'RE DEAD!"
Yinst was thoroughly muddled at this point. By the time he had reached the station and boarded the appropriate sub-maglev, he had marshalled his thoughts into a coherent order.
1) The woman had mentioned Apexx: that implied SinopeCorp, and either of the two commanders of the Apexx forces. If he remembered correctly, a "she" had been mentioned. Was that Nolee or some subordinate?
2) A Mechil Hoffskeit was deeply involved, and he was pleading guilty to charges of Scarlett's murder.
3) Scarlett was dead.
4) Fiera was mixed up in this. The original investigation request had been specifically from him, and Yinst suspected the magnate was a major player in the action.
5) Scarlett was dead.
6) He was alive.
7) He was going to the addess specified by the magnet.
8) That address happened to be 47327 6th Street.
9) Scarlett was dead.
10) He was going to die.
No I'm not, no I'm not...cate this is not the most promising of circumstances but I will not die. I've been through this once with the other case, and I'll do it again.
A part of him was snickering. "Ho ho, last time you didn't have a problem."
"Ace right, you little worm," was the grim reply, along with a brutal grind under his mind's heel.
Keeping a positive mentality was difficult when you were a modern-day Ace.
"Fuck this, you know? I say those shevys're dumb 's hev. They can move outta here if they wanna hit us up for nico, you know? Cate, they move out, I'll be de-fuckin'-lighted. Hey, you want a drink or somethin'?"
Fiera was growing weary of parrying the young man's energetic appeals. His voluble stream had so far yielded a shocking variety of parts of speech for a certain notable word, including, rather puzzlingly, conjunction. He was blatantly encroaching on Fiera's personal space bubble, and Fiera's sang froid was alarmingly close to snapping—he threatened to burst into laughter at any moment.
Earlier, he had treated Raia to dinner. While taking out lenders was definitely not in keeping with normal business conditions, he felt it was the right thing to do. What he had managed to wrangle from her reluctant lips hinted at a destitute level of poverty. The poor woman deserved a token of his sympathy.
Throughout the meal, she shot him anxious looks. Fiera almost didn't notice in his distant state, and he certainly did not care. If she was uneasy appearing with him in public, her worries would soon be assuaged. Fiera concisely explained the termination of their contact and gave her a handsome sum to subsist on until she located a new customer. He never focused on Raia the whole time; his mind was elsewhere.
The woman was tearing him to pieces, rudely extricating him from his complacency. For it was complacency that had directed him for so long...the woman from his past was just whom he needed to see. Talking to her marked him invisibly and elusively, leaving him ravaged without his mental faculties of lucid reasoning. Dismissing Raia—severing my business arrangements with her, he corrected himself—was in no way momentous, but he found himself with satisfacion and moral rectitude, all because the woman had messed with his head. He had ceased to support the lender industry, removed himself from infidelity (if that was the right word) without having his hand forced, and helped an impoverished woman glimpse the world of money. He felt positively bubbly, as a child who has pleased his mother does.
Something was deeply wrong with him.
"Whuta fuck's up? I'mean, it's hot's hev and they'dun care?!"
The young man was still ranting obscenely, defaming the infamous, all-purpose "they" that currently subsumed anyone associated with eco-control.
"They'r'outta th'r f'ck'n minds, tak'n' us out by th' thous, you know?! They're fuck'n' us dry...bitchin' broke, uh...you know?"
The guy definitely sounded drunk.
"An' they, uh, these s'ns-o'-bitches, uh..."
He was working himself into a frenzy, coming up short of epithets as he slurred on determinedly. Fiera noticed an underlying strain in the man's voice, separate from the tensions of emphatic cursing. It was like the man could not find the right words...
"F'cktards, ev'ry las' one'uv'em. I'd give it all to, uh, j's' fuck th'm up, and see how they like it. Yeah. I'll j's' f'ck'em over, and I'll give it to 'em so bad that, uh, cate, those muthufuckin', uh, motherfucking shit-bleeding tish-sucking shevy bastardian fucking draconian FUCKS can take their fucking iniquities and a—"
The bar's patrons erupted in outrage, and the bartender propelled herself in the young man's direction. Fiera intercepted her smoothly, slipping a discrete unit into her palm.
She squinted at him disgustedly."You think this will cover my taxes?"
Fiera hastily handed over two more. Behind her, irate, affronted drunks were converging on the young man.
The woman stepped aside and allowed Fiera to whisk the belligerent man away from the crowd's maws. She directed them to a small, quiet offshoot of the main bar, giving them a glare that ensured they wouldn't be wandering from their little nook anytime soon.
Fiera was left with the strange man, who looked at him sideways from his seat at the table. Resigned to actually conversing, Fiera dropped into the adjacent chair wearily.
The young man shoved his chair to the side with screech, whipping out a comm-zepto and waving it like a weapon. "Touch me and you die."
Fiera sat motionless, puzzled. First of all, the man shouldn't have had money enough for a comm-1, let alone a zepto. Second, his drunken hostility was gone. Gone!
"If I press this button, you will regret ever having laid eyes upon me. Get away from me now and I'll let you go. I know why you paid off the bartender."
The kid—Fiera happily acknowledged his own seniority—apparently thought Fiera was going to mug or otherwise use him.
"Listen, that's not why I helped you. I have no intentions of hurting you. I'm interested in your act."
The sober drunk slumped in his chair, and his face fell.
"Is it so terribly obvious?" he muttered, mostly to himself. "Indeed, I don't speak in that manner. I could not bring myself to utter that one phrase, nor am I particularly indigent. I do have a job, of sorts."
These last words were so comically indignant, and the man was so ridiculously genteel, Fiera could only stare.
What's wrong with him?
"Have you ever been held back?" the man fumed. "Has your full potential gone unrealized for another's cruel satisfaction?
Just enduring the man's convivial vitality was tiring. Add in the affected speech, and the arrangement was intolerable.
All his instincts told Fiera the guy would leave him in peace if he seemed unresponsive. Against his better judgment, he feigned concern. "Sure."
The atomic bomb hit the gunpowder.
"My father is affluent. Highly affluent, you might say. Do you know Ryordid Enterprises? Suffice to say his name is not 'Enterprises.'"
Fiera leaned closer. Suffice to say Ryordid of Ryordid Enterprises was no friend of his.
"Forgive me," the young man added hastily. "I failed to introduce myself. I am Blaiz Ryordid."
Fiera nodded cordially. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ryordid."
The man winced. "Please, call me Blaiz. Mr. Ryordid is my nemesis."
A smile crept along Fiera's lips at the bitter label. "Do you despise the man so fervently, then?"
"He belittles my accomplishments, perpetuates plots to reduce my influence, inures to my pleas any sympathizers I might possess. He dismisses both my requests and demands as one would a child's histrionics. He portrays himself as a kindly philanthropist who tirelessly champions the public's rights, but he's a supercilious, greedy supremacist who in his insufferable arrogance restrains me to meaningless sinecures." Blaiz's eyes were...blazing. "What are you employed in?" he said gruffly.
"Actually," said Fiera,"I work at SinopeCorp. Desk job." He did have a desk.
"What a coincidence!" said Blaiz with disaffected delight. Fiera could read his mind: Simply associating with SinopeCorp is resisting my father. From the eagerness on his face, Blaiz was a well-bred scion of the upper crust, rebelling in his droll naivete.
He reminded Fiera of Nolee in her agreeable moods. Both she and Blaiz blithely displayed no understanding of life's grit apart from the aristocratic, censored version they painted for themselves. But Nolee's darker, cagey side was also evident. When Fiera had referred Urvine to her, Nolee had completed the job tolerably well. Not that Fiera would commend her for it, but...it relieved him to see she possessed skills of the craft. He had handled Hoffskeit, and she had managed to complete a delicate operation: cover-up.
At the other end, Fiera thought Hoffskeit was a brilliant work. The chair was popular and dangerous, canvassing votes for laws against Fiera's expressed positions. As an easy addition to the inquisitive Urvine's disposal, the solon was taken out. Fiera had co-opted Hoffskeit beautifully: the man wanted to be convicted. Court proceedings would reveal Hoffskeit to be the unpenitent murderer. Case closed.
Blaiz was still expounding on the conceitful hubris of his father.
"Do you have another parent to protest his conduct?" Fiera asked, unintentionally mimicking Blaiz's misplaced sophistication.
"I was conceived traditionally, but as things transpired, my father demanded sole custody. He was familiar with the adjudicator, hence my subsequent alienation from my mother."
Fiera's throat tightened. Wasn't that setup backwards?
"What of you?" inquired Blaiz. "Are you married?"
Fiera ran a hand through his hair and phrased his answer carefully. "I don't have a wife."
"You don't like women?"
"I don't like many people in general."
"Wait, do you contest marriage?"
"Precisely."
"Indeed!" said Blaiz, drumming his fingers on the table thoughtfully. "Why? I imagine I'd enjoy engaging in some, er, lasting relationship."
Fiera unconsciously smoothed the back of his hair down.
"Coming in contact with people regularly is tedious enough. Suppose you had to put up with a person 35 hours or more a week for years and years. Unions of any kind are begging for divorce."
"How," said Blaiz incredulously, "can you dislike people so? Everyone knows certain individuals they'd rather not see, but it's impossible to hate all people."
"It's very possible, and I follow the statute to the best of my ability."
"No parents, friends, mentors? What about partners, mates, possul-kews?"
"None. Connections as you have mentioned are equally tedious and rewardless, save one."
"And that would be...?" Blaiz's fingers tapped curiously.
"Marriage is worse, being simply inconvenient."
"Inconvenient?!" Blaiz seemed to marvel at such irreverent words. "Well, what about relatives?"
"I forcibly estrange myself from any I might have."
"Children?"
"I do not cherish contact with children any more than the rest of mankind."
Fiera slipped into stony silence, giddy with revealing his ethos to a complete stranger. Another unthinkable, bright idea came to him; he accepted it resignedly.
"Blaiz, would you by any chance be interested in a job?"
When Fiera arrived at his office, he was assailed by an invite from the Secretary of Defense. He traded pleasantries, resisting the urge to flirt. It was insulting enough to string the man along like this, teasing him for a decade with the implication that things could develop into a relationship eventually. In SinopeCorp's earliest years, the subsidies had stabilized the fledgling company. Now money no longer rested with the government, but Fiera kept this contact exceptionally fresh. He should have in all practicalities ceased friendly communication, but the ego-stroking blend of admiration and attraction entertained him.
Mr. Aruvian finally released Fiera, leaving him to pad around his home. It was technically his office, but, not having any other permanent residence, he usually slept here. When he slept.
He paused in front of the window. The filler had not yet dried, so mirrored silver streaked across the center of the blue expanse. The outside world looked like a fantastic civilization on the bottom of the ocean, and it might as well be for all the sanity he found out there.
Retreating to his desk, he initiated his comm-screen, which was scarred as though by amateur chainsaw jugglers. The blood had been scrubbed off promptly at Hale's command, but the scratches would have to wait for a trip to the manufacturer. The missing infoPacs were much more unsettling, and he would feel vulnerable until they were recovered. He should have destroyed them immediately. Instead, he had left them out for anyone to grab, a ReachGon member no less.
He supposed keeping them was the only way to make sure it was all real, on those days when he suspected he had invented it. After all, his current life had started out as a fiction. He had feigned the hauteur and avarice needed in a tycoon, and the mask came easier as he incorporated his duplicitous behavior. There came a time when, upon reflection, he found the illusion gone—it was reality.
His ergonomic chair tilted him forward, and he was soon immersed in his mechanically dull work.
At some point, the continual thumps hovering at the edge of his attention lengthened into an incessant drone, like that of a pneumatic drill. Customarily, Fiera ignored this sound as part of his arrangements with Nolee. She could be as distracting as she wanted...for no more than two days per week. But in the same spirit that he had stopped paying Raia and granted Blaiz a job, he decided to shut Nolee up.
He walked over the hall carpeting, a vibrant tableau of stock exchanges, current and projected agricultural yield, and cuts from streamers featuring moguls or large-impact commercial disasters. Unpromising sounds emanated from Nolee's door. Fiera paused, steeling himself for what he knew was next.
He opened the door and found Nolee's friends in flagrante delicto. Enchanting.
Paul, immediately noticeable with his excess of avoirdupois, was endeavoring to perform as a curiously hirsute ecdysiast. Others, including Nolee's primary partner Sway, were industriously providing each other with labial stimulation, thrashing like dying fish. If there was any place to crush the morals of generations, it was here.
"Hello, handsome."
Nolee spoke from behind Fiera with the candor born of intoxication. He turned to see her in the doorway of a kitchenette, bearing several martinis. Wide, twilled straps of black leather bared her breasts and upper arms distractingly.
"Nolee, you wouldn't mind moving the orgy to your house?"
Nolee didn't seem to hear the distaste in Fiera's voice. She sighed theatrically. "This is the nepenthe and lethe of old! You of all people could appreciate its fruits, I presume. You, straightlaced and ever so chaste..." She became more eloquent when drunk.
Fiera took this time to survey her quarters. Damascene walls of gold, silver, and platinum bore coruscant arrays of inset carnelian and amethyst. His own office was austere in contrast, the only excuse for decoration his cobalt glass window.
The prodigal snaked her hands under his collar, recapturing his attention. Her leg extensions, which she'd commissioned ten years ago, raised her to roughly the same height as him, but they detracted nothing from her willowy grace. "Please, won't you stay?" She tossed her hair, smiling seductively. She seemed to brook no resentment over the car he had failed to return.
"You're drunk. Leave." Fiera was expressionless.
Nolee was not at all turned off. The only person in the room who looked miffed was Sway, a jealous scowl marring her face.
"Coda," Nolee simpered, ingratiating as usual. She pressed him to the wall and played with his neck titillatingly. Fiera felt distinctly claustrophobic.
"Get off me," he said icily.
"I'm a passionate connoisseur in the fine art of fellatio," Nolee wheedled. "Wouldn't you care to try?" Fiera's "no" was muffled in her sloppy kiss. She tasted of BLT, cloying and sharp.
In an instant, he had pinned her to the wall by her neck. With no end to her ribald coquetry, he had to persuade her with 5 shares to remove her friends, and another 10 for Nolee herself.
Steep, but well worth it, he thought back in his office after having ejected her and the rest of the troupe from the premises. Glancing at his comm, he saw it was 11:oo. As someone somewhere had once said, the night was still young. Plenty of time for paperwork.
Letters, grayish in their blend with the surrounding white, swam before Yinst's blurred eyes. He had found what he was looking for—but what was it?
The address on the pink magnet had led him to a downtown crematorium of sorts: a warren of celluloid paper with data either obsolete or digitized for convenience, scheduled to be burned in blazing glory. When he had walked onto the registered premises of the warehouse's land lot, the magnet had changed to show a digit/alphabetical code.
This, in turn, had led Yinst to find a row of bins, engorged with a mass of useless knowledge. The only problem: the row had thousands, maybe millions of sheets in it. Worse, all evidence of Scarlett's search (if she had even made it this far) was wiped, negated by automatics to keep the unruly celluloid tidy.
There was no apparent organization in the papers, and Yinst soon grew weary of poring over records, bills, notes, drafts, journals, pamphlets, advertisements, copies, originals, and ever more. It became impossible to actually read the dry evidence of another decade's fine-tuning, its mechanisms and fallbacks and simply paperwork.
Yinst gave up neatly stacking the papers he had browsed and began tossing them in an ever-growing mountain formation around him. His valley walls were steepening rapidly; he was wondering when someone at the front desk would realize that he was not engaged in a case at the moment (at least officially) and that he had no legal right to be looking at these plethoric slips of whatnot.
Slumped over, consciousness failing in the monotony of pure tedium, he threw the fated paper aside at first and had to go diving into the piles to recover it a second later. The pink of Scarlett's preferred ink formed a fluorescent loop around a few choice words.
The sheet appeared to be a checklist of some sort, with two columns of names and one of distorted v's. It was handwritten and showed marks of having once been crumpled into a ball.
The circled letters spelled out:
"Derrick SCOTT .trn James Tobias PORTER"
Yinst sighed in relief at having found a clue of consequence. This, he realized abruptly, must have been what was on Scarlett's mind in the minutes before her death. This was what she had found.
Now to follow up on her efforts, he had to get out of this deadzone, then find out who these people were—or had been—through research, the wonderously unchallenging and non-life-threatening excursion of choice.
As if I'll ever be safe again.
Ah well.
First things first: Derrick Scott.
Where is it? I need it now.
James dug hurriedly through his mother's belongings, moving on to the dresser after searching the bathroom and the bed. After all, you could never tell where an elusive item might be hiding.
I did menial labor to get that thing...I WORKED for it!
The comm-atto was nowhere to be found.
Throwing bits of paraphernalia over his shoulder, he worked through the drawers like a tornado, ripping out the messy stacks of clothes and flinging them onto the floor heedlessly.
Where is it, where is it, WHERE IS—
His heart stopped.
At least it felt like that. He couldn't be sure anymore. He couldn't feel any part of his body. A cold shiver worked its up his back, and all thoughts of the comm-atto fled in quiet terror. He took in a shuddering breath; his expressionless face revealed nothing of his true feelings. Shutting the drawer softly, he left the whirlwind of a room without looking back.
He refused to listen or acknowledge in any way: not to the home truths screamed out, nor the secret awe stirred, nor the startling possibilities revealed.
It was a nice neighborhood.
A lack of wind seemed to double the effects of gravity in the calm aura of suburbia on the outskirts of Los Angeles. With a four-hour drive to the Atlantic coast, most residents chose to resist the charms of the cancer-inducing beach in favor of a vacation in the city. The high-rise condo district began roughly one hour away. Downtown was only 30 minutes further.
This kind of peaceful environment was not subject to the raw fury of the city, nor was it sullied by a constant crush of crime, if occasionally facilitating the exchange of illegals like alcohol or nicotine. More subtle were the menacing signs of a society pushed to the limits of tolerance, of a place bursting with barely checked ideas. The flow of unrest was not novel―it had been eddying in a steadily growing tide for centuries.
But in the last ten years or so, it had spiked all-time highs, and an exigency was incipient.
Two figures emerged from one of the houses.
"Thank you for your time…Your information has been invaluable."
"It's no problem. I honestly never thought someone would come looking."
"I'll definitely use this to further my investigation. You…I told you my hypothesis."
"Yes." Derrick's eyes shifted to a point of Yinst's shoulder. "I should have seen that coming. It wasn't so unlikely. I must have stopped looking. I thought…when…it seemed as though he…"
"Don't worry, you've explained yourself thoroughly. Besides, it's a unsupported explanation, and I could be completely wrong. A guess is only a guess. Even if it is true, you had no reason to believe…"
He paused, realizing that—
"I did." Derrick showed no sign of emotion, guilt or otherwise.
Yinst stared at his shoes and cleared his throat. He had one question.
"I have one question."
Derrick seemed to rejoin the living.
"How exactly does James's condition work? You said he's killed people―how can that possibly coexist with the inability to hurt others?"
Derrick took a deep breath, seeming to brace himself in preparation for an unsavory topic.
"He never does it directly. It's…definable as first-degree murder, before and after the fact. Never during. Other people seem to bend to his will, and he exploits them to perform his crimes. As for the subject of his…'condition,' he can't physically hurt people. Or rather, he cannot hurt someone without an intermediate to perform the most direct...actions."
"You deducted this from just observing him?" Yinst, with procedure deeply inculcated, distrusted Derrick's matter-of-fact tone.
"I observed him for some time, yes, but most of my conclusions are based on logic. Trust me, I've been searching long enough to recognize the truth."
Yinst still didn't believe Derrick, but he accepted the ideas provisionally and tried to rationalize Derrick's explanation. "He can't hurt people without an intermediate...But that makes no sense―accidents happen, and he's surely hurt someone at some time."
"When he does hurt people directly, he feels the pain he inflicts. No, he feels what he perceives them to feel. If he injures someone and only discovers it later, he experiences their pain―or his perception of their pain―at the moment he is cognizant of his actions. He could conceivably have a different reaction due to a softening of his memory over time, but in general, the reaction would be much the same if he realizes it instantly or if it takes time to get around to him."
Yinst sensed an evasion and dug in. "What happens when he kills someone directly? Did you engineer an effect for that?"
For the first time since Yinst had dropped the name "James Porter," Derrick showed more than a blank apathy. The man furrowed his brows in thought and shifted his weight. "That's an intriguing scenario I've pondered myself...unfortunately, it's never been put to the test as far as I know.
"Anyways, neither I nor those I've been associated with are sure of the condition's cause. I can assure you, none of our procedures created this peculiarity. We were exactingly precise in our work, and there was no room for this kind of mistake. I always assumed it to be an outgrowth of his homicidal tendencies, a sort of fallback for his moral sense when it was no longer a part of his conscious mind.
"However, a…friend of mine perceived an alternate causal path. She believed his murderous intent stemmed from his condition, an attempt to compensate for an inadequacy, or inability. Furthermore, she described a fear, like a…phobia of sorts. Of what, I don't know―she isn't exactly around for questioning on her theory anymore. If she and I were both incorrect in our conjectures, I have no idea where his restraints come from. Maybe some early life experience…I can hardly see it as congenital, as his mother obviously did not display such passivity from my experience with her." Derrick chuckled dryly.
"But the father..." he mused. "I never knew him…if you do any research in that area, could you check that for me? You wouldn't have to do an in-depth search―I'm sure a…disability of this nature would be highly notable unless there's an inane amount of security surrounding the man."
Derrick grinned.
"I'll definitely look into it," said Yinst, a little hoarse.
In his transport on the way back to the downtown office, he felt an unexpected wellspring for James, wherever he was. The detective hoped, for James's sake, that his tentative explanation for the facts was wrong. Speaking with Derrick had forged a strong, if unreasonable, bond in Yinst's mind with James and his "phobia."
Yinst knew phobias.
James scaled the stairs slowly, trying to put off the moment when he would have to open the door and see his mother. He was glad Henry wasn't around. The man could infuriate James with a casual word. James wasn't even sure the poor man, never fully recovered from the disappearance of his daughter, intended to make such cutting remarks.
James urged the door open.
There was no one there.
Upon attentive listening, a faint hiss betrayed the shower's flow in the bathroom. James moved quickly, grabbing a jacket and some cash from the bedroom and dashing for the door. Emma stepped into the kitchen wearing a towel. Mother and son froze.
"James, sweetie, are you going out?" her tone was plaintive and uncertain. "Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something...important."
James was fixed to one spot. He felt the instinctive urge to comfort his mother, tempered by a deep seated and equally ingrained revulsion. She was one of them. The first stirrings of confused misdirection breathed within him. He inched toward the door.
"I saw that you found my..." Emma shifted uneasily. "I was going to tell you."
James had sidled over to the entrance; he stepped out and gently erased the sliver of sunlight on the kitchen floor.
The muted bluish light of the travelway was a soft pool in Taun's eyes. It made him think of water, sweet and wonderful, trickling down his throat. Memory of his privileged sip in Fiera's office was vague, but he tried to reexperience it once more, closing his eyes to savor the imaginary taste at the periphery of his senses.
Akii was curled up on the ground, his eyelids at half mast and breath slow. He had claimed to be unfatigued when Taun had asked; they had only stopped when Taun, enervated himself, found his legs to be failing.
Dusk was falling, but the ground still glowed with warmth collected during the 42-degree day from the sun. With the majestic, vindictive orb gone, however, there was a new flame to rival the darkness.
Taun raised his head and was dazzled by the flamboyant glow of the city nightscape. Wires and controlled gases writhed across the tall, spacious gap over the travelway, almost alive in their beauty. In view of these gorgeous, sparkling effulgencies, free to roam the dark skies like electrified wraiths, the faint light of the travelway was invisible.
For a brief moment, Taun thought he saw a bright spark sizzle across the chink of sky between the buildings. It could have been one of the private, exotic somethings: those organic motes of glittery exuberance that the wealthy were rumored to engage their children with. Seemingly all of the organic contrivances and breakthrough technologies were in the possession of the fabulously rich. The middle and lower classes were suffering the consequences of their forfeiture...but when had they forfeit anything? Losing their human privileges right by right, had anyone spoken out? Did the blurred, rheumy eyes of humanity's masses demand their technology, their knowledge, in silent reproach?
Somewhere, the chain had been broken.
At some moment in time, the divide had been completed, drawn with every monetary unit of difference and every privilege revoked.
Today, all those exempt from high society had left for themselves was their right to dream of the fantastic magics just beyond their reach: ingenious trinkets, devices to amuse and entertain, marvels of engineering, and life-saving feats. But that right, too, was quickly disappearing.
Taun stirred, stretching his limbs out; he studied the still boy beside him.
Akii's eyes flew open.
"Dost thou seeth the night-time skye?"
Taun stared at the boy in shock, taking a deep breath to calm himself. Setch, the kid was creepy. Psycher-creepy.
"Why do you talk that way? I can't understand you."
Akii didn't avert his gaze, but his reply was much softer. "I read when Father's not watching...I practice talking like the books when he's not there."
"Okay," said Taun uncertainly, "you can talk however you like around me. I'll figure it out."
Akii smiled shyly in a way that was brought gratification to Taun as a sweet success. It felt satisfying on many levels to make this little boy happy. Which made him think...
"How old are you?"
"I turned 10 a while ago."
Akii certainly didn't look ten years old; Taun would have placed him more around 7 or 8. But now that he knew the boy's age, it seemed to show. He was taller than Taun had previously assumed; plus, it was already confirmed numerous times that he was calm and collected, wise beyond his years and unafraid. It was in his eyes and demeanor, in his every movement.
"Come," suggested Akii, soft but confident, "thou shalt journey yet to thine home thither. 'Tis not far."
"In a minute," replied Taun, shifting to point. "Look up at those lights. They're alive, you know."
"Forsooth!"
