Context (20 page)

Now.

Fear, making him hesitate.

Do it now.

The vibroblade spat into life.

Smoke,
acrid yellow/grey, and the burning pain.

Tom screamed.

Cutting high, so the
growth-control implant was removed along with the flesh and soft, growing
bones.

Screamed louder.

The thump as dead meat hit the
floor, smoking. Roasting stench...

Elva!

Wave after black cascading wave
of pain crashed down upon him, pounded him, buried him, smashed him. And
scattered the pieces to dark oblivion.

~ * ~

12

TERRA
AD 2142

<Story>>

[3]

They
danced.

Diminutive brown bodies,
startling mask-faces of turquoise and brilliant white, of black and red, with
fierce eyes and whiskers... But they were tiny, dancing around the bonsai atop
the credenza, waving their minuscule spears and chanting, with the volume
turned low.

‘Kachinautons.’ Sergeant
Arrowsmith waved them to silent stillness. ‘Traditional.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Ro hugged herself. ‘I
don’t feel too good.’

Arrowsmith settled back in his chair,
shifting his sidearm’s weight. The belt dug in below his rounded belly. But his
shoulders were wide and athletic, his bronzed face strong. He had pulled his
chair round to face Ro’s, so there was no desk between them.

The air in his office was very
cool.

And quiet.

It struck Ro that this was a
Navajo thing, not needing to fill a void with words. With Anglos it would be an
effective interrogation method.

‘She was very sweet,’ Ro said. ‘Even
though I’d just met her...’

Arrowsmith nodded. ‘In your statement,
you said it wasn’t just a random intruder.’

‘There’s a sensor array just
inside the mistfield. Teardrop sniff-cameras floating at random . . .’ She saw
the intense concentration growing in his dark eyes. ‘My home is a UNS A
training school in Switzerland, ran by my mother. I know about security
protocols.’

‘And the logs show... ?’

‘I don’t have security officer
access.’ Ro shrugged. ‘Not in DistribOne.’

She wondered if the question had
been deliberate, a trick.

‘Perhaps you’d like to wait outside,
Ms McNamara.’

‘Something
to eat?’ asked a chunky uniformed woman, pausing in the cool, glassy atrium.

‘You bet,’ said her colleague, a
lean, tanned deputy.

Not talking to me.

Ro’s stomach growled.

She had not eaten, had not even
thought about it, since discovering Anne-Louise’s body. An entire day without
food.

There were Tribal Police and
Rangers, and many people in civilian clothes, wandering around Police HQ. But
the smells of food came from beyond a glass door decorated with a virtual-image
holo:

*** STAFF AND
AUTHORIZED VISITORS ONLY ***

Ro was sitting on a bench in the
foyer, and beginning to feel faint. It seemed shameful, almost blasphemous, but
she had to eat. Anne-Louise would not have wanted her to starve.

The two officers stared into red
wall lenses for ID-scan, then the door slid open—aromas of hot food escaping—and
they stepped inside. Ro watched the door seal shut.

A simple recognition:
I’m
hungry.

She cast a glance around the busy
foyer: no-one was looking at her.

‘OK,’ she murmured. ‘Let’s try
it.’

She got up, walked unobtrusively
to the nearest lens, and stared into it. Beyond normal perception, buried
circuitry felt like a distant stream in which tiny fish darted, the flows
obvious to one who was familiar with their ways, like a woodsman who can see
and feel what city folk cannot. It was nothing she could have explained to
another human being.

If I am human.

In the depths of Ro’s
black-on-black eyes, a tiny golden spark of fire glimmered ...

It worked.

...
and was gone.

The door slid open.

‘...
the stiffest stiff I’ve ever seen’—the speaker was a white-haired woman wearing
a lab coat—‘and the deceased’s name was Woody!’

Laughter from the others at her
table.

Anne-Louise’s dead protruding
eyes...

Ro forced the image away.

‘... ergot victim,’ a big-bellied
man was saying, ‘when I was in Tunisia. Kept seeing spirits, like
chindhí’—
he
glanced around: no Navajo officers were nearby—‘and did himself in, inside the
very granary the fungus started from.’

The other forensic staff
continued eating, not bothered by the imagery.

‘Yeah, so what?’ asked one of
them, munching an open sandwich.

‘So first he placed his head
between the grinding wheel and the stone ...’

The
white-haired woman looked over at Ro, who was sitting by herself next to the
window.

‘I’m Hannah,’ the woman said. ‘You
can join us if you like.’