Metal Fatigue (30 page)

"Perhaps. But you are treading a dangerous path that might, eventually, lead nowhere."

"That's a chance I'll just have to take."

"Very well." Morrow sighed. "Was there anything else?"

"Just one more favour. A big one, this time. I need a security pass to Mayor's House for tonight. I don't think I'll be able to get in otherwise, and I can't afford to miss any of the action."

Morrow pondered the request. "It'll be tricky, but I can do it. I'll call you later with a rendezvous."

"Thanks, Keith." That Morrow could deliver wasn't in doubt. Being an artificial intelligence, he had immediate access to more cognitive resources than any human. Had it not been for the War, he might have been running the entire country, not just a few shady operations in an isolated city.

Roads turned another corner, and realised that he had made it at last. He glided slowly to a halt and balanced on two wheels and one leg in the middle of the street.

"I have to go."

"Already? Must our conversations always be so brief?"

"I'm afraid so. You're a 'criminal element', remember?"

Morrow didn't smile. "Ah, yes. I do keep forgetting."

Old North Street was empty as far as his eyes could see. One hundred and fourteen was still sealed with RSD Major Crime tape, and looked deserted. He had no doubt that, if he ventured down into the concealed cellar, he would find that empty as well.

Opening the cyberlink to Barney, he softly called her name. Her reply was instantaneous.

"Shit! Sorry, Phil. You startled me. Where are you?"

"Old North Street. Any news from the lookout?"

"None since I last called."

"Good." He leaned the bike against the wall of number 113, inside which the stake-out was hidden. There was no response from within the building, but he knew the bike would be watched along with the building across the road. "How're things at your end?"

"Slow. I'm down by the Wall, and the crowds are fairly quiet. The heat's making everyone docile, I guess."

"That won't last. Any protests?"

"One group tried to string an anti-Reassimilation banner across the road, but we got rid of them easily enough. There've been a couple of scuffles, nothing too exciting. Some of the lads are hoping for a minor revolution in our vicinity, to relieve the boredom, but I don't think that's likely."

Roads lit a cigarette. "Anything from the bosses yet?"

"The Mantis made a speech not long ago, to explain that we will be co-operating closely with the MSA and the States in future. No specifics, and she's been quiet since then. There's a bit of gossip going around, some of it concerning you, but I'm keeping on top of it."

"That's my girl. You'll let me know when the fun starts, won't you?"

"The parade? Sure. I finish my shift at seven, if you want to meet me somewhere then."

"Maybe. We'll see how I go."

"Call me."

"I will."

He cut the line. While he finished his cigarette, he ran through everything that Morrow had told him.

The Head was obviously smuggling RUSA products into the city — hence the crates arriving at 114 Old North Street in the dead of the night and Morrow's possession of the batteries — although exactly how he had obtained them was still a mystery. That ruled out one possibility: that the explosives Danny Chong had used to blow up his house had been supplied by the people who had ordered his assassination — i.e. the RUSAMC itself, or a faction within it.

So the RUSAMC hadn't tried to kill him. That was some relief, but it still left him short of an actual suspect.

He had had a half-formed idea that the assassination attempt might have been a set-up: that Chong and co. had been deliberately killed in order to incriminate him. That made the Mole, as Chong's killer, the source of the contract. But he doubted it; it was too complex a plan, relying on too many variables. Why would the Mole go to so much trouble when it would be easier to kill Roads himself and be done with it?

No. The Mole had nothing to do with Chong's mission. His assumption of the previous day had been wrong, therefore: he was close to catching
Cati
, not the Mole. That meant Cati's controller had been behind the attempt to assassinate Roads. He or she — or even
they
— must have used Chong to throw him off the scent, on the off-chance that the attempt to kill him would fail.

DeKurzak still professed a belief in a member of the Old Guard being behind the killings, and had tied up much of homicide looking for evidence to support his case. O'Dell did not seem to have allied himself with DeKurzak in this instance, however, and that difference of opinion was worth noting. Not that it helped Roads terribly much. Whether Cati was investigated or not, Roads felt safe assuming that he was close to solving, if not actually dealing with, that half of the problem. All that remained was the thief.

Suddenly, a new thought occurred to him: in six weeks of random thievery, the Mole had killed no-one. Then, during Blindeye, he had struck Roads a blow that might have killed an ordinary man. The following night he had killed fourteen people. What had changed in the thief's situation to warrant such violence? Or had the situation changed at all?

On the one hand, the Mole had tried to kill him. Then, after weeks of eluding him, spying on him, doing everything he could to confound the man he had impersonated — he had actually saved his life. Why the inconsistency?

An answer came instantly, more from intuition than thought: just as Morrow wanted him to catch the Mole, so too did the Mole want Roads to catch Cati.

But that didn't make sense. Two nights ago, he had known nothing about the killer, apart from a photo or two; hardly enough to make him suspect anything specific. Not until the search through the datapool had found the old CATI file did he guess the truth, and even then he had kept it quiet for several hours. Whoever had decided that Roads knew the truth had made a very' large assumption — or had access to his data.

The cigarette had died some time ago. Throwing the butt illegally into a gutter, he crossed the road and mounted the steps of 116 Old North Street. He straightened his clothing in the reflection cast by a shadowed window; despite the fact that he rarely wore full uniform, plain-clothes felt awkward. He still had his ID, however — the subtle distinction between "holidays" and suspension having allowed him to keep that, if not his gun.

Two other things DeKurzak's attack had left him with were time and freedom to pursue the case fully. He knew he would need both if he was to succeed.

General Stedman would be in Kennedy Polis within a handful of hours, and Cati would try to kill him. Roads felt safe assuming this, although he lacked the evidence to prove it. The only way to stop the killer was to neutralise the person controlling him, so that's exactly what Roads planned to do.

The Mole would have to wait, if he only would.

Katiya answered on the second knock. The door to the second-floor apartment swung open with a rattle of locks and chains, and her eye appeared in the crack. When she saw who it was, she opened the door wider and let him in.

She looked as though she had just woken from a deep sleep. Her hair was tangled; her eyes were bagged. She wore a cotton nightshirt that barely reached the tops of her knees. A silver pendant shaped like a miniature ingot hung from a chain about her neck — the only item of jewellery Roads had seen her wear.

She guided him into the lounge and collapsed onto an old sofa, rubbing her eyes. The room was threadbare: the sofa and one companion chair, a small table; no ornaments, no carpet. Damp had stained the ceiling black in places and made the paint peel from the walls. The air smelled of closed spaces, of claustrophobia.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

"I don't mind." She curled her legs beneath her, resting her head on the sofa's massive armrest. Childlike, she watched him. She seemed less nervous on her own ground.

He sat down in the other chair. "I only came to talk."

"Have you found Cati?"

"No. Has he contacted you?"

"No." She shook her head, eyes liquid. Silence claimed them again. He waited for her to speak — for he sensed that she wanted to — but she didn't. After a minute or two, he broke the silence again:

"I'm sorry. Can I have a cup of water?"

She went to another room without a word, and returned with a small glass. Roads placed it on the arm of the chair without drinking from it. She watched with interest as he removed his contact lenses and dropped them into the water. They drifted to the bottom of the glass like curious jellyfish, and stared vacantly back at her.

"I know all about the way Cati is," he said, raising his naked eyes. "But that's not why I'm here."

She nodded, understanding the gesture for what it was: an exchange of secrets, and therefore of trust.

He continued: "I simply want to know more about him — where he came from, how you met, what he does, and so on. I need to
understand
him before I can help him."

She nodded again, and her eyes wandered. They drifted aimlessly across the walls, the floorboards, ceiling — everywhere but at him — as she retreated into her memories. When she spoke, her voice was soft.

"I first met him ten years ago, by accident. I was ... working ... for a man called Jules. Had been since I turned thirteen. He kept me in money, as long as I did my bit. He looked after me, in his way."

Roads remembered the scars under her armpits. She had probably been a prostitute, enslaved by addiction to her pimp. Some sort of tailored drug, perhaps, brewed in the dark quarters of the city; maybe even one that had heightened her sexual response, inducing a volition in the act which would have made the degradation acceptable at the time — but even more abhorrent, later.

"Jules was a sadist, high on a power trip," she went on. "Occasionally he'd get paranoid and freak out for a day. We — I wasn't the only one working for him — we knew when to avoid him if things looked like they were going bad. Still, he'd sometimes catch us off-guard. He'd beat the shit out of anyone handy until they confessed to whatever it was that had him in a spin. He'd make it up later — with real doctors, real sympathy — but we all knew he'd killed a girl once, and kept out of his way as much as we could.

"Late one night, I was almost home when he caught me by surprise. I hadn't even made it through the front door when he was suddenly
there
, waving a knife, threatening to kill me. I tried to run, but he was too fast. He hit me and I fell down. He kicked me a couple of times, just to hear me scream, and went to cut my throat with the knife.

"Then this guy appeared out of nowhere: it was Cati, although I didn't know him then. He grabbed Jules and threw him to one side like a rag doll, then came back to see if I was okay. I was more afraid of Cati than Jules, and tried to crawl away. His eyes were like nothing I'd ever seen before. But he wouldn't let me go. Jules went for him with the knife — I guess he'd only been stunned — and Cati knocked him out. Didn't kill him, just put him down with one punch. I'd seen Jules fight three men and win when he went
crazy
, but Cati was so much stronger ... he knew exactly where to hit..."

She hesitated for a second to clear her throat. Roads waited patiently, guessing that she was unused to talking at such lengths, especially about the life that she had kept secret for so long.

"I was hurt," she went on. "Jules had broken a rib where he'd kicked me, and must have cut me at some stage without me noticing. Cati took me to his hideout in a wrecked Rosette cab and fixed me up — wouldn't let me go, wouldn't answer any of my questions. Just looked after me until I was better."

Her eyes clouded over, and Roads knew what she was remembering. How long had Cati held her? Long enough for her ribs to knit, at least, and for withdrawal symptoms to begin; long enough, perhaps, for them to pass. Depending on the particular drug she had been addicted to, her physical distress may well have been acute.

Until she was
better
, she had said. In more ways than one.

"I don't know how long he looked after me; maybe a week or more. In all that time he didn't say a word. I soon worked out that he was mute, that he couldn't speak. When I was able to, I tried to write questions on paper, but he couldn't read either. He could only understand a little speech, and make himself understood in return with his hands. When I was well, he made it clear that I was free to go.

"But I didn't want to. He didn't frighten me any more. He had healed me, freed me, saved my life. I think I loved him even then, although all I understood was sex. I wanted to thank him that way, to know him better, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't touch me.

"I cried when he showed me why. I thought that it had been ... taken away from him. That he had been castrated. It wasn't fair, for either of us.

"But I stayed anyway. He didn't really want me to go, and I eventually got used to the idea. He looked after me, and I looked after him. I was the only person in the world that hadn't run away from him and didn't want to turn him in. I was the only one who had loved him in all his life."

She cried then, letting free the emotion that had been accumulating during the days alone. He watched her silently, building a mental picture of their relationship. She needed someone non-threatening and strong, he someone who could accept what he was. Without communication, without even a sexual bridge, it was hard to imagine any relationship succeeding; yet theirs obviously had, cemented by needs that transcended the everyday.

And was it so strange? She had never had a normal relationship. If one could accept the idea of sex without love, why was love without sex so unimaginable?

"We lived in the hideout for a month until Jules tracked us down and tried to get me back," Katiya went on, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand. "We moved elsewhere to avoid a scene. Cati doesn't like to hurt people. Jules kept coming for over a year, until one of his rivals killed him in a fight. Only then could we really settle down." She looked around her, reliving her life in the apartment. When her eyes returned to him, they were sad, but composed.