The abnormalities of str.., p.8
The Court of a Thousand Suns, page 8
“Step one,” Haines explained, “in any homicide is to seal the scene. We put that bubble around the area, pump all oxygen out, and replace the atmosphere with a neutral gas, if you’re interested in details.”
“I am interested in details, Lieutenant.”
Sten began once more with the report. On second reading, it was no more (or less) confusing than any military after-action report. Sten reread it a third time.
“Would you like a guided tour, Captain? It’s messy, by the way.”
“If I start to get sick, I’ll let you know.”
The bubble suits looked a little like close-fitting shallow-water diving dress, except that the lower chest area had a large, external evidence bag and the upper chest area bulged, making the wearer look somewhat like a pouter pigeon. Inside the bulge was a small alloy table where an investigator could put notes, records, etcetera. The suit also had a backpack with air supply and battery plate.
Sten thumbed his suit closed and followed Haines through the airlock into the ruins of the Covenanter. Of course it wasn’t the first time Sten had examined a bomb site, but it was the first time he wasn’t busy running away from it or expecting another one momentarily. He’d learned, years ago, not to consider that gray, pink, or yellow dangling ropes, snaillike particles, and bas-relief facial bones had once been human.
Sten oriented himself. There . . . there was the door. That low parapet would have been the bar. Along . . . there . . . would have been the booths.
Two other cops were inside the bubble, laboriously scraping fire-foam from the floor and walls.
“You’re right,” Sten said conciliatorily. “A mess.”
“Two of them,” Haines said bitterly.
“Ah?”
“Captain, I’ll —” Haines caught herself, shut off her radio, clicked Sten’s off, and touched faceplates. “This is for your information only. This crime scene is so mucked up that we’ll be very lucky if we ever get anything on the case.”
“You know, Lieutenant,” Sten said thoughtfully, “if you’d said that with an open mike I’d have figured you were setting up an alibi. So GA. I’m not sure I track you.”
Haines thought that maybe the liaison type wouldn’t be quite the pain in the sitter she’d expected. “SOP, Captain, is very explicit. Whatever officer comes on a homicide scene, he is to first take appropriate action — looking for the killer, requesting med, whatever.
“Second, is to notify homicide. At that point, we take charge.
“But that isn’t what happened.” She waved her arm helplessly.
“That tac unit responded just before 2100 last night. Homicide was not notified for ten hours!”
“Why not?”
“Hell if I know,” Lisa said. “But I could guess.”
“GA.”
“Our tactical squads think they’re the best. The Imperial Guards. I guess, since they were first on the scene, they wanted it to be their case.”
Sten thought back through the report. “Is tac presence normal in this area?”
“Not especially. Not unless there’s some kind of disorder, or maybe for security on some classified shipment. Or if the area’s high-crime.”
“And?”
“The tac sergeant said his squad had been pounding these catwalks for three weeks, and nothing had happened.”
Odd. Sten wondered: Since the last two weeks had been the pandemonium before Empire Day, it did seem as if the tac unit was misassigned. However, in Sten’s experience cops had always found a way to stay away from where they could get hurt. But the tac squad’s assignment could be something to ask about.
“Look at this,” Haines continued. “No fire, but the tac sergeant opened up the extinguishers. He and his people went in. Three bodies. Dead dead. And so he and his people spend the next ten hours galumphing around trying to play detective. For instance . . .”
Lisa pointed down at the flooring. “That size-fourteen hoof is not a clue — it’s some tac corporal’s brogan right in the middle of that bloodstain.”
Sten decided that he still didn’t like cops that much and cut her off. “Okay, Lieutenant. We’ve all got problems. What do you have so far?”
Haines started a court singsong: “We have evidence of a bomb, prior planted. No clue as to detonation method, or explosive. The bomb specialists have not arrived as yet.”
“You can hold on them,” Sten said dryly. “Maybe I know a little about that.”
He’d already spotted the blast striations on what remained of the ceiling. Sten lifted an alloy ladder over to the center of the striations. Sten may have been ignorant of police SOP, but he knew a great deal about things that went boom.
“Lieutenant,” Sten said, turning his radio back on, “you want to put a recorder on?”
Haines shrugged — now the Imperial hand-sitter was going to play expert, so let him make an ass of himself. She followed orders.
“The bomb was mounted in the ceiling light fixture. We’ve got . . . looks like some bits of circuitry here . . . the explosive was high-grade, and shaped. The blast went out to the sides, very little damage done to the overhead.
“Your bomb people should be able to figure out whether the bomb was set off on a timer or command-det. But I’d guess it was set off by command.”
“We have a team checking the area.”
Sten got down off the ladder and reexamined the striations. They occupied almost a full 360 degrees. But not quite. Sten hummed to himself and ran an eyeball azimuth from that area toward the wall.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Sten went toward the airlock and exited. Outside, he stripped off his suit and walked well away from the bustling techs around the bubble.
Haines removed her suit and joined him. “Are you through playing detective, Captain?”
“I’ll explain, Lieutenant Haines. I got stuck with this drakh job and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. That sends me into orbit, Lieutenant. Now what lit your stupid fuse?”
Haines glowered at him. “Item: I’m in the same mess you’re in. I’m a cop. A very good cop. So I come down here and see what I’ve got to work with.
“And then I get some — some —”
“Clot?” Sten offered, half smiling. He was starting to like the woman.
“Thank you. Clot, who comes down here, says one thing, and then is going to go back to the palace and get his medal. Let me tell you, Captain, I do not need any of this!”
“You through?”
“For the moment.”
“Fine. Let’s get some lunch, then, and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
The restaurant sat very close to Landing Area 17AFO. Except for clear blast shields between the field and the patio area, it was open-air. The place was about half-full of longshoremen, docking clerks, and ship crew. The combination of one man in Imperial livery and one woman who was obviously the heat guaranteed Sten and Haines privacy.
Dining was cafeteria-style. The two took plates of food, paid, and went to the far edge of the dining area.
Both of them saw the other reflexively checking for parabolic mike locations, and, for the first time, smiled.
“Before you get started, Captain,” Haines said through a mouthful of kimchi and pork, “do you want to talk about that booth?”
Sten chewed, nodded, and pretended innocence.
“Thank you. I’d already spotted that the bomb was directional. Actually, semidirectional. It was intended to garbage the whole joint — except for one booth.”
“Good call, Lieutenant.”
“First question — the one booth that wasn’t destroyed was rigged with every antibugging device I’ve ever heard of. Is there any explanation, from let us say ‘top-level’ sources? What was a security setup like that doing in a sleazo bar?”
Sten told her, omitting only Craigwel’s identity and position as the Emperor’s personal troubleshooter. He also didn’t feel that the lieutenant needed to know that Alain was planning a meeting with the Emperor himself. Any meeting with any Imperial official was enough for her to work on, he felt. Sten finished, and changed the subject, eyeing a forkful of kimchi cautiously. “By the way — what is this, anyway?”
“Very dead Earth cabbage, garlic, and herbs. It helps if you don’t smell it before you eat it.”
“Since you know about bombs,” Sten asked, “did you figure out why no shrapnel?”
Haines puzzled.
Sten dug into his pocket and set a somewhat flattened ball bearing on the table. “The bomb’s explosive was semidirectional. To make sure the bomb took care of anyone in the bar, the bomber also taped these on top of the explosive. Except the area facing that booth.
“Prog, Lieutenant?”
Haines knew enough military slang to understand the question. She pushed her plate aside, put her fingers together, and began theorizing.
“The bomber wanted everybody in that bar dead — except whoever was in that booth.”
“If Alain and your man had been in that booth when the bomb went off, they would have been . . . concussed, possibly, or suffering blast breakage at the worst, right, Captain?”
“Correct.”
“The bomber knew about that booth . . . and had to have known Alain would be in that booth on that particular night.”
Haines whistled tunelessly and drained her beer. “So for sure we have a political murder, don’t we, Captain? Clot!”
Sten nodded glumly, went to the counter, and brought back two more beers.
“Not just a political murder, but one done by someone who knew exactly what Alain’s movements were supposed to be, correct?”
“You’re right — but you aren’t exactly making my day.”
“Drakh!” Lisa swore. “Clottin’ stinkin’ politics! Why couldn’t I get stuck with a nice series of mass sex murders.”
Sten wasn’t listening. He’d just taken the reasoning one step further. Impolitely, he grabbed the plate-projector from under Haines’ arm and began flipping through it.
“Assassination,” Lisa continued, getting more depressed by the minute. “That’ll mean a pro killer, and whoever hired it done will be untouchable. And I’ll be running a precinct at one of the poles.”
“Maybe not,” Sten said. “Look. Remember the bomb? It was just supposed to knock Alain cross-eyed, yes? Then what was supposed to happen?”
“Who can tell? It never did.”
“Question, Lieutenant. Why did an ambulance not called by this tac sergeant show up within minutes of the blast? Don’t you think that maybe —”
Haines had already completed the thought. Beer unfinished, she was heading for Sten’s combat car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PORT SOWARD HOSPITAL bore a strange resemblance to its oddly shaped cnidarian receiving clerk. It just grew from an emergency hospital intended to handle incoming ship disasters, industrial accidents, and whatever other catastrophe would come up within a ten-kilometer circle around Soward itself. But disasters and accidents have a way of growing wildly, so Soward Hospital sprawled a lot, adding ship-capable landing platforms here, radiation wards there, and nonhuman sections in still a third place.
All of that made Admissions even more a nightmare than in most hospitals. In spite of high-speed computers, personal ID cards, and other improvements, the hospital’s central area went far toward defining chaos.
Sten and Haines waited beside a large central “desk,” the outer ring of which was for files and such. The second ring contained a computer whose memory circuits rivaled an Imperial military computer. In the center swam the clerk(s), a colony of intelligent polyps-cnidarians, beings which began life as individuals and then, for protection, grew together — literally, like coral. But most cnidarians did not get along. The one in front of Sten — he mentally labeled it A — burbled in fury, snatched a moisture-resistant file from Polyp B, tossed it across the ring to Polyp R, Sten estimated, brushed Polyp C’s tentacles off A’s own terminal, and finally turned to the two people waiting. Its “voice” was just shrill enough to add to the surrounding madness as white-clad hospital types steered lift gurneys past, patients leaned, lay, or stood against the walls, and relatives wailed or wept.
“You see what it’s like? You see?” The polyp’s feeder tentacles were bicycling wildly against the bottom of the tank.
“Police,” Lisa said dryly, holding out a card with one hand. She touched the card with an index finger, and the “badge” glowed briefly.
“Another cop. This has been one of those days. Some wiper comes in, bleeding like — like a stuck human. Drunk, of course. He doesn’t tell me that he’s union, and so I send him to the Tombs. How was I to know he was union? Job-related and all that, and now I’ve got all this data. He’ll probably die before I get the paperwork through. Now what do you want?”
“Last night, around 2100 hours, an ambulance responded to a call.”
“We have thousands of ambulances. For what?”
“An explosion.”
“There are many kinds of explosions. Ship, atomsuit, housing, radiation. I can’t help you if you don’t help me!”
Haines gave the polyp the file. The being submerged briefly, only the plate-projector, held in one tentacle, above the surface. Then another tentacle wove behind the being to a terminal and began tapping keys.
“Yes. Ambulance GE145 it was. No input on who summoned it. You see what my trouble is? No one seems to care about proper files.”
Sten broke in. “Where would this ambulance have been routed to?”
“Thank you, man. At least someone knows the proper question. Since it was sent to a . . . drinking establishment . . . unless other data was input, it would have gone to the Tombs.”
“The Tombs?”
“Human emergency treatment, nonindustrial.” The polyp pulled a square of plas from the counter and touched the edges of it. An outline of the sprawling hospital sprang into life on it. Further tentacling and a single red line wound its way through the corridors.
“You are . . . here. You want to go there. They’ll be able to help you. Maybe.”
Sten had one final question. “Why is it called the Tombs?”
“Because this is where our — I believe the phrase is down and under — go. And if they weren’t before, they are when they get to the Tombs.”
* * * *
“GE145. Weird.” The desk intern was puzzled. “No entry on who dispatched it — came from out-hospital. Three DOA’s. They’re . . . um, being held for autopsy results, Lieutenant.”
“Question, Doctor. Assuming this ambulance had arrived with live victims, what would have happened then?”
“Depends on the injury.”
“Blast. Shock. Possible fractures,” Sten said.
“Um . . . that would have gone to — let me check last night’s roster . . . Dr. Knox would have treated them.”
“Where is he?”
“Let me see . . . not on shift today. Pity.”
“Would he be in the hospital?”
“No, not at all. Dr. Knox was hardly one of us. He was a volunteer.”
“Do you have a contact number on him?” Lisa asked.
“It should be right — no. No, we don’t have anything on his sheet. That’s unusual.”
“Two unusuals, Doctor. I’d like to see your files on this Knox.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But without a proper court order, not even the police —”
Sten’s own card was out. “On Imperial Service, Doctor.”
The intern’s eyes widened. “Certainly . . . perhaps, back in my office. We’ll use the terminal there. Genevieve? Would you take the floor for me?”
* * * *
Ten minutes later Sten knew they had something. Or rather, by having nothing, they had something.
Knox, Dr. John, began the hospital’s scanty info card. No such doctor was licensed on Prime World, as Sten quickly learned. Yet somehow a “Dr. Knox” had convinced someone at Soward Hospital — either a person or a computer — that he was legitimate. His listed home address was a recently demolished apartment building. His supposed private clinic was a restaurant, one which had been in existence at that address for almost ten years.
“So this Knox,” Sten mused, still staring at the fiche, “shows up from nowhere as a volunteer two weeks ago.”
“He was an excellent emergency surgeon,” the intern said. “I prepped some patients for him.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall,” the intern said hesitantly. “One eighty-five, one ninety centimeters. Slender build, almost endomorphic. Seventy kilograms estimated weight. Eyes . . . I don’t remember. He was very proud of his hair. Gray it was. Natural, he swore. Wore it mane-style.”
“Not bad,” Haines said. “You ever think of being a cop?”
“In this job I sometimes think I am one.”
“You said he was ‘hardly one of you.’ Did you mean just because he was a volunteer?” Sten asked.
“No. Uh — you see, we don’t exactly get Imperial-class medicos here. The pay. The conditions. The patients. So when we get a volunteer as good as Dr. Knox, well . . .” And the intern interrupted himself:
“His room!”
“Knox had a room?”
“Of course. All of us do — our shifts are two-day marathons.”
“Where would it be?”
“I’ll get a floor chart.”
“Very private sort, this Knox,” Lisa said.
“His room card specifies no mechanical or personal cleaning wanted. Maybe we’ll get something.”
Sten suspected they would get nothing, and if they got as thorough a nothing as he feared.
“Four thirteen.”
Lisa took the passcard from the back of the room file.
“Hang on. And stay back from the door.”
Millimeter by millimeter, Sten checked the jamb around the slide-door’s edges. He found it just above the “floor” — a barely visible gray hair stretched across the doorjamb.
“We need an evidence team,” Sten said. “Your best. But there won’t be a bomb inside. I want this room sealed until the evidence team goes through it.”
Lisa started to get angry, then snapped a salute.
“I am interested in details, Lieutenant.”
Sten began once more with the report. On second reading, it was no more (or less) confusing than any military after-action report. Sten reread it a third time.
“Would you like a guided tour, Captain? It’s messy, by the way.”
“If I start to get sick, I’ll let you know.”
The bubble suits looked a little like close-fitting shallow-water diving dress, except that the lower chest area had a large, external evidence bag and the upper chest area bulged, making the wearer look somewhat like a pouter pigeon. Inside the bulge was a small alloy table where an investigator could put notes, records, etcetera. The suit also had a backpack with air supply and battery plate.
Sten thumbed his suit closed and followed Haines through the airlock into the ruins of the Covenanter. Of course it wasn’t the first time Sten had examined a bomb site, but it was the first time he wasn’t busy running away from it or expecting another one momentarily. He’d learned, years ago, not to consider that gray, pink, or yellow dangling ropes, snaillike particles, and bas-relief facial bones had once been human.
Sten oriented himself. There . . . there was the door. That low parapet would have been the bar. Along . . . there . . . would have been the booths.
Two other cops were inside the bubble, laboriously scraping fire-foam from the floor and walls.
“You’re right,” Sten said conciliatorily. “A mess.”
“Two of them,” Haines said bitterly.
“Ah?”
“Captain, I’ll —” Haines caught herself, shut off her radio, clicked Sten’s off, and touched faceplates. “This is for your information only. This crime scene is so mucked up that we’ll be very lucky if we ever get anything on the case.”
“You know, Lieutenant,” Sten said thoughtfully, “if you’d said that with an open mike I’d have figured you were setting up an alibi. So GA. I’m not sure I track you.”
Haines thought that maybe the liaison type wouldn’t be quite the pain in the sitter she’d expected. “SOP, Captain, is very explicit. Whatever officer comes on a homicide scene, he is to first take appropriate action — looking for the killer, requesting med, whatever.
“Second, is to notify homicide. At that point, we take charge.
“But that isn’t what happened.” She waved her arm helplessly.
“That tac unit responded just before 2100 last night. Homicide was not notified for ten hours!”
“Why not?”
“Hell if I know,” Lisa said. “But I could guess.”
“GA.”
“Our tactical squads think they’re the best. The Imperial Guards. I guess, since they were first on the scene, they wanted it to be their case.”
Sten thought back through the report. “Is tac presence normal in this area?”
“Not especially. Not unless there’s some kind of disorder, or maybe for security on some classified shipment. Or if the area’s high-crime.”
“And?”
“The tac sergeant said his squad had been pounding these catwalks for three weeks, and nothing had happened.”
Odd. Sten wondered: Since the last two weeks had been the pandemonium before Empire Day, it did seem as if the tac unit was misassigned. However, in Sten’s experience cops had always found a way to stay away from where they could get hurt. But the tac squad’s assignment could be something to ask about.
“Look at this,” Haines continued. “No fire, but the tac sergeant opened up the extinguishers. He and his people went in. Three bodies. Dead dead. And so he and his people spend the next ten hours galumphing around trying to play detective. For instance . . .”
Lisa pointed down at the flooring. “That size-fourteen hoof is not a clue — it’s some tac corporal’s brogan right in the middle of that bloodstain.”
Sten decided that he still didn’t like cops that much and cut her off. “Okay, Lieutenant. We’ve all got problems. What do you have so far?”
Haines started a court singsong: “We have evidence of a bomb, prior planted. No clue as to detonation method, or explosive. The bomb specialists have not arrived as yet.”
“You can hold on them,” Sten said dryly. “Maybe I know a little about that.”
He’d already spotted the blast striations on what remained of the ceiling. Sten lifted an alloy ladder over to the center of the striations. Sten may have been ignorant of police SOP, but he knew a great deal about things that went boom.
“Lieutenant,” Sten said, turning his radio back on, “you want to put a recorder on?”
Haines shrugged — now the Imperial hand-sitter was going to play expert, so let him make an ass of himself. She followed orders.
“The bomb was mounted in the ceiling light fixture. We’ve got . . . looks like some bits of circuitry here . . . the explosive was high-grade, and shaped. The blast went out to the sides, very little damage done to the overhead.
“Your bomb people should be able to figure out whether the bomb was set off on a timer or command-det. But I’d guess it was set off by command.”
“We have a team checking the area.”
Sten got down off the ladder and reexamined the striations. They occupied almost a full 360 degrees. But not quite. Sten hummed to himself and ran an eyeball azimuth from that area toward the wall.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Sten went toward the airlock and exited. Outside, he stripped off his suit and walked well away from the bustling techs around the bubble.
Haines removed her suit and joined him. “Are you through playing detective, Captain?”
“I’ll explain, Lieutenant Haines. I got stuck with this drakh job and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. That sends me into orbit, Lieutenant. Now what lit your stupid fuse?”
Haines glowered at him. “Item: I’m in the same mess you’re in. I’m a cop. A very good cop. So I come down here and see what I’ve got to work with.
“And then I get some — some —”
“Clot?” Sten offered, half smiling. He was starting to like the woman.
“Thank you. Clot, who comes down here, says one thing, and then is going to go back to the palace and get his medal. Let me tell you, Captain, I do not need any of this!”
“You through?”
“For the moment.”
“Fine. Let’s get some lunch, then, and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
The restaurant sat very close to Landing Area 17AFO. Except for clear blast shields between the field and the patio area, it was open-air. The place was about half-full of longshoremen, docking clerks, and ship crew. The combination of one man in Imperial livery and one woman who was obviously the heat guaranteed Sten and Haines privacy.
Dining was cafeteria-style. The two took plates of food, paid, and went to the far edge of the dining area.
Both of them saw the other reflexively checking for parabolic mike locations, and, for the first time, smiled.
“Before you get started, Captain,” Haines said through a mouthful of kimchi and pork, “do you want to talk about that booth?”
Sten chewed, nodded, and pretended innocence.
“Thank you. I’d already spotted that the bomb was directional. Actually, semidirectional. It was intended to garbage the whole joint — except for one booth.”
“Good call, Lieutenant.”
“First question — the one booth that wasn’t destroyed was rigged with every antibugging device I’ve ever heard of. Is there any explanation, from let us say ‘top-level’ sources? What was a security setup like that doing in a sleazo bar?”
Sten told her, omitting only Craigwel’s identity and position as the Emperor’s personal troubleshooter. He also didn’t feel that the lieutenant needed to know that Alain was planning a meeting with the Emperor himself. Any meeting with any Imperial official was enough for her to work on, he felt. Sten finished, and changed the subject, eyeing a forkful of kimchi cautiously. “By the way — what is this, anyway?”
“Very dead Earth cabbage, garlic, and herbs. It helps if you don’t smell it before you eat it.”
“Since you know about bombs,” Sten asked, “did you figure out why no shrapnel?”
Haines puzzled.
Sten dug into his pocket and set a somewhat flattened ball bearing on the table. “The bomb’s explosive was semidirectional. To make sure the bomb took care of anyone in the bar, the bomber also taped these on top of the explosive. Except the area facing that booth.
“Prog, Lieutenant?”
Haines knew enough military slang to understand the question. She pushed her plate aside, put her fingers together, and began theorizing.
“The bomber wanted everybody in that bar dead — except whoever was in that booth.”
“If Alain and your man had been in that booth when the bomb went off, they would have been . . . concussed, possibly, or suffering blast breakage at the worst, right, Captain?”
“Correct.”
“The bomber knew about that booth . . . and had to have known Alain would be in that booth on that particular night.”
Haines whistled tunelessly and drained her beer. “So for sure we have a political murder, don’t we, Captain? Clot!”
Sten nodded glumly, went to the counter, and brought back two more beers.
“Not just a political murder, but one done by someone who knew exactly what Alain’s movements were supposed to be, correct?”
“You’re right — but you aren’t exactly making my day.”
“Drakh!” Lisa swore. “Clottin’ stinkin’ politics! Why couldn’t I get stuck with a nice series of mass sex murders.”
Sten wasn’t listening. He’d just taken the reasoning one step further. Impolitely, he grabbed the plate-projector from under Haines’ arm and began flipping through it.
“Assassination,” Lisa continued, getting more depressed by the minute. “That’ll mean a pro killer, and whoever hired it done will be untouchable. And I’ll be running a precinct at one of the poles.”
“Maybe not,” Sten said. “Look. Remember the bomb? It was just supposed to knock Alain cross-eyed, yes? Then what was supposed to happen?”
“Who can tell? It never did.”
“Question, Lieutenant. Why did an ambulance not called by this tac sergeant show up within minutes of the blast? Don’t you think that maybe —”
Haines had already completed the thought. Beer unfinished, she was heading for Sten’s combat car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PORT SOWARD HOSPITAL bore a strange resemblance to its oddly shaped cnidarian receiving clerk. It just grew from an emergency hospital intended to handle incoming ship disasters, industrial accidents, and whatever other catastrophe would come up within a ten-kilometer circle around Soward itself. But disasters and accidents have a way of growing wildly, so Soward Hospital sprawled a lot, adding ship-capable landing platforms here, radiation wards there, and nonhuman sections in still a third place.
All of that made Admissions even more a nightmare than in most hospitals. In spite of high-speed computers, personal ID cards, and other improvements, the hospital’s central area went far toward defining chaos.
Sten and Haines waited beside a large central “desk,” the outer ring of which was for files and such. The second ring contained a computer whose memory circuits rivaled an Imperial military computer. In the center swam the clerk(s), a colony of intelligent polyps-cnidarians, beings which began life as individuals and then, for protection, grew together — literally, like coral. But most cnidarians did not get along. The one in front of Sten — he mentally labeled it A — burbled in fury, snatched a moisture-resistant file from Polyp B, tossed it across the ring to Polyp R, Sten estimated, brushed Polyp C’s tentacles off A’s own terminal, and finally turned to the two people waiting. Its “voice” was just shrill enough to add to the surrounding madness as white-clad hospital types steered lift gurneys past, patients leaned, lay, or stood against the walls, and relatives wailed or wept.
“You see what it’s like? You see?” The polyp’s feeder tentacles were bicycling wildly against the bottom of the tank.
“Police,” Lisa said dryly, holding out a card with one hand. She touched the card with an index finger, and the “badge” glowed briefly.
“Another cop. This has been one of those days. Some wiper comes in, bleeding like — like a stuck human. Drunk, of course. He doesn’t tell me that he’s union, and so I send him to the Tombs. How was I to know he was union? Job-related and all that, and now I’ve got all this data. He’ll probably die before I get the paperwork through. Now what do you want?”
“Last night, around 2100 hours, an ambulance responded to a call.”
“We have thousands of ambulances. For what?”
“An explosion.”
“There are many kinds of explosions. Ship, atomsuit, housing, radiation. I can’t help you if you don’t help me!”
Haines gave the polyp the file. The being submerged briefly, only the plate-projector, held in one tentacle, above the surface. Then another tentacle wove behind the being to a terminal and began tapping keys.
“Yes. Ambulance GE145 it was. No input on who summoned it. You see what my trouble is? No one seems to care about proper files.”
Sten broke in. “Where would this ambulance have been routed to?”
“Thank you, man. At least someone knows the proper question. Since it was sent to a . . . drinking establishment . . . unless other data was input, it would have gone to the Tombs.”
“The Tombs?”
“Human emergency treatment, nonindustrial.” The polyp pulled a square of plas from the counter and touched the edges of it. An outline of the sprawling hospital sprang into life on it. Further tentacling and a single red line wound its way through the corridors.
“You are . . . here. You want to go there. They’ll be able to help you. Maybe.”
Sten had one final question. “Why is it called the Tombs?”
“Because this is where our — I believe the phrase is down and under — go. And if they weren’t before, they are when they get to the Tombs.”
* * * *
“GE145. Weird.” The desk intern was puzzled. “No entry on who dispatched it — came from out-hospital. Three DOA’s. They’re . . . um, being held for autopsy results, Lieutenant.”
“Question, Doctor. Assuming this ambulance had arrived with live victims, what would have happened then?”
“Depends on the injury.”
“Blast. Shock. Possible fractures,” Sten said.
“Um . . . that would have gone to — let me check last night’s roster . . . Dr. Knox would have treated them.”
“Where is he?”
“Let me see . . . not on shift today. Pity.”
“Would he be in the hospital?”
“No, not at all. Dr. Knox was hardly one of us. He was a volunteer.”
“Do you have a contact number on him?” Lisa asked.
“It should be right — no. No, we don’t have anything on his sheet. That’s unusual.”
“Two unusuals, Doctor. I’d like to see your files on this Knox.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But without a proper court order, not even the police —”
Sten’s own card was out. “On Imperial Service, Doctor.”
The intern’s eyes widened. “Certainly . . . perhaps, back in my office. We’ll use the terminal there. Genevieve? Would you take the floor for me?”
* * * *
Ten minutes later Sten knew they had something. Or rather, by having nothing, they had something.
Knox, Dr. John, began the hospital’s scanty info card. No such doctor was licensed on Prime World, as Sten quickly learned. Yet somehow a “Dr. Knox” had convinced someone at Soward Hospital — either a person or a computer — that he was legitimate. His listed home address was a recently demolished apartment building. His supposed private clinic was a restaurant, one which had been in existence at that address for almost ten years.
“So this Knox,” Sten mused, still staring at the fiche, “shows up from nowhere as a volunteer two weeks ago.”
“He was an excellent emergency surgeon,” the intern said. “I prepped some patients for him.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall,” the intern said hesitantly. “One eighty-five, one ninety centimeters. Slender build, almost endomorphic. Seventy kilograms estimated weight. Eyes . . . I don’t remember. He was very proud of his hair. Gray it was. Natural, he swore. Wore it mane-style.”
“Not bad,” Haines said. “You ever think of being a cop?”
“In this job I sometimes think I am one.”
“You said he was ‘hardly one of you.’ Did you mean just because he was a volunteer?” Sten asked.
“No. Uh — you see, we don’t exactly get Imperial-class medicos here. The pay. The conditions. The patients. So when we get a volunteer as good as Dr. Knox, well . . .” And the intern interrupted himself:
“His room!”
“Knox had a room?”
“Of course. All of us do — our shifts are two-day marathons.”
“Where would it be?”
“I’ll get a floor chart.”
“Very private sort, this Knox,” Lisa said.
“His room card specifies no mechanical or personal cleaning wanted. Maybe we’ll get something.”
Sten suspected they would get nothing, and if they got as thorough a nothing as he feared.
“Four thirteen.”
Lisa took the passcard from the back of the room file.
“Hang on. And stay back from the door.”
Millimeter by millimeter, Sten checked the jamb around the slide-door’s edges. He found it just above the “floor” — a barely visible gray hair stretched across the doorjamb.
“We need an evidence team,” Sten said. “Your best. But there won’t be a bomb inside. I want this room sealed until the evidence team goes through it.”
Lisa started to get angry, then snapped a salute.
