Part 4 (1/2)

'Yeah, transferred to s.p.a.ceport Five Undertown,' Forrester snapped. 'Keep up with the news. Where's the body?'

The bot swung one of its four arms the one equipped with the blaster towards a damp grey ma.s.s about eight feet long. She strode over. Cwej followed. Forrester bent down beside the body.

'Hith,' she said. 'Don't find many of them on Earth since we terraformed their planet.' The offworlder's chest was a mess. It looked as if it'd been carved like a turkey, and its eyestalks had been severed close to the head.

Forrester looked back to the woman in the grip of the robot. She was so bundled up against the rain and the cold that she could hardly bend her limbs.

Her face peered out from a beehive of towels and scarves like a monkey from 26a forest, and her eyes had a dull, unfocused look, as if she had been drugged.

A sharp spike of metal dangled loosely from her left hand.

'What happened?' Cwej asked the bot.

'Start report. Body was discovered during routine patrol. Suspect was standing over body. Suspect was apprehended. Suspect offered no resistance.

Suspect identified as Falvoriss, Annie Thelma, based upon subdermal biochip.

Victim unidentified. Local station supervisor was notified. End report.'

Forrester glanced across at Cwej. He shrugged.

'Record,' she said to the securitybot, then, to the woman: 'I am obliged to inform you that your words, gestures and postures are being recorded and may form part of any legal action taken against you. Under the terms of the data protection act 2820, as amended 2945, I am also obliged to inform you that you and any appointed legal representative will be able to purchase a copy of all recordings upon payment of the standard fee.'

The woman just stared at her. A thin string of drool hung from her lower lip.

'Drugs?' Cwej ventured uncertainly.

'Not now,' said Forrester. 'I'm on duty.'

Cwej's pointed ears p.r.i.c.ked up.

'Joke,' she added. He smiled uncertainly, revealing small, pointed teeth.

'Okay,' she said to the robot. 'Disarm her, tag the weapon and put her in the back. Then notify the clear-up squad.'

It was just an accident.

Archer McElwee was practising his t'ai chi in the park. Every morning, as soon as the sun rose, he took the null-grav shaft up from his apartment to the roof of the tower and went through the whole set of exercises in the warm, golden glow. Repulsing the Monkey. The Heron Flying West. The Crane at Sunset. One hundred and thirty-five, he was, and he still felt like a ninety-year-old!

He took a deep breath and gazed around the park. The azaleas and sheckt bushes were in full bloom and, close by, a number of friends from the tower were also practising their exercises. It all looked so beautiful. He was a lucky man.

Beside him, Kan Nbaro turned to smile. She was a hundred and ten, and beautiful with it. He waved back. Perhaps after they finished, he could offer her a cup of coffee.

He raised his hands above his head in the Crane position and turned slowly to one side. His hand brushed accidentally against hers.

He caught her eye again, but she was frowning.

'What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?' she snapped.27.

'I'm . . . I'm sorry,' he stammered, shocked. 'I didn't '

'Pervert!'

Her hand lashed out, catching him across the nose. He fell backwards, hot blood gus.h.i.+ng into his mouth. He tried to apologize, cry out, anything, but her hands were flailing at him, scratching his cheeks and neck, catching at his forehead. His arms were trapped beneath her knees as she straddled his chest, her fingers gouging into his eyes.

Warm, salty blood bubbling in the back of his throat.

Obscenities screamed in his ear.

Fingers thrust deep into his eyes.

It was just an accident.

Powerless Friendless And Scattered Through s.p.a.ce woke up s.h.i.+vering as a pang of pain shot through his tail. Absently, he scratched the old scar just beneath the vestigial sh.e.l.l at the base of his tail, taking stock of the situation.

His battered fedora hat had slipped off and he had managed to shrug off the monofil thermo-blankets in his sleep. He pulled his eyes back inside his body, extruded a pseudo-limb to pull the hat back over his head, rolled himself up in the blankets and settled back to sleep.

His basal foot was cold. He tried to s.h.i.+ft himself so that the blankets wrapped around his column-like body, but by the time he'd done that a stone was pressing into his back. He wriggled sideways, but the blankets rucked up around him.

Every morning this happened. He hated it. He hated it all.

As his mind gradually crept back to consciousness, he became more aware of his surroundings. Bright light. Lapping water. Hard floor.

Earth.

He extended his eyestalks, and withdrew them quickly, wincing at the weak sunlight that filtered down from between the towers of the Overcity, reflected from the water outside the window and made patterns on the ceiling.

The ceiling was low and cracked. Fungus had crept across it, one step behind the patches of damp. Once it had been an office, before the Overcity had been built. He had been living there for a few months now, and he was beginning to get twitchy. More and more people knew where he was. He didn't know why, but that made him nervous. Jumpy. Perhaps it was time to be moving on.

His back and his joints protested as he climbed laboriously to his feet. He couldn't see Krohg, but that wasn't unusual. The little glih glih would be around somewhere. would be around somewhere.

He knew that he had to find somewhere to wash the mucus from his body before he wandered up to the lower levels of the Overcity and started work.28.

It would leave his skin dry and sore, but it was worth the sacrifice. The bulk of the workers would be heading for their offices in an hour or so. Like all Hith he hated crowds, but they were used to seeing him hunched over his old, battered Earth Reptile hag'jat hag'jat, same spot every day, performing rock 'n' roll cla.s.sics or some of the more playable Martian and Earth Reptile pieces. A few regulars always sh.e.l.led out for him, probably more because of the incongruity of a Hith playing an Earth tune than because he was any good, but if he didn't wash some of the mucus off his body then the day's take would be down. He knew: he'd tried it before. Humans were intolerant of alien beauty. Humans were intolerant of anything that wasn't human.

He thought for a moment. At this time in the morning it was just possible that the sports facilities and showers in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the INITEC tower would be open. It was worth a try. The worst that would happen was that he'd get a little more exercise than usual.

With his backpack full, no longer fulfilling the role of pillow, he extended a pseudo-limb to swing it over his shoulder and bent down again to retrieve his hag'jat hag'jat case. For a moment the moist skin of his pseudo-limb looked strange to him gnarled, grey and twisted, like an old tree root, instead of young and smooth. Sighing, he placed the fedora over his head, poking his eyestalks through the holes, and set off. case. For a moment the moist skin of his pseudo-limb looked strange to him gnarled, grey and twisted, like an old tree root, instead of young and smooth. Sighing, he placed the fedora over his head, poking his eyestalks through the holes, and set off.

As he walked, he scratched at his skin. There were new cracks there alongside the old scars the ones that he couldn't remember ever getting, but which covered his body and he could feel the bites over his tail and mid-torso. Pests, creeping in from the s.p.a.ceport. Terrestrial pests were like humans themselves; they tended to avoid coming into contact with offworld flesh. Unfortunately it seemed to him that, ever since the end of the Wars of Acquisition, during which the Earth Empire had grabbed whatever it wanted as quickly as it could, there were more and more multi-legged, multicoloured things taking up residence in his skin, and he was spending more and more of his hard-earned money at the autodoc trying to get rid of them. He knew of one old woman who dossed down a few streets away, and who'd been infested with some sort of protoplasmic parasite picked up from a pa.s.sing alien tourist. By the time she'd got to old Doc Dantalion well, by the time Powerless Friendless had taken her to him it was too late. The things had been radioactive, and she only had a few weeks left.

Powerless Friendless had never asked what happened to the body. With Doc Dantalion, you never could tell.

The rest of the underdwellers had looked upon Powerless Friendless with some sort of respect after that. Looking after their own, that was the first rule of the streets, offworld or not. He hadn't liked to say that he'd been worried about her ruining his trade with her weeping sores and her moaning. If he'd 29known the things were radioactive he'd have been halfway across the city.

So preoccupied was he with his usual early morning litany of complaints that he hardly noticed the journey across the roofs and along ledges, alongside the flooded alleys and the sunken squares with the heavy weight of the Overcity forever pressing down. It was only when an Adjudication flitter droned across the sky above him, angling for a landing on the roof of a nearby building, that he realized where he was. Humans! He slid quickly into the lee of a tumbledown shack. He mustn't let them see him! He wasn't entirely sure why they mustn't see him, but he hid anyway.

Powerless Friendless extended his eyestalks around the edge of the shack.

The flitter had landed next to a group of street life, and two black-robed Adjudicators had got out. One of them was a short-haired, sour-faced woman; the other was a tall, furry creature that moved like a human, not an offworlder. There was a securitybot as well. He cursed. How could he have been so careless? He had almost walked into them!