Part 5 (1/2)

'Look!' Lymaner was saying. He was dark, intense, and slightly pudgy. 'We have a responsibility to the underdwellers. We can't dump our c.r.a.p on them, take their sky away and make it rain all the time and expect them to like it. I tell you, there's going to be big trouble one day if we don't do something.'

The meagre light was gleaming off the blade of a knife on the table. McConnel couldn't drag his gaze away from it.

'We are doing something,' a blonde named Dara said. 'That's why we're here.'

With a slight jolt of surprise, McConnel realized that he had picked up the knife.

'We're here to come up with a report that absolves the Empire of all responsibility,' Lymaner snorted, casting a wary glance at McConnel. 'That's our job, isn't it, Professor?'

The heat was conspiring with the smell of the food and the crush of the crowd to make McConnel feel nauseous.

'd.a.m.n the stinking underdwellers,' he whispered. The students gazed un-easily at him. 'd.a.m.n the stinking underlife and d.a.m.n you all for caring more about them than about your fellow humans.'

McConnel glanced up at Lymaner.

And plunged the knife into the boy's eye.

The flitter was still powering down when Forrester jumped out onto the raft.

The smell inside was getting to be unbearable, despite the air-conditioning, but at least the woman had kept quiet for the journey, staring blankly out of the window without moving.

At least the station was still where they had left it. That was one small bonus.

'Shove her in a holding cell,' Forrester barked at Cwej, gesturing to one of the Adjudication securitybots to come over to help him.

'Why, where are you going?'34.

'May as well get this over with quickly. I'll break out a portable mindprobe from stores. If we can retrieve the killing from her recent memories for centcomp, we can get her convicted and sentenced before lunch. Since the victim's only an offworlder, there's no point dragging it out.'

'If she's guilty.'

Forrester turned to look at Cwej. He was gazing at her in all seriousness, his b.u.t.ton-bright eyes gleaming, his fur bristling.

'If?'

'We can't a.s.sume anything until we've seen the scan.'

'Yeah. Right. Dream on, kid.'

She strode off to the equipment truck and signed out a battered mind probe.

Lugging the machine over to the holding truck, she wondered how long Cwej's innocence was going to last.

The inside of the truck was small and bare of anything except a table and three plastic chairs. Cwej had sprayed a restraining suit over the woman.

The flexible foam encased her completely apart from her little, wizened face, making it impossible for her to hurt herself or her captors, or to move faster than a waddle. She looked to Forrester like a child's toy: soft, pliant and blank.

Forrester threw the mindprobe upon the table, folded up the screen and plugged the input contact and the hand-scanner into the jack-points.

The securitybot was standing beside Cwej. Coincidentally, it was another INITEC model. The RECORD light was flas.h.i.+ng on its chest.

'Did you switch it on?' she asked Cwej, nodding towards the bot. He shook his head.

'No. Is it recording? Must have been left on by the last guys.'

'Slobs.' Forrester sat down. 'May as well start afresh,' she said, turning to the bot. 'Stop record.'

'Recording stopped,' the bot said.

The light remained winking.

'Stop record,' she repeated, louder.

'Recording stopped,' the bot repeated.

The light went out.

'Must be a malfunction,' she muttered. 'That's all we need.'

'These things aren't supposed to break down,' Cwej said. 'Mean time between failures is ten thousand years, according to the manuals.'

'Yeah, right. And Father Christmas lives on the fiftieth floor of my block.'

She raised her voice. 'Start record.'

The light began to flash again.

'Recording started,' said the bot.

'Have you got the spike?' she continued, turning to Cwej.35.

'The what?'

'The murder weapon?'

Cwej reached beneath his seat and retrieved a vacuum-sealed bag with the bloodied spike inside.

'Here.'

Forrester placed it on the table and waved the mindprobe's sensor over it, registering the item in its memory.

'All right, bring her over.'

While Cwej had manoeuvred the uncooperative but unresisting woman into one of the chairs, her arms and legs sticking out stiffly in the foam suit, Forrester attached the metal mindprobe contact to the centre of the woman's forehead.

'Ever used one of these?' she asked Cwej.