Glasshouse (24 page)

Business is so dead that I go home half an hour early. It's a warm summer evening, and I've got about two kilometers to walk. I barely see anyone. There are some park attendants out mowing the grass, but no ordinary folks. Did I miss a holiday or something? I don't know. I put one foot in front of the other until I hit the road out of the town center, follow it down into a short stretch of tunnel, then back into daylight and a quiet residential street with trees and a lazy, almost stagnant creek off to one side.

I hear voices and catch a faint smell of cooking food from one of the houses as I walk past. People are home—I haven't mysteriously been abandoned all on my own.
What a shame.
I briefly fantasize that the academicians of the Scholastium have figured out that all is not well in YFH-Polity and arrived to evacuate all of us inmates while I waited behind the library counter. It's a nice daydream.

Pretty soon I come to the next road tunnel linking hab segments. This time I pull out a flashlight as I pass out of sight of the entrance. Yes, just as I guessed—there's a recessed doorlike panel in one wall of the tunnel. I pull out a notepad and add it to my list. I'm slowly building up a map of the interrelated segments. It looks like a cyclic directed graph, and that's exactly what it is, a network of nodes connected by lines
representing roads with T-gates along their length. Now I'm adding in the maintenance hatches.

You can't actually see a T-gate—it's just that one moment you're in one sector and the next moment you've walked through an invisible brane and you're in another sector—but the positioning of the hatches can probably tell me something if I'm just smart enough to figure it out. Ditto the order of the network: if it's left-handed or right-handed, or if there's a Hamiltonian path through it. In the degenerate case, there may be no T-gates at all; this might actually be a single hab cylinder, divided up by bulkheads that can be sealed against loss of pressure. Or all the sectors may be in different places, parsecs apart. I'm trying to avoid making assumptions. If you don't search with open eyes, you risk missing things.

I get home at about my usual time, tense and nervous but also curiously relieved. What's done is done. Tomorrow Fiore will either notice my meddling, or he won't. (Or with any luck he'll assume Yourdon did it, which I think is equally likely. There's no love lost between those two, and if I play my cards right, I can exploit their division.) Either way I should learn something. If I don't . . . well, I know too much to stop now. If they knew how much I've figured out about their little game, they'd kill me immediately. No messing, no ritual humiliation in front of the score whores in Church, just a rapid brainsuck and termination. Fiore's playing with fire.

Sam is in the living room, watching TV. I tiptoe past him and head upstairs, badly in need of a shower. When I get to my room I shed my clothes, then go back to the bathroom and turn the water on, meaning to wash today's stresses away.

Seconds after I get in I hear footsteps, then the bathroom door opening. “Reeve?”

“Yeah, it's me,” I call.

“Need to talk. Urgently.”

“After I finish,” I say, nettled. “Can't it wait?”

“I suppose.”

Small torments add up; I'm now in a thoroughly bad mood. What's life coming to, when I can't even take a shower without interruption? I
soap myself down methodically then wash my hair, taking care to rub the inefficient surfactant gel into my scalp. After a couple of minutes of rinsing, I turn off the water and open the door to reach for my towel, to be confronted by a surprised-looking Sam.

“Pass me the bath sheet,” I tell him, trying to make the best of things. He complies hastily. Months of living in this goldfish bowl society have done strange things to my body-sense, and I feel surprisingly awkward about being naked in front of him. I think he feels it, too. “What's so important?” I step out of the shower as he holds the towel for me.

“Phone call,” he mumbles, trying to look away—his eyes keep drifting back toward me.

“Uh-huh. Who from?” He folds me in the towel as if I'm a delicate treasure he's trying not to touch. I shiver and try to ignore it.

“From Fer. He and El, they've heard something bad from Mick, and they're talking about sorting it out.”

“Bad.” I try to concentrate. The water on my skin is suddenly cold. “What kind of bad?”

“It's Cass, I think.” I tense up inside. “Mick gave them some crazy story about hearing from Fiore. Said the Priest told him that one of the rules in here is, what was it, ‘be fruitful and exponentiate.' That you can get a gigantic score bonus for having children.”

“That's not good,” I say carefully, “but it might just be Mick acting in character.”

“Well, yes, that's what Fer said, but then Mick told El he was going to get that bonus whether or not Cass wanted it.” He sounds apprehensive. “El wasn't sure what that meant.”

My mind races. “Cass wasn't at Church yesterday, Sam. Last time I saw her she wouldn't talk—she seemed afraid.” I have a nasty feeling that I know what's going on. I really don't want it to be true.

“Yes, well, Fer called me when El told him Mick had made some kind of joke about stopping Cass trying to escape for good. He wasn't sure just what it was but said it didn't sound right. Reeve, what's going on? What are we going to do if it turns out he's been tying Cass up while he's been at work, or using physical force, or something?”

For someone living in a dark ages sim, Sam can be heartbreakingly naive at times. “Sam, do you know what the word ‘rape' means?”

“I've heard it,” he says guardedly. “I thought it had to involve strangers, and usually killing. Do you think—”

I turn round. “We've got to find out what's going on, and we've got to get her out of there if it's true. I don't think we can count on the police zombies, or Fiore for that matter, to help. Fiore's messed up in the head anyway, even Yourdon thinks so.” I pause. “This is very bad.”

The thought of what Cass might be going through horrifies me, especially as I can guess how some of our cohort will react if we try to rescue her. Before last Sunday I might have been more hopeful, but now I know better than to expect anything but gruesome savagery from our neighbors if they think their precious points are at risk. “I think Janis would help, but she's ill. Alice, maybe. Angel is scared but will probably follow if we approach her right. Jen—I don't want Jen around. What about you guys?”

“Fer agrees,” Sam says simply. “He doesn't like the idea either. El, maybe not. I think if I ask, I can get Greg and Martin and Alf involved. A team.” He looks at me oddly.

“No killing,” I say, warningly.

He shudders. “No! Never. But—”

“Someone's got to go find out if it's true, or if it was just Mick making a joke in bad taste. Right?”

He nods. “Right. Who?”

“I'll do it,” I say flatly. “Tonight. I'm going to get dressed. You get on the phone to people. Get them round here. I want to sort out what we're doing before I go in, that way there won't be any nasty surprises. All right?”

He nods then looks at me, an odd expression in his face. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” I lean forward and kiss him quickly on the lips. “Get moving.”

THREE
hours later, we're holed up in a vacant house on a quiet residential side street across the road from what we now know is Cass and
Mick's home, thanks to an obliging zombie taxi driver. This street is still three-quarters unoccupied. We pile out of our three taxis at five-minute intervals and go to ground. Fer was among the first to arrive. He got us into the empty house with a crowbar. There's not a lot of furniture, and everything is dusty—not to mention dark, because we don't want to turn on the lights and risk alerting Mick—but it's better than trying to hide in the front garden for a couple of hours.

There are only five of us—me, Sam, Fer, Greg, and Greg's spouse, Tammy. Tammy is determined and very quietly furious—I think it's because she didn't realize how bad things really were until Sam phoned Greg. It's nearly midnight, and we're all tired, but I run through the plan once again.

“Okay, one more time. I'm going to go across the road and ring the doorbell. I'll ask to see Cass. Depending how Mick reacts, Sam and Fer, you'll rush him or hang back. I've got the whistle. One whistle means come in and get me, I need help. Two means get Mick.” I stop. “Greg, Tammy, you take the stockings, pull them over your heads. We don't want him to recognize you if you have to take Cass and look after her.”

“I hope you're wrong about this,” Tammy says grimly.

“So do I, believe me. So do I.” I glance sidelong at Fer.

“Mick's not been right in the head since I've known him,” Fer mutters.

“Anything else before we go?” I ask, standing up.

“Yes,” says Fer. “If you don't whistle, and you don't come out within ten minutes, I'm going in anyway.” He grips his crowbar.

“I should hope so.” I nod, then get up and head across the road.

Mick's garden is overgrown with weeds, and the grass is long. There are no lights in the windows, but that doesn't mean anything. Like our house, there's a conservatory at the front. The door stands open. I step inside and look at the front door. There's a new lock drilled into it, big and chunky-looking. I ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. I ring it again, and a light comes on in the hall. I tense up, ready for it as I hear a key turn in the lock, then another key, and the door opens.

“You.” It's Mick. He belches at me, and I smell sour wine on his breath. He's wearing a dirty T-shirt and boxers, and he's clutching a
metal canister with an open top. “What do you want?” He leers at me. “Din't I tellya not to bug me?”

“I want to see Cass,” I say evenly. There's
stuff
piled in the hall. Looks like empty food cartons, rubbish. It smells sickly sweet. “She wasn't at Church on Sunday.”

“Yeah?” He raises the can and takes a drink from it, then looks at me slyly. “Come in.”

I step over the threshold as he backs into the house. It looks like it started out as a mirror image of the one Sam and I live in, but it's been trashed. The hall is stacked with ripped boxes of ready meals and bits of decaying food. Something upstairs has leaked, and there's a smelly stain spreading down one wall. “She's upstairs, resting,” he says, gesturing at the staircase. “Whyn't you go up an' see her?”

I stare at him. “If you think she won't mind.”

“She won't.”

As I set foot on the staircase he sidles round below and closes the door, then twists both keys in the locks. “Go on,” he tells me, “nothin' to worry about.” He giggles.

That does it. I've got the whistle on a cord round my neck, hidden under the jumper I'm wearing. I pull it out and blow two sharp blasts as I take the steps two at a time. Mick winces, then turns to look up at me, his face a picture of confusion slowly turning into anger. “Whatyuh do
that
for?” he shouts. Then there's a loud thump from behind him as someone hits the door.

I make the top step and glance round quickly. The master bedroom is on the left, just like in my own house. There are piles of filthy clothing mounded up along one wall, and I take in the sick-but-sweet stench of blocked drains overlying something else, something less identifiable. I dart into the bedroom, and my hand goes to the light switch. Something squeals.

There's a splintering crash downstairs and a bellow of inarticulate rage, but I'm too busy staring at the bed to pay attention. Most of the furniture in the room has been trashed, like someone threw it about or took an axe to it. The bed is the sole exception, but it's been stripped
down to the mattress. It stinks of excrement and stale urine, there are flies buzzing about, and it's occupied: Cass is lying on it naked. Her arms are tied to the headboard, and her legs to either corner of the bottom of the bed. She's filthy and there are bruises on her thighs and her face looks like she's been repeatedly punched. That's where the squealing noise is coming from. I think he's broken her jaw.

“Up here,” I yell through the doorway. I turn back to her. “We'll get you out of here, my friend.” I bend over her and pull out the switchblade I brought along for emergencies. “This is going to hurt.” I begin sawing on the cord around her arms and she whimpers. As she moves there's a horrible stench from the encrusted mattress and I realize she isn't just skinny, she's half-starved, and there are sores on her arms, angry red rope burns.

I hear more crashes and bangs from downstairs, then an angry yell. Cass whimpers, then moans loudly as the last cord parts; her arms flop limply, and she moans some more. Her hands are puffy and bruised-looking, and I've got a bad feeling about them, but there's no time to waste. I move to the foot of the bed and start sawing away at the rope around her right ankle, and that's when she screams and I see what he's done to stop her from running away. There's blood on the rope because he's slashed the big tendon on her ankle, and her foot flops uncontrollably, and every time it moves, she tries to scream, gurgling around her broken jaw.
He said you get lots of points for having a baby.
I yell with fury, then there's someone in the doorway. I look up and see it's Sam. There's a cut on his cheek that's bleeding, and one eye is half-closed. That gets my attention, and I'm in control again. “Over here,” I say tensely. “I need you to hold her leg still . . .”