Engineman Part 35

"Eh?" I'm having difficulty with the zipper.

"You aren't armed."

"Told you so."

"Then how the h.e.l.l do you hope to kill the killer?"

I give her a big smile before fastening the zipper. "An old African custom," I say. "I'll think think him dead." Which isn't that far off the mark, minus the ethnic bit. him dead." Which isn't that far off the mark, minus the ethnic bit.

"Okay, just one more thing," she says. "You gotta walk like the real Mickey. Like this."

I stare at her through the gauze where Mickey's tonsils should be. She's strutting up and down the corridor, waving her arms, twitching her a.s.s. If only Ma.s.singberd could see us now.

"Your turn, Manchester."

So I strut my stuff before her, elbows working invisible bellows. "Point your boots! Swing your tail! This has to be perfect, Manchester. If this b.a.s.t.a.r.d so much as suspects..."

She doesn't have to finish that line.

"Fine. You got it. Now where you want to go first?"

The thought of parading myself out there like a sitting duck - or rather mouse - gives me the heebies.

I quit wriggling and squat on my heels. The suit is tight and uncomfortable, squas.h.i.+ng me short. "First, before I start risking my life - 'cos I don't want to be found dead in this f.u.c.king thing - first I want to know more about the killer. Like how he managed to waste an entire security team and and blow the defence system?" blow the defence system?"

I keep a probe out for the killer. I have a range of just over a kilometre, though it's getting weak by then. We're quite alone at present.

"The security unit? The killer sprayed them with Procyon animalcules. They reduced the unit to slush one hour before the fireworks began."

"Yech! And the mechanical defences? The 'bots?" And the mechanical defences? The 'bots?"

"Deactivated beforehand. That should have set off an alarm in computer control, but that'd been fixed too."

"Whoever the killer is, he sure knows his stuff. Could it be someone who works here?"

She shrugs. "Why not? We employ nearly twenty thousand permanent staff."

"Most of them evacuated with the trippers? So that leaves only the dozen workers holed up in the dorms."

"Plus the killer."

I think about it. "Has there been any shooting since the dozen staff made it to safety?"

"No..." Da Cruz is getting my drift.

"So perhaps, just perhaps perhaps, the killer is a worker. He or she hides with the others after the firing's through - providing an alibi."

"You think that likely?"

"At the moment anything's possible," I say.

Da Cruz pushes herself from the wall with a practised rubber bounce. "Any more questions?"

"Yeah... how come a girl as young as you gets to be the Director of an outfit as big as this?"

That stops her in her tracks.

"How do you know how old I am?"

"I'm well informed," I tell her. "Well?"

She shrugs. "I work hard."

"You must be very talented."

She's suddenly uncomfortable, under the Minnie suit. I read that she was a solitary kid, bullied at school, whose only way of showing them them was to succeed. But there's still something lacking, I read. Success isn't all. was to succeed. But there's still something lacking, I read. Success isn't all.

I have the almost irresistible urge to go in there and help her out, ever so gently. But I restrain myself. This is neither the time nor the place - and there's work to be done. Besides, I'm getting to the stage where I need real real love, love that isn't forced. love, love that isn't forced.

"Lead the way," I say.

"Where to?"

"The workers' dorm, or thereabouts. I can do my stuff at long range."

She regards me. "Okay. You ready?"

We cake-walk into the open, beneath the arching crystal dome, along with a hundred other cartoon characters. They're operating with an attention to duty that could be mistaken for macabre celebration of the surrounding carnage.

The fear I feel at our vulnerability is soon replaced by horror. Gobbets of human flesh occupy parks and gardens, tree-lined boulevards and exhibitions and fun-rides. Families lie in messily quartered sections, each chunk still grotesquely parcelled in the appropriate portion of clothing. Lower halves of once human beings sit in the seats of whirlers and spinners, still whirling and spinning in mechanical ignorance of their dead cargo.

And - this somehow makes the slaughter all the more tragic - robotic Mickeys and Minnies, Donalds and Plutos move from body to lasered body, patting dismembered heads, shaking lifeless hands, posing for pictures never to be taken beside the lacerated remains of Junior and Sis.

Da Cruz continues galumphing along. She's seen it all before. I slow and stare aghast until I hear a, "Psst!" and see a tiny gesture from Minnie up ahead. I quicken up and join her, strutting like a fool.

We leave the boulevard, cross a facsimile Wonderland and come to the croquet lawn. The Queen of Hearts strides around and calls imperiously, "Off with their heads!" And by some ghastly coincidence the Alice 'bot stands, hands on hips, her head removed by a freak sweep of this killer's laser.

Da Cruz ducks behind a hillock and points. "There," she says, indicating the entrance of a large rabbit burrow.

I close my eyes and concentrate on the workers' dorm beneath this make-believe world.

"What are you doing?" Da Cruz asks in a whisper.

"Just casting dem ol' black spells," I j.a.pe.

I make out eleven minds down there. I go through them one by one, discarding each in turn as innocent. All I read is fear and apprehension and, in a couple of cases, even hysteria. I'm looking for the bright brainvibes of a maniac. This bunch is clean.

"You a telepath?" Da Cruz asks in a small voice as I open my eyes and clear my head with a shake.

"Something like that," I tell her. "I thought you said there were a dozen workers? I scan only eleven."

"Over there." She points a white-gloved hand beyond the burrow to a hulking structure moored in a white, simulacrum river, part of another facsimile. I recognize it. The steamboat from Huck Finn. "He didn't make it to the dorm," she says.

I concentrate, get nothing. There's a blank where the person should be. The boat's within range, and there's nothing wrong with my ability as I can still sense the eleven down the rabbit hole.

"There's no-one there," I say. "You sure-?"

Then I glimpse movement.

Between bal.u.s.trades I see a guy sitting on the steps of the upper deck. He's garbed in ancient costume: cloak, frilled s.h.i.+rt, tight breeches and big-buckled shoes. He's there, okay.

Fact remains - I scan nothing.

"I don't get this one bit," I murmur. "You see a guy over there? Or am I hallucinating ghosties?"

"Sure. That's him. He's an Andy, an A-grader. He plays the part of Dr Frankenstein in our latest spectacular."

"Thanks for telling me," I say. "You think I can scan cyber-junkboxes just like living minds?"

She gets the message and stays mute.

So our Dr Frankenstein's an Android? A tank-nurtured artificial human, playing the lead in the Gothic cla.s.sic. I reckon Mary would just love that.

As for me, I'm suspicious. I have this aversion to Andys. Okay, so this guy's a citizen-grade Android from a reputable clinic, a fellow sentient with all the civil rights of you and me. But he still doesn't scan. I can't read Androids.

Prejudice, I know. And me of all people...

Nevertheless, I avoid them at parties.

"What do you know about this guy?" I ask. And I read her to ensure she's telling me all she knows.

"Well, he's an exceptionally talented actor. He applied for the role of the Doctor in the Frankenstein show. He auditioned well and got the part."

"You think he might be the killer?"

"Him?" She's surprised. "No... I don't think so. When we met he seemed very-"

"Okay, okay. I don't want a character reference. They say the Boston Strangler was a charmer."

"But what makes you think-?"

I shrug. "A hunch, that's all. The eleven workers are clean, and here we have an unscannable Andy."

"The laser fire did come from the other direction."

"Has it occurred to you that he might have got where he is now after he quit firing?" I say in a tone that suggests she shut up.

But why would an Andy go berserk like this, I ask myself.

I'm about to suggest we get the h.e.l.l out in case the Andy is our man, when he sees us. He stands and stares across the river at the two cartoon mice no longer in role.

I take Da Cruz by the hand and put the d.u.c.h.ess's cottage between us and the Android. "The best way to prove your Andy innocent is if I grill him," I say, pulling off my left glove.

Most Androids are equipped with handsets, and Dr Frankenstein is no exception. I get through to him and stare at his face on the back of my hand: it's heavily made-up, with age-lines and dark smudges beneath his eyes to suggest overwork.

"Worry not, good Doctor. Your circuits have not fused." I unzip the Mickey head and tip it back. "Isabella Manchester. Tactical Telescan Unit. I'm here to save you people like a regular superhero."

The Android inclines his head, not taken with my humour. "I wondered when help might arrive." His tone is measured, cultivated. I almost understand why citizen-graders are so sought after at all the big social events.

"A few questions, if you please."

He inclines his n.o.ble head again.

So I ask him where he was when the firing began, what he saw of the slaughter, where does he suspect the killer is now? I try every trick in the book to make him incriminate himself, but he's not that dumb. He answers the questions with a slight Germanic accent, and I get the impression he's mocking me, as if he knows what I'm doing and wants me to know that he knows. He's pointedly civil in his acceptance of suspicion.

I thank him, a.s.sure him that I'll get the killer and quick, and cut the link. "Well?" Da Cruz asks.

"What do you expect?" I say, frustrated. "That he admits he's the bad guy?"

"What did he say?"

"He was rehearsing when the killing began and made it as far as the s...o...b..at. He saw nothing of the ma.s.sacre after that. He kept his tin-pot head down."

"You still think he did it?"

"I never said I did... But anything's possible."

"And now?" she asks. She's far from impressed by my uncertainty.

"Where did you say the last fire came from? Across the complex? Okay, so I'll make my way around the perimeter until I come within range. If I were you I'd remain here. I don't want your death on my conscience."

"I feel it my duty to accompany you," she says.

I nod. "Very well, then. Okay." I grab her hand and look for a route out of the Andy's possible line of fire.

She restrains me. "Remember the walk!"

So we be-bop into the open again, heading towards the multiple amphitheatres that scallop the perimeter of the complex. Our only comfort is the knowledge that we're indistinguishable from hundreds of other strutting cartoon characters.

At least, I thought thought we were. we were.

The killer knows better.

The first bolt amputates Minnie's tail at the rump with a quick hiss and a coil of oily smoke. The second bolt misses me by a whisker and roasts a pa.s.sing Donald Duck at short order.

Da Cruz drags me into the cover of a stage set and we crouch behind a chunk of lichened stone. I trace the bolts back to their source: across the complex beneath the far arch of the dome. I concentrate, but the distance defeats me.

"So the Android can't can't be the killer," Da Cruz claims. be the killer," Da Cruz claims.