The Romance Of Crime Part 5

Spiggot was surprised when the tall freak walked over and slapped a hearty hand on his shoulder. The weirdo had caught on quicker than the girl, but he was taking things too far. Who the h.e.l.l was he?

'Oh no,' he boomed. 'We've got to help our old friend Frank out with his latest case, haven't we?'

Spiggot decided to make the best he could out of the situation he'd landed himself in. 'Of course,' he said, smiling.

'We make the perfect team, don't we, er, Doctor?'

Pyerpoint signalled for the cell door to be opened and ushered them out. 'I'll a.s.sign you rooms for the night. There are some workers' quarters unoccupied on level five.'

'Hold up, mate,' said Spiggot. 'What about the guest suites on level six?'

'They are reserved for Archons on circuit duty,' said Pyerpoint.

'Well, unreserve them,' said Spiggot. He strode off down the corridor.

As they followed Spiggot, Romana coughed to gain the Doctor's attention. 'Yes?'

'Do we know what we're doing?'

He thought for a moment. 'Well, I know what we're doing,'

he said emphatically, and hurried off down the corridor after their rescuer.

Margo felt hot tears gathering as she stumbled from the lift and slammed the shutter behind her. She collapsed against a wall and pressed her fingers to her eyes. There was a slight alteration in the rumble of the asteroid's engines as it ploughed away on its newly authorized course. The artificial gravity field adjusted to compensate and she was thrown forward.

She looked up. She didn't recognize her surroundings. This wasn't the staff residential wing on level five. This was the bas.e.m.e.nt. She was sure she'd pressed the correct b.u.t.ton in the lift. Or had she? She remembered tumbling into the lift and reaching for the control panel, her hand reaching automatically for the b.u.t.ton marked 5. There must have been an error in the lift's programming.

She picked herself up and straightened her uniform. This behaviour was unacceptable. She had to control herself, concentrate, and relax. She had to find her way back to her cabin.

The lift had been summoned away. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her tunic and thanked fortune that there was n.o.body around to see her in this state. This attack had been the worst. Most importantly, Pyerpoint had noticed something was wrong.

Their partners.h.i.+p went back eighteen years, back to his appointment as administrator. They had worked together closely. He was the nearest she had to a friend, and they dined together occasionally. They talked about politics between courses. Their opinions were always the same.

The first attacks had come about a year ago. Sudden panics, worries, nervous twitches. Now the slightest disruption of her routine could bring about the nausea. She knew she should report herself to the station medic, but the prospect of humiliation deterred her. Events of the last few months were jumbled up, dates were unclear in her mind.

And then there were the things that she was writing in her room. It was as if she was losing her grip on her personality.

It was inevitable that there would be a major security breach with her in this condition. Tonight's events shouldn't have come as a surprise, but she was shaken. She'd only sunk this deep once before, and on that occasion at least she'd been locked in her room, in private.

She heard a m.u.f.fled shout from the end of the corridor. It had come from behind a large wooden door. Something urged her to investigate. She walked towards the door and suddenly realized where she was. Stokes's gallery. She'd only been here once before, when she'd been giving a group of ministers a tour of the station. Both she and Pyerpoint considered Stokes an irritation. He was another example of the government's idiocy. Why had they ever allowed him to take up residence on the Rock? He was loud and offensive, like his work, always emerging from unlikely corners at the worst of times.

She put her hand to the doork.n.o.b of the gallery. Something made her twist it. To her surprise, it opened. There was no reason why she should go in. She decided to pull herself together and turn back.

She found she couldn't. Something was calling her, pulling her forward. Her stomach knotted as she turned to leave.

Unable to resist, she pushed open the door and entered the gallery.

The large hall was in darkness. Distorted images of the criminal dead stared at her from all sides. She pa.s.sed a jar that contained what looked like pickled intestines and a mask cast in helicon that seemed to smile as she pa.s.sed it. She shuddered. What was she doing here?

There was something moving in the darkness up ahead. She crept behind one of the pillars as a figure emerged into the light. It was Stokes. He was dressed in an ancient pair of striped pyjamas and was tying up the cord of a paint-splattered dressing gown.

'd.a.m.ned insomnia,' he was muttering. 'Wretched pills have no effect.' She watched as he picked up a framed purple print and sneered at it. 'Twenty sales. Six hundred apiece. For the work of a gossoon from the Irontown slums. It defies all sense.'

He crossed to where a canvas rested on an easel and snapped on a small lamp that gave out a strong green light. His broad bald head and contemptuously curled lips took on a ghoulish aspect. He fished out some brushes that had been resting in a jar of water and sorted through some paints.

Margo squinted to make out the picture on the canvas. She recognized Stokes's subject as Naomi Blakemore, the murderess terminated that evening. The old woman's gnarled hands were crossed on her lap. Her face wore a smile that might have looked kindly in life. But Stokes had twisted it, and in his work, she had become a vicious skeleton.

Stokes settled himself before the canvas. Margo contemplated his big green head from behind. How easy it would be to smash it in. To crack him open like the egg he resembled. Or to watch his bones dissolve, to flatten him somehow, scramble him, crush him into a bundle of flesh and bone and blood. She licked her lips. A feeling of power ran through her body. Her muscles felt stronger. It was a good way to feel.

'Ridiculous,' said Stokes. 'How can I compose myself in this light?' He sat up and unconsciously flicked on a monitor.

Text filled the screen, offering the options of the station's entertainment service. Stokes thought for a second, picked up a remote control, and requested information from the courtrooms.

Margo flinched. She blinked and her murderous visions faded. Why was she here, creeping about like this?

Stokes was reading aloud from the screen. 'Termination orders, April 21st. Yes, yes, know all that. Naomi Blakemore, poor darling. What a subject. One of the old school, indeed.'

He patted his canvas with genuine affection. 'Seldin Vranch, yes, the fraudster, boring, boring. Jarrigan Voltt. Which was he? Oh, yes, that phlegmatic idiot they brought down this evening. They must have been very keen to get rid of him, haven't had one jump the queue that quickly in years. Poor blighter.'

He yawned, stretched, and turned off the screen. 'I'm sure,'

he said as he stood, 'that as soon as my poor head touches the pillow I shall find myself alert once more to the dance of the muse.' He disappeared into the darkness.

Margo felt sick and dizzy. She forced herself away from the pillar and staggered towards the exit. In the darkness it was difficult to orientate. She stopped and tried to get her bearings.

She heard breathing nearby. She moved towards the exit, and a hand was clapped on her shoulder. Her attacker shone a small torch in her face. It illuminated his own. She recognized him as Zy, the young student a.s.signed by the educational authorities as Stokes's apprentice.

'What are you doing here?' he demanded. Margo noted that he was wearing his day clothes, as if he was going out.

'I I came to see Mr Stokes,' she stammered. She pulled away from him and straightened up. She couldn't bear to let anyone see her like this.

'Mr Stokes'll be asleep,' Zy told her. 'Along with everyone else.' He eyed her suspiciously. 'Don't you trust me, is that it?

Coming to check up on me?'

Margo barely heard him. She tried to reply, but her head suddenly felt as if it was being drawn away from her body.

She felt that something was trying to consume her, something that she couldn't name. She reeled back. When she next looked at Zy, she saw him as an insignificant obstruction.

Something that could be brushed away with ease, crushed out of existence in a moment. He was, after all, a Normal.

And all Normals must die.

She cried out and fell to the ground, wailing and clutching at her head. Where had that thought originated? What did it mean? What was happening to her?

Zy, confused, backed away from her. 'I don't know what you're playing at,' she heard him say, 'but it's nothing to do with me.'

He left.

Moments later, she pulled herself up from the floor and followed him out. The pain had returned, coursing through her bones.

She reached her bare cabin after an hour of confused staggering through the empty, darkened corridors of the station. She threw herself onto her small single bed and closed her eyes. She knew she would not sleep tonight.

Her eyes opened wide. A spasm rippled through her left hand. She watched as it jerked up, clenched and unclenched, out of her control.

The writing was about to happen again.

Margo's hand led her from the bed and over to a set of drawers. It unlocked the top drawer and searched through a jumble of computer manuals, maps and crumpled sheets of paper. In one corner a tiny device winked with a steady green light.

The hand pulled out a notepad. It found a clean sheet of paper and a pen, and started to write.

Margo watched as the hand produced a stream of symbols.

The clean page filled up rapidly with equations solved in an unfamiliar algebra.

4.

The Investigators.

The Rock of Judgement ploughed past a shower of bright-tailed comets that were whizzing through the system on a course equally erratic to its own. The feeble electric light that broached the plastigla.s.s of its many windows grew stronger as artificial morning commenced.

Lights throughout the high hallways, courtrooms, kitchens, computer rooms, cells and offices of the station brightened.

Soft music tinkled from concealed speakers. A recorded voice announced softly, 'Wake up everybody. It is time to begin work. Today is April the twenty-second. There's plenty of work to do. So please, everybody, wake up.'

Romana walked briskly along the deep carpeted corridor of level six. She tapped on the door of the Doctor's suite. There was no reply. She might have known he wouldn't stay put for the night. He had probably been out causing all sorts of mischief.

She pushed open the door and walked in to the luxury apartment. As she'd expected, the silver sheets on the four poster had not been disturbed. She was about to leave when a snore came from the other side of the room. It issued from a high-backed chair that had been moved to face the cabin's porthole. The Doctor's coat was draped over its back.

'Doctor?' she called. 'Doctor?'

He leapt startled from the chair, put up his arms and took on a fighting stance, then relaxed as he recognized her. 'Oh, it's only you.'

'What have you been doing all night?'

He beckoned her forward and pointed to a table, upon which a collection of large books with yellowing pages crammed with small print had been upended. 'Romana,' he said gravely. 'I know everything.'

'I already knew that, Doctor.'

'No, I don't mean everything, I mean everything.' He indicated the books again. 'These belong to the usual occupant of this room, some judge person. Probably away hanging people, somewhere.'

Romana picked up a few of the books and inspected their spines. ' The Law, the State, the People... Legal Procedures in The Law, the State, the People... Legal Procedures in the Ultimate Court... the Ultimate Court... ' She grimaced. ' ' She grimaced. ' Jokes Cracked by Jokes Cracked by Archon Tablor. Archon Tablor. ' '

'I know where we are and what goes on here,' the Doctor said. 'I've read most of that lot.'

'It can't have been that interesting, you fell asleep.'

'Well, I had a long day. Romana, what does Uva Beta Uva mean to you?'

She thought back to her Academy studies. 'It's near the centre of the Earth's galaxy. The star's a torroidal elliptic with fourteen planets. Colonized in earth year 2230.'

The Doctor looked somewhat taken aback. 'Spot on, spot on.' He moved to the automatic food unit and took out a slice of toast. With his free hand he put on his coat, hat and scarf.

'Now, this place is not only a court. It's also where they mete out punishment to all of their worst criminals. Murderers, mostly. A lot of the people in custody here are very dangerous, and many of them would like a chance to get out, or get rescued.' He looked out at the stars. 'A few million miles of vacuum makes a pretty good prison wall. Difficult to spoon your way through that. The place opened for business over forty years ago. What's more, the course is constantly s.h.i.+fting.

n.o.body outside can be quite sure exactly where it is.'

They watched as a green planet of middling size pa.s.sed by slowly.

'A bit like us and the Black Guardian,' Romana said ruefully.

'Hmm. Now, eighty per cent of those on murder charges are convicted, and ninety-five per cent of that number end up in a particle reversal chamber. Gruesome, but what you'd expect from the human race, more or less. The few that escape that fate are transmatted back to Five and prison.' He ate the last corner of his toast. 'By this time they'll be feeling a bit jaded in these parts. Their mineral wealth dried up a long time ago.'

Romana thought back to the events of the previous night. 'I suppose it explains the drugs in the bar. The people who work here must require suppressants to keep them happy for such long spells of duty off planet.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Yes, although I doubt whether the station administrator and his chums partake of that stuff.' He wiped his fingers on a napkin. 'Let's go and find Spiggot, shall we?'

Romana nodded. 'And when his friends turn up? The people we're supposed to be?'

The Doctor grinned, pleased to be several steps ahead for once. 'Spiggot is a trained investigator, a high-ranking officer, right?'

'Right.'

'And he goes blundering in to their computer control centre, which he must know to be bristling with detection devices,' the Doctor said. 'Then greets two total strangers as trusted colleagues.'

'Perhaps he's just stupid,' Romana pointed out.

The Doctor shook his head. 'Perhaps he's just too clever by half.'

In the duty room, Shom took a deep breath. He looked again at his wrist.w.a.tch. There was no choice. Procedure was procedure. He had to refer staff problems to the administrator, whoever they involved.

He called Pyerpoint's office. 'Sir. The chief hasn't reported for duty this morning.'

A brief silence. 'Strange. Have you tried her quarters?'

'There's no answer, sir,' Shom said, almost apologetically.

'She seems to have removed her communicator. n.o.body on staffs seen her since last night.'