The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [15]
Fifteen young sharpsie men came out to meet them, black eyes always flat, but faces sullen. They growled their unintelligible language, and they looked like they were spoiling for a fight. They threw rocks and old bottles. The gendarmes attacked, and bore the young men to the ground. The brawl lasted only ten minutes before most of the young sharpsies ran, leaving behind only five: four were beaten too badly to move. One was dead.
Beckett read all about the first action against the Sharpsie Threat in the broadsheets the next morning. He and Skinner were in his office in Raithower House. The building had become the headquarters for the coroners ever since the Vie-Gorgon family had abandoned it for a bigger one that didn’t have Edmund Gorgon-Vie’s ugly, lumpy tower looming over it.
“We have nothing,” Skinner was saying. “No witnesses saw anything. Zindel’s friends had seen him the day before and he seemed fine. His children had been in school, his wife had done the shopping. Nothing.”
Beckett tossed the broadsheet onto his small, rickety desk. “Not nothing. Riot in Mudside. Gendarmes.”
“I’d heard about that.” Skinner was very quiet for a moment. “You don’t think…?”
“No.” Beckett’s head was buzzing. There was a pain in the corner of his right eye, like it was trying to roll around inside his head. He rubbed his temples. “Nothing from the witnesses. Nothing…” It was too hot. He’d thrown off his coat and, because Skinner was the only one there and she couldn’t tell the difference, he’d pulled off his scarf, revealing the gap into his face. It was still too hot.
“Elijah? Are you all right?”
She could hear something in his voice. Beckett rubbed his hands over his face, and took a deep breath. “Fine.” Another breath. “No witnesses. Nothing in the house . . . except for the geometry. Which we don’t understand.” He jerked his head as a thought struck him, then winced at the pain in his neck. “Ow. Co-workers. Who does he work with?”
Skinner shook her head. “He’s independent. A thousand crowns a year. Some old prize from the Academy of Sciences, or something. Everyone we talked to said he spent his free time at the public houses.”
The buzzing in Beckett’s head had grown stronger, and it was now accompanied by a ringing in his ear, and a sickly-sweet taste in his mouth. Shit, he thought. “Excuse me.”
Briskly but carefully, Beckett rolled up his sleeve, and wrapped it tight around his elbow, then opened the leather traveling case for his hypodermic. The veins in his arm began to bulge. Not much. Quarter-ounce. Beckett pulled a small amount of fang into the hypodermic, then quickly jabbed it into his arm and pressed on the plunger.
It was too much. He could tell immediately.
The pain receded; it didn’t leave, it just didn’t bother him any more. The taste in his mouth was suddenly satisfied. But the world jumped alarmingly, and his vision distorted. It looked like a kirliotype that had been heated with a match. The walls of his office bubbled and turned black.
“Elijah?” Skinner’s voice echoed off his inner ear. Six Skinners, scattered around him, spoke softly in his ears.
“Sh!” He blinked rapidly, in an effort to restore his ordinary vision. In the split second that his eyes were closed, he saw water: a vast, churning ocean under a black, stormy sky. Rushing waves filled his ears, saltwater ran up his nose.
His eyes opened, and it was gone.
Blink.
The ocean tossed him back and forth, knocking the air from his chest and filling up his lungs.
Blink.
He was back in his office, panting heavily. He could feel snot on his upper lip, running from his nose. His eyes seemed to have settled down, and the buzzing in his head had vanished.
“Elijah, are you all right?” Skinner