The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [20]
Beckett considered the captain. The Lobstermen were the Empire’s elite troops, drawn from the ranks of the Royal Marines. They were fanatically loyal and obedient. Through extensive and costly trolljr surgeries, bone plates had been grafted to the bodies of the men, in a fashion that resembled the old-fashioned, segmented lorica on their chests, saw-edged plates on their arms and legs, and a heavy, crested helmet on the skull. A thin patina of blood continually dribbled down the plates, making them crimson and sticky. Beneath the armor, a network of thin tubes carried ichor-derived chemistry that made the men stronger and faster than even an athletic human. It would also kill them after five years of duty. Fanatically loyal.
“…this foreign threat to our stability, especially now during wartime, can not, and will not be tolerated…”
“Whose orders?” Beckett asked.
“Committee for Public Safety.”
The coroner pulled his credentials from his pocket: a flat square of leather with a shiny brass shield affixed. The shield had the two-headed eagle crest of the Coroners Division. “Coroners. We outrank CPA.”
The Lobsterman shook his head. “Sorry, sir. Orders. No one goes in.”
Edgar Wyndham-Vie had finished his inflammatory sermon to the gathered business men, and climbed down from his box. “Who are you?” He demanded of Beckett. “What the hell are you doing here?” He turned to the Lobsterman. “This area is to be sealed, captain. Take these people out of here.”
“Detective-Inspector Beckett,” Elijah Beckett said. “Coroners Division. And this is my crime scene. Tell the Lobsters to back off.”
Wyndham-Vie looked closely at Beckett; the man had a familiar shock of ginger hair, and familiar taste in facial hair: moustache and mutton-chops. “Beckett. Beckett.” He said the name to himself as though trying to recall its provenance. His eyes suddenly widened. “You. You’re the one.” Edgar Wyndham-Vie leaned in. “You killed my cousin,” he spat through clenched teeth. “I’ll see you hanged for it.”
Beckett was unmoved. “Your cousin was a heretic. He had to die. But I don’t publish my reports.”
“You think that matters?” Edgar sneered. “You think they don’t know? The rumors have started already. In a year, the Wyndham-Vie name won’t be worth spit.”
Beckett’s voice was a deadly whisper. “You misunderstood me. I don’t publish my reports. But I could start.” He leaned in close. “A year? Your name won’t last a fucking week.”
The two men stared long and hard at each other: Edgar Wyndham-Vie’s cheek twitched, and a vein bulged at his temple. His face had turned very red. Beckett stood as cold and still as the gray city around him, never blinking, never turning his eyes from Edgar’s face.
The Adjunct broke first. He turned away, and then waved at the Lobstermen. “Let them in.” He turned back to Beckett and his companions. “You have an hour.” The coroner walked smoothly past the Lobstermen, and Alan hurried to keep up. He distinctly heard, as he passed Wyndham-Vie, “Hanged.”
He also heard Beckett, as they crossed the short bridge over Thurgood Street, mutter under his breath. “Not today, jackass.”
Six: Herman Zindel’s Home
The mathematics that covered the walls and floor of Herman Zindel’s office was, as far as Alan Charterhouse was concerned, extraordinary. As enthusiastic as he was, however, he had to be careful; Aetheric Geometry was a heresy, punishable by death. A scientific heretic didn’t even get the benefit of a trial. If Beckett suspected that Alan had been dabbling in higher-plane geometry, he could simply take out his revolver and shoot him in the head.
“This is…well.” Alan swallowed hard. He was looking at a group-theory proof that went a long way to solving a harmonic symmetry equation he’d been working on for a year. It was just as well his uncle was going mad. He’d have been furious if he’d recognized the mathematics scrawled in Alan’s journals and on the backs of old maps. “Obviously, my father knows…knows a lot more about this sort of thing…”
“We haven’t got your father.