The Gentle Touch

Fiction by Ian Nichols

His mind was mutilated as greatly as his body, Pat Reilly thought. She dragged her gaze away from the pathetic figure in the gutter, attended by a medic team, and looked over to where her partner, P’rixis, vomited into a wastebin. She walked over to the little telepath. He heaved and trembled, but it seemed there was nothing left to throw up.

“Come on, Prix,” she said as she stroked the soft fur on his neck, “let’s get out of here. We’ll get the medical examiner’s report back at the station. I’ve seen all I want to see. The forensic team will work it over after they get the guy to hospital. You can tell me what you found out when we get back.”

P’rixis nodded agreement, still too shaken to speak, his dark fur matted with perspiration. He wiped his mouth with a tissue, pulled his gloves on, and followed away from the crime scene. Their car was waiting. The driver opened his mouth to say something, but Pat gave him a look and shook her head. P’rixis was in no state to talk right then. As soon as he laid his hands on the distorted figure, kneeling by the feverishly working medics, he had gone rigid with shock and pain. Pat had held her breath while he read what he could of the man’s mind, and then torn himself away. Pat wasn’t surprised. She’d talked, briefly, with one of the medics who’d described the injuries. The man’s naked body made them obvious. 

There were gaps where his flesh looked as if it had been simply torn out, deep cuts and scratches. Injuries marked every square inch of his body. His genitals had been hideously despoiled. His teeth had been shattered but left in their sockets to make more agony. In places, his dusky skin had simply been torn from the muscle to hang in flaps and strips. His limbs had been broken and deliberately set crookedly. Yet, he’d been alive. No single one of his injuries was enough to kill him immediately; his wounds had been clean, left open to form scabs that had been torn off. He’d been tortured for a long time, and then tortured more. 

He was the third, and the first one to live long enough for P’rixis to get a reading. Pat was glad it was his job to go through that, and guilty that she felt glad.

The trip back to the Central Police Station took a little over thirty minutes through the late early shift traffic. Lunar City kept to a 25-hour day, a compromise between the majority human population and the various other people. Some of these were used to much shorter days, some longer, and some didn’t sleep at all. P’rixis had a cycle that varied on his home planet, but it averaged out at about 22 hours. The dome lights weren’t on full, so many buildings still had their own lights on. By the time they’d checked in and made their way to the office they shared, P’rixis was ready to talk about what he’d read. Pat got him a cup of tea, black with four sugars, and called in her boss, Superintendent MacCarthy. He brought a recorder in with him, and they sat at the desk. As P’rixis spoke, he pulled down on the fine leather of his gloves, as if to ensure that he wouldn’t touch any flesh and read anybody’s mind for a while.

“The man’s name is James Umbele,” he said, “and he’s Congolese. He was an agent for one of the private combines selling rainforest biologicals. He was taken three weeks ago; he doesn’t have any idea how. One minute he was in a hotel room, the Rose, on Piermont Street, and the next he woke up in utter darkness with his hands and feet tied.” The name rang a bell with Pat, and she tapped up a file on the data pad on her desk. He was there, reported missing from his hotel on the seventh of January 2085. “He never saw his captor,” P’rixis went on. “He was kept in total darkness, not a whisper of light. Suddenly, there would be pain. Sometimes the abuse was constant, for hours. Sometimes, more than a day would go past with nothing. He was force-fed with a tube down his throat and hosed off at irregular intervals. After the first week, his sense of time gets confused; his entire awareness of self is ground down to nothing. It’s just one blur of agony.” Prix looked up at them. “He is already dead. It would be a kindness to end his memories of pain.” 

P’rixis’ eyes glistened as he said this last. One of the many traits Cathails shared with humanity was that they wept. 

“Is there any memory of the one who did this at all?” MacCarthy said gruffly. “Any tiny clue as to what they look like?”

P’rixis frowned, his whiskers flaring out a little as his mouth wrinkled in concentration. “Big hands, with claws or very sharp nails. Big, tall, very strong. Leathery skin. He felt all that,” he swallowed and hesitated, “when he was being hurt.”

Pat saw P’rixis’ eyes close, and she spoke up. “Boss, Prix has had enough for now. It’ll take him time to get around this. Let’s leave it for a while.”

MacCarthy nodded and rose. “Okay,” he said, “leave it for now. Take a rest, Prix. We’ll get back to it when you’re ready.” 

P’rixis nodded, eyes still closed, and began to sink into a trance that would help to heal his mind from the savagery of what it had felt. MacCarthy gestured for Reilly to come with him, and they left the office together. 

In MacCarthy’s office, he waved Reilly into a chair and ran his hands through his thinning red hair. “You saw the name on the list of the missing?” he said.

“Yes. The only reason the hotel reported it was that he’d left luggage behind.”

“There are more than a hundred names on that list, reported missing for various reasons, and god knows how many more that haven’t been reported. Any one of them could be this creep’s next victim. Still, he made a mistake with this one; he left him alive.”

“No,” Pat said thoughtfully, “I think he got it right this time. He meant us to find this one alive. It would have been a lot easier to leave him dead.”

After she’d made certain P’rixis would be okay and that someone would get him home, she drove home herself. She walked into her apartment, threw her keys on the desk, and picked up the remote for the vision. The news was just starting. At first, it was the labour riots in Germany and China. Unemployed workers were trashing stores that sold offworld products or factories that used offworld technology. They were crazy; exotrade produced far more jobs than it eliminated. There were just too many people, twelve and a half billion of them, and a lot of them were just plain crazy. Pat walked into the kitchen and grabbed a cold bottle of Riesling from amid the diet food in the refrigerator. I must get around to eating some of that, she thought as she hunted the corkscrew in the kitchen drawer. She looked at her reflection in the kitchen window. Same mousey hair, in need of a cut, same slightly too plump face above a ditto body in a navy prêt-à-porter skirt and top. She looked, she thought, just as anonymous as ever. Good for a cop. 

Not everybody liked offworlders; that was why they came to Freeport. It was a pretty wide-open town, rambling around where streets had been added every time the gravity compensation field had been expanded. Even though entry and exit were controlled, the police force wasn’t big enough, Pat thought as she poured a glass of wine. It was just as well that most offworlders were law-abiding. Most of them lived here. So did the killer.

The story about finding the victim was on next. Pat watched it carefully. Good, she thought, they hadn’t given away any vital details to the reporter. Just that the victim was alive and receiving treatment. No clues as to who’d done it, but inquiries were proceeding. Yes, they thought it was the same perpetrator as the previous two cases. MacCarthy came over well on vision. He was big and had a square-jawed, sandy-haired, honest face that disguised his conniving nature. Pat finished watching the Earth weather forecast – hot and hotter as the remnants of global warming kicked in – and switched off.

The first victim had had a broken neck and fewer injuries. The second victim had died of shock and blood loss before she was found. Umbele had been tortured into insanity. If there were more, they’d be like this one. He could have been killed, easily, but he hadn’t been. Therefore, he’d been left alive for a reason. Pat finished her glass and poured another. The criminal was trying to send a message. She was still trying to work out what it was when she finished the bottle and fell asleep on the lounge.

***

MacCarthy briefed those working on the case first thing in the morning. “There’s not a lot that’s new, apart from the fact that this one was left alive and what Prix read, which is in your briefing folders. All the damage done by claws and teeth matches exactly the pattern on the previous victims. The femur was snapped in two, so this criminal is a strong one. The victim was found in the grounds of one of the new blocks of apartments that are empty. The victim was dumped there. The screams attracted the security patrol.” MacCarthy nodded at a man sitting to the side of him

He stood up. He was dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. “I’m Steve Robertson, Freeport Security. I was the one who found him, on a sweep of the unoccupied sites,” he said. He was massively built, well over six feet, and solid muscle. “The full sweep takes just over twenty minutes, and there was nothing in the previous sweep, so that’s how long they had to get out of there. I heard the screams and called in the disturbance before I went inside the grounds. He was just outside the fence, on the sidewalk. He’d just been tossed out onto the road, inside some big garbage bags.”

One of the detectives asked if Robertson had seen a vehicle.

“No.” Robertson shrugged. “The grounds are in a dip, a little valley. A car could have been a hundred metres away, and I wouldn’t have seen it.” He sat back down.

MacCarthy continued. “There’s a full copy of Robertson’s report to the security company in your files. One of our teams was at the site in ten minutes, and their forensic report is in your files as well, but let me summarise it for you. They found no tracks of the criminal at all. Nothing. The only tracks around were the detectives’ and Robertson’s. There were plenty of scuff marks on the street, but nothing distinct enough to call it a print. Nothing to work on, just like the other cases.

After the general question time, Pat collared Robertson on his way out. “I’m Detective Sergeant Reilly,” she said, “Can I talk to you somewhere? I’d like to see if I can fill in a few details about the crime scene.”

“Sure,” Robertson replied, “where?”

“There’s a coffee lounge a block or so from here, and I could use some food. I missed breakfast.” And dinner, she thought to herself. She’d woken up still sprawled on the couch, with a hangover.

After they ordered, Pat asked, “Why do they have patrols? Why not electronic surveillance?”

“They have that too, but only on the grounds; it won’t go active inside until there are tenants.”

“So why patrol at all?”

“Response time. If there’s a patrol in the area, we can be at any point in the complex in a few minutes. They’re also not all that happy about the citynet. We were told it’s too vulnerable to hackers.”

“Has it been corrupted? Any signs?”

Robertson shrugged. He’d ditched his jacket and only had a tee-shirt on. His biceps were as thick as Pat’s thighs. “Those apartments come fully equipped, and stuff’s been stolen from them. Terminals, visions, anything portable and easily sold,” he said. “How many times has the citynet been down this year? Six, seven? How many times have the hackers been caught?”

Pat sipped her coffee and thought for a moment. “Twice,” she said. “Two different electronic terrorist groups.” 

“Hacking a security system and leaving no trace would be child’s play for people like that.”

“So, you don’t think the criminal worked alone?”

“I don’t know.” Robertson ran a hand over his brown hair and tugged on the ponytail. “All I know is that there was nothing on one round, and I heard screams the next. I called as I went to the noise.”

“Why?”

“Standard operating procedure. If I’d followed it to the letter, I would have waited for backup, but those screams were too much. I had to get up there.” He looked disturbed by the memory. 

Pat said, “What did you do when you got to the bag?”

“Look, all this is in the written report. It’s not a pleasant memory.”

“Sorry. I can’t ask questions of a report.”

Robertson brooded for a moment. “I saw his head,” he said. “He’d forced it out of the bags. I cut them, and I saw his body. He was screaming, and there wasn’t anywhere that he wasn’t hurt. I had a first-aid pack, but there was nothing that could help him. I just wiped some of the blood off his face. I said, ‘Okay, it’ll be okay now.’ Just making reassuring noises. He kept screaming. The police and ambulance were there in minutes, but they were long minutes.”

Pat looked at him as he looked down into his coffee. The knuckles of the hand that wasn’t on the coffee mug had gone white as they clenched into a fist, and the corners of his eyes were crinkled, as if someone fighting off tears. She said, “What did you do before you got here?”

Robertson blinked twice before answering. “International Marines for twelve years. Sergeant in the Recon. Got out five years ago, worked Lunar construction for a year, been with Freeport security for four years.”

A light went off in Pat’s head. “You would have been in the Marines in `70. The Tuvalu massacre.” 

He nodded. “I was a corporal then. I was 2IC of one of the teams that tried to get the hostages out while the frontal assault hit. The hostages were all killed.” His eyes took on a thousand-yard stare for a second, then refocused on the present. He drank some coffee. “None of the offworld ambassadors or Earth diplomats lived. Neither did the terrorists. They killed themselves rather than be captured. Each one was wired with explosives. They’d lay down their arms and wait `til we approached, then pull the pin. We got orders to shoot on sight.”

And that was why all offworlders lived in Freeport these days. It was on the Moon and easy to isolate. On Earth, terrorists had taken over the island where the Exotrade Summit was held and hung on to it for five days. They’d demanded an end to exotrade, and the expulsion of all aliens from Earth. The UN had sent Marines in, but the terrorists were waiting. Massacre. That couldn’t happen here. She hoped. Pat’s `phone beeped.

“Pat Reilly,” she answered.

“Pat, you’d better get back here.” It was MacCarthy’s voice. “Umbele’s died.”

***

Prix was outside MacCarthy’s office when Pat arrived back at the station. MacCarthy was on the `phone. He hung up when she came in. 

“Umbele died about ten minutes ago,” he said. “The doctor said it was a cataclysmic failure of the body’s systems.” He shook his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised. From what was on the report, there wasn’t a piece of him that wasn’t broken.”

Prix said, “There was too much pain.”

“How the hell could that happen?” Pat said. “They must have had him on painkillers.”

Prix looked up at her. “It was the memory of pain that made him give up. Sometimes it is a memory that is as deep as the cells, as deep as the core of a person. He was a strong man to survive what he did for so long.”

“Having had a spike of bone shoved through his liver may have had something to do with it, as well,” said MacCarthy, who was reading the report that had been sent through to them. 

“Where do we go now?” Pat asked.

MacCarthy looked up. “You go down to the Challis Embassy and have a little chat with the charge d’affaires there.”

“Forensics report?”

“Yes. A Challistan could have been responsible for the injuries. Claws and jaws and strength. They’re going to be suspects.”

“That could apply to a couple of other offworld races. Socons, the Payre.”

“I’ve got other teams for them. I want you to do the Challistans.”

“Why?”

“They’ve got an attitude. You’re better with attitude. You seem able to put up with aliens better than most.”

Pat sighed, gathered her bag, and patted the holster in the small of her back, under her jacket. “Anything particular you want me to find out?”

“All the Challistans in Freeport are in the Embassy compound. Check their movements for the last week.” MacCarthy looked at Prix. “You go with Pat.”

Prix looked down at the floor. He still looked tired. “I think I should. It may trigger some associations within the memories I have from Umbele.”

***

There shouldn’t have been mean streets, but there were. Freeport had beome too big, too fast. After the Tuvalu episode, when the offworlders moved to Luna, Freeport grew. Now, it was a boom town, and there was crime. Maybe it was because it was a big port and isolated, with a lot of money going through it every day. Maybe it was because there was something in people, Terrans or offworlders, that made some of them criminals. Pat didn’t know what the answer was, but she wished the Challistans had picked a better location for their embassy.

The walls were solid, fused rock and blank, save for one largish door. They were topped with scrolls of razor wire. When Pat knocked on the door, it felt as if there was a solid metal core beneath the polished wood surface. Crazy, Pat thought. It might be next to a bad neighbourhood, there might be burglars and muggers around, but who would want to mug someone who could bend them in half without breaking into a sweat? Challis was a heavy planet, 2.2 gravities, and the Challistans had evolved from a race of hunting carnivores. They looked it. Maybe they liked to have peace and quiet at home. The door opened.

A looming giant with grey skin and fangs should not look funny, but this one wore a kilt with designs of purple fish on a yellow background. A hunting animal should have a growl for a voice, but this one spoke in a breathy tenor. “Detective Sergeant Reilly?” he said. “We’ve been expecting you.” He noticed Prix and bared his fangs a little. “We weren’t told you would be bringing a Catharl.”

“Is that a problem?” Pat asked. 

“We are a very private people. We don’t like telepaths. I would ask him to keep his gloves on while he is here.”

“That will be fine,” Prix said quietly. “We, too, are a private people. It is rare that we will touch someone not of our own race to read them or to send to them. It would be - impolite.”

The Challistan bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Then welcome to our embassy,” he said, and gestured them in.

They were led down a long hall decorated with paintings of pastoral scenes and oases. The light glared a little, colours brighter, more acid. Their guide said, “Please do not stray away from these meeting areas,” as he brought them to a much dimmer room with a trickling fountain against one wall. “This is the safe zone for visitors. The rest of the embassy is at our home planet’s gravity.” Plants almost obscured the other walls, and a scent of spices hung in the moist air. Their guide waved them to low chairs by a small table, and they sat. He took a seat as well, opposite them. “I am Lilobot, the ambassador’s assistant. How can I help you?” 

Pat said, “We’re investigating a series of murders. There is some indication that a Challistan may have been involved.” She watched his face as she said this. There was not a twitch of the smooth grey skin. He continued to gaze steadily at her with his khaki eyes. She went on. “There aren’t many Challistans in Freeport, and they’d all have to register with you. We’d like to be able to check their whereabouts, to eliminate as many as possible from any suspicion of involvement.”

“You may eliminate all of them,” Lilobot said. “All our people here are peace-bound. That is a condition of their entry to Terra.”

“Peace-bound?”

“They take an oath to not harm others while they are here.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“And they all keep their word?”

Lilobot blinked, then blinked again, the first hint of reaction. “Yes. It is a matter of honour. His voice carried a hint of reproach. “Honour is, like privacy, very important to us.”

Pat looked over at Prix. The little telepath’s brow was crinkled in concentration. She said, “Nevertheless, I’d appreciate it if you could account for the whereabouts of all the diplomatic staff, at least, for the last couple of days.”

Lilobot took a small communicator from a pouch at his hip and pressed some buttons. “I have sent for our chief of security, Saten. He can help you.”

A minute passed in uneasy silence. A door opened silently, and another Challistan, even larger than Lilobot, entered the room. His kilt was a modish houndstooth check in lime green on black. It went well with his short, amber fur. He nodded at Lilobot and waited by the door at parade rest.

“Saten, these detectives are investigating a crime. They would like to know the whereabouts of the diplomatic staff for the past few days.”

“I can give them a copy of the entry and exit records and a copy of the security vision from the door cameras. Would that be enough?” Where Lilobot’s voice was a flute, Saten’s was lower, a clarinet. He looked at Pat and Prix.

“Okay, that would be a start,” Pat said. “Do you know offhand if many of your people have been out for extended periods? A couple of hours at a time, maybe?” 

“The only people to leave have been the three members of the trade delegation, to conferences with companies and government representatives.”

“How do they get there?”

“They are taken directly from the embassy by car, with an escort of our security staff. They come back the same way.”

“Could they slip away for a while during the conference?”

“I do not believe so, but it would not matter if they did. They are peace-bound. I will get those records.” He turned abruptly and left the room.

Pat felt uncomfortable in the silence that followed Saten’s departure. She wanted to ask a Prix about this peace-bound thing, but she couldn’t under the gaze of Lilobot. Instead, she asked Lilobot, “Are the security staff peace-bound, as well?”

“Of course, but slightly modified. They may respond with force if it is required. But they rarely leave this building. Most of our discussions are held here, hence the meeting areas.” He gestured around them. “We learned a great deal about humans at Tuvalu. When the terrorists broke in, they killed all the Challista at once, even though they were all peace-bound. Saten’s lifemate, Lillas, was one of them. She was the security guard for the Trade Liaison. She killed one terrorist, but another jumped at her and exploded the bomb he carried. Four humans died. Lillas had a broken back but dragged herself towards the other terrorists. They sprayed her with bullets until she was just a bloody mass. ‘A’stessa memmortt.’ A saying: ‘even the strongest will can only accomplish so much,’ I think would be the nearest translation.”

Prix said “tua’stessa paartdos.”

“What?” Pat said.

“It’s the other half of the saying. ‘But without a strong will, nothing may be accomplished.’”

Lillobot twitched his mouth, but Pat couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a grimace of surprise. “Your accent is very good,” he said to Prix. “Where did you learn Challis?”

“On Earth, before Tuvalu.”

“Did you learn of our honour, as well?”

“Yes, and I regret that we must question it.”

There was a silence for a moment. Saten’s return broke it. “I have the records from the cameras.” He held up a data stick. 

Pat rose. “I’ll take that to the station. Okay, that seems to be all we need here for the moment. Thanks for your help.”

Prix rose as well, and they both followed Saten as he led the way out. Lillobot said, “Wait.” He got up and joined them on the path to the outer door. “You imply that you may need to return.”

“We don’t know what these records will show, or whether it will make a return trip necessary.”

“Ah. I see. Saten will accompany you to the door.”

***

There was news waiting back at the station. A piece of evidence was the good news. The bad news was that they now had not one, but two observers to help them. One was Robertson. Freeport Security had sent him along to help with any questions about the security system. The other was Saten. 

“I have no idea what you said at the embassy,” MacCarthy grumbled, “but they got on the ‘phone to the mayor and the Chief of Police pretty much straight away. If a Challistan could be a suspect, or could in any way be involved, they want someone to liaise with us. Lizard rights, so to speak. That liaison will be in our faces as of tomorrow morning.”

The evidence was dirt. Lunar dirt. It didn’t exist inside the dome.

“It was deep in a cut,” Chan, the medical examiner, explained. “All the cuts and tears had been washed out; it must have hurt like hell. No chance of DNA, any trace evidence at all. But this was right down the end of one of the stabs, and Umbele must have twisted or contorted, probably with pain, and the end of the wound folded. It couldn’t be washed. And there was just this one piece of dirt left behind. A tiny little chunk of lunar regolith. It had to come from outside.”

Pat said, “How the hell did it get inside?”

Chan shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s your job.”

***

The Chief Environmental Officer for the city was Indira Gahdouani, and she greeted Pat, Prix, Steve, and Saten courteously and made sure they were all seated and comfortable before she retreated behind the huge desk in her office. She was a tiny woman with long, black hair in a thick plait, dressed in a green sari. She had a caste mark on her forehead, unusual in Freeport. She saw Pat glance at it and said, “It is an anachronism in this day and age, I know, but it is a tradition in my family.” She smiled, and her voice was like the trill of a pretty bird. “How can I help you?”

“We found a piece of lunar dirt inside the dome,” Pat said. “I thought the dome was sealed against that.”

“Oh, that is correct. It is a very bad thing. It is hard and very abrasive, corrosive, and some has poisonous metals in it. We make sure that none is carried into the dome. Cargo and passengers cannot come into contact with it. The transfer locks are sealed, as is the rail transit. The locks have precipitators, and the warehouses are sealed. We do not want dust to get into the air-conditioning. That would be disastrous.”

“So how could it get inside?”

Gahdouani considered for a moment. “It might be possible for a tiny amount to get in on a vacuum suit. Construction workers wear them when they work outside the dome. They come back through temporary locks, and they are sometimes not so efficient. The workers, too, are sometimes in a rush and not as vigilant as they could be. If any dust did get in, it could get no farther than the suit room. They cannot bring suits into the dome proper.”

“Why?”

“Oh, these are powered suits with nuclear transition batteries.” She laughed. “We do not allow radioactive substances into the dome, either. And the suits could inadvertently damage something; they are very strong.”

“How do you keep track of them?”

“They are all monitored.” Gahdouani touched her desk, and a panel rose smoothly from it. She touched the screen and said, “There are, at present, one hundred and twenty-two powered suits in Freeport. Thirty-eight are outside working the first shift on the western extension. Sixty-six are in the suit room for the extension, waiting for the second and third shifts. Eight are in the workshop, under repair, and ten are new ones, just shipped from Earth, locked in the customs warehouse.” She touched the screen again, her hands as delicate as flowers. “Those arrived three weeks ago, and their movement history shows that they went straight to the external customs warehouse and have been there ever since.”

“Can the tracking show if any of the suits have been inside the dome?”

“Of course.” She brought the information to the screen, “Four of the suits have been separated from their batteries and brought from the workshop for decommissioning in the last three months. Three have been decommissioned and broken up for parts. One is in this building, waiting for that to happen.” She looked up at them. “Would you like to see it?”

The suit lay in a pod in the basement, sealed and locked. A panel on its side lit up when Gahdouani touched it. “Ah,” she said, “this one suffered abrasion to its fabric when the person wearing it fell and slid down into a dip. The seal did not break, but it is no longer up to safety standards, so it will be recycled.”

“Why does it come here?” Pat asked.

“Because we have to sight the suits and check the actual serial number against our records. It is a precaution against electronic hacking. Even then, we have to get police permission to move the pods through the dome.” She pressed a code into a touchpad. The pod clicked, hissed, and swung open. The suit looked sterile. The front seal was open and showed the body-fitting foam inside. On the outside, metal glinted. Tools showed at the cuffs, ready to be rotated into position. Even without power, it looked sinister. 

“It looks so dangerous,” Gahdouani said, “but it is now just another piece of junk.”

Saten leaned closer. “How strong is it?” he asked.

“Oh, this model... could lift just over a tonne in one gravity. But not without its battery pack.” 

Saten glared at it, then stepped back.

“Where’s the abrasion?” Pat asked.

Gahdouani checked the little data pad and pointed to the left side of the suit. “There.”

Pat looked closer. The smooth orange plastic over the hip looked as if it had been lightly sanded, exposing a darker underlay. 

“That’s it? Can’t it be repaired?”

Robertson answered her. “It could be, in an emergency. We had suits like that when I worked construction. Probably wouldn’t last long.”

Gahdouani smiled at him. “That is correct. I qualified for vacuum excursions as part of my job, and I would not wear that suit on the surface. It is unsafe.”

“Could dust have come in on that suit?” Pat asked.

“No. They are washed and secured, as you see, in a pod for transport.”

Then, where, Pat thought to herself, did that grain of dust come from?

***

MacCarthy called them into his office when they got back. “The Socons and the Payre are out. The Payre haven’t had a complete hive-mind since one of them died a month ago, and the Socons are in estivation until next week. So, one was too stupid to make decisions, and the others are asleep.” He looked at his screen. “The Challis data stick accounts for the whereabouts of their staff, and the trade delegation is all accounted for.” He ran his hands through his hair, what remained of it. “How did you go with Indira?”

“I can’t see how dust could have got in on one of the suits. They are tracked every second.” Pat said.

“Then we’re stuffed.”

“What’s next, then?”

“How the hell do I know?” MacCarthy scowled. “We’re out of suspects, and we don’t have motive or opportunity or method. I suppose we just have to wait until some poor bastard has his guts pulled out and dumped on a street. Then we start all over again.”

Saten said, “There is one thing; if it is one of my people, they must answer to our law. The oathbreaker is an outcast, a tareprestis.” 

“No!” MacCarthy yelled, rising from his chair. “It’s Terran law here, not every law from every planet. Not now, not ever.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry. This is getting on my nerves.” He sat back down and looked at his hands. “Go home, get some rest. We can pick it up tomorrow.”

They left, but MacCarthy called Pat back into his office. “Close the door,” he said. She did and sat when he waved to a chair. “Okay, now that others can’t hear, what do you think?”

She took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. “It’s like you said. We’re out of suspects who have opportunity, method, and motive. Some have got one or two, but not the third. Saten has motive, after Tuvalu, and he could certainly do the damage, but he doesn’t have the opportunity. His movements are accounted for. A powered suit could certainly have done it, but that leaves us without motive or opportunity. Gahdouani showed us how they’re tracked. The trackers are actually part of the battery pack, and they can’t be turned off or removed.”

“Indira nails everything down tight.”

“Indira?”

“I got to know her on the vacuum training course, just after she’d come up here. Had a few drinks, listened to each other’s sad stories.”

“What’s her sad story?”

“She’s the last of her family. They made data chips. Other plants started up using offworld tech, and they were financially ruined, then dad went crazy one night and poisoned them. He, mother, sister, all died. She was away at school.” He shook his head. “She lost everything and fought her way back up. She’s one tough woman.”

“And that makes her a woman with a motive.”

“But no method or opportunity. Those construction suits couldn’t ever fit her. She had to use an unpowered suit for the course.”

“So, we really are stuffed.”

“Like I said. Go home.”

***

Home was mussed and untidy. Pat swore she would eat something healthy tonight, but nothing looked appealing. She wanted fat and calories. Her `fridge offered calorie-reduced salads and tofu burgers. She called and ordered a pizza, then sat down at her desk to wait. She called up the data from the case. Three incidents, and they could all be traced back to when they disappeared. She played with other dates and times until the pizza arrived, then went back to her desk, munching pepperoni and mozzarella. Something caught her eye, and she cross-checked data. The dates of each of the disappearances were just after a powered suit had been brought in to be decommissioned. Three victims. Three suits. The fourth suit had only just arrived at the Council offices. She called MacCarthy.

He said, “I’ll call Indira in the morning, find out where suits go to be decommissioned. Maybe someone’s using them, somehow.” 

“How could they power it without a battery?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Indira will.”

***

MacCarthy called before she left home in the morning. “Pick up Robertson and Prix and then come down to the Corner of Plaistow and Rux. I’ll meet you there with Indira and Saten. We’re going to inspect the decommissioning workshop.”

Pat’s car hummed to a stop, and MacCarthy waited for them as Robertson squeezed his bulk out the door. Saten was with him, but there was no sign of Gahdouani. 

“She’s gone ahead to open the facility,” MacCarthy told them. 

They were the only ones around, and their footsteps echoed off the blank faces of the warehouses. “This area hasn’t been officially opened yet,” Robertson said to Pat. “I didn’t even know that it had been opened to the city.”

Saten said, “I do not wish this to be evidence against a Challista...”

“All your people are accounted for,” Prix said. 

“I no longer trust our records. Electronic systems can be corrupted. But I still do not believe, within my very soul, that it was one of our people.”

They arrived at a warehouse with itsdoor open. MacCarthy led the way into a voluminous room, separate from the rest of the warehouse. A powered suit lay in pieces on a bench. A transport pod lay open on another. Tools were in neat racks against the walls. There was no sign of Gahdouani, but a further door opened into the recesses of the building.

“I’ll go look for her,” MacCarthy said and moved off through the doorway. 

Pat looked at the pieces lying on the bench. “I guess that means there won’t be any action from that suit we saw. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” 

Robertson picked up a few bits while Pat and the others checked the room. There was one door out and one door further in. Pat thought the whole place had a temporary look about it. The tools looked unused.

“This is wrong,” Robertson said.

“What?” Pat said.

“The suit we saw was a 21P9. These parts are from a 20A7.”

MacCarthy called out from beyond the other door. “Pat, Prix; there’s something you should all see down here.”

They went through the inner door, down a short corridor to a darkened room. Pat’s eyes widened at what was inside. There was a stainless-steel table with restraints attached to it. Saten growled, deep in his throat, and Robertson said, “What in the name of Christ...?”

Pat went into the room and touched the table. The others followed her. 

The door slammed shut. 

They turned and saw a powered suit looming behind the door. An armoured cable snaked out behind it. Pat drew her gun, but the suit took two steps and smacked it out of her hand. Her wrist felt broken. One arm of the suit reached down and knocked Prix against a wall. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to do that.” It was MacCarthy’s voice. The light inside his faceplate came on, and his voice rose. “Sneaking little bastard. Reading people’s minds, all their feelings. Never touched him. Never!” his face was distorted with hate.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pat yelled.

“Finishing the job. Challistan found to be serial torturer, shot by brave police sergeant as she dies, that’s how the story will go. Good story, isn’t it? All that stuff outside will vanish fifteen minutes after I’m done here, and this suit will be broken up and gone.”

Saten snarled and leapt. His body smashed into MacCarthy and clawed ineffectually at the faceplate. MacCarthy lifted him bodily and threw him against the table. Robertson jumped at the cable that was connected to a wall outlet. “He’s plugged it in to mains power,” he yelled. “It’s dead if we disconnect it.” MacCarthy reached behind and tore the man’s huge body away from the cable. He squeezed Robertson’s arm in a pincer, and the bones gave a dull crack as they snapped.

“You just make the story even better, Steve. You were Saten’s next victim, and Pat came to rescue you. Terrific fight between you and him; you lost.” He smashed Robertson down on the floor.

Pat scurried over towards her gun, but MacCarthy got there first and seized it. “Sorry, Pat. You were a good cop. Too good. You would have worked it out eventually.”

“Worked what out?” Pat yelled.

“That someone else might have known about those suits, someone they’d fit, someone who had access to the store where they’re kept for disposal. I stole the code from Indira, months ago. You’d keep at it until you found that out.”

“But why? In the name of God, why?”

MacCarthy’s voice became a hiss. “They took the Moon away. Terra nullius, they said. They mocked us. They took it. They’ll take the Earth next. With freaks like Prix everywhere, not even our thoughts are safe.”

The massive frame of the suit shook as Robertson threw himself against its legs, trying to force it away from the wall, break the connection. Saten was up again and clambered onto the front, this time trying to bite the neck. MacCarthy kicked Robertson away from him and squeezed Saten to him in a bear hug. Saten’s scrabbling hind claws tore into the damaged fabric at the hip and ripped a great swathe of it away, carrying the clothes underneath with it. Blood drooled from a few scratches on MacCarthy’s leg as he raised Saten high and shook him. Robertson crawled back towards them, but a kick in the face knocked him away. 

There was movement by the wall. Prix had regained consciousness. He took his gloves off.

MacCarthy threw Saten into a corner. He kicked Robertson in the ribs, and Pat could hear them break from where she was. A more delicate, handlike tool rotated into place on the suit’s right hand. MacCarthy put the gun into it and aimed it at Saten. “Time to die,” he said.

Prix launched himself at MacCarthy and slapped a hand onto the bare patch of skin. MacCarthy went rigid and then spasmed. The hand with the gun snapped upwards and blew a hole in the ceiling. He screamed, a resounding, agonised scream that seemed, to Pat’s ears, to go on for minutes. Then he toppled. Pat ran forward and grabbed the gun from the twitching claw. MacCarthy’s eyes seemed full of blood, and his face was a rictus of pain. Prix lay on the floor, breathing shallowly.

Robertson called out weakly, “Get the cable. He’s helpless without that.”

Pat limped across and pulled at the plug. It was locked under a cover. She put the gun against it and blew it apart. The light in MacCarthy’s faceplate winked out. Prix sat up. Pat went over to him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded. 

“What did you do to him?”

“I took all Umbele’s memories of pain and sent them to him. Time and again. Until his mind broke.”

Pat looked down at the little Catharl in astonishment. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“It is how we get rid of such memories, but usually a little bit over a long period of time, with friends who wish to help.”

“Jesus.” She looked at MacCarthy. “Will he recover?

“Umbele didn’t. I do not think he is as strong a man as Umbele. It was fear that drove him to his actions. He was not strong enough to control it.”

Pat looked around her at Robertson, lying on the floor, supporting his broken arm with his other hand, and at Saten, who was just coming around, and then back down at Prix. “You had that inside you all this time?” she said.

“Yes. There had been no time to do otherwise.”

“Hell.” Her wrist gave a pang as she tried to get her bag open. She put the gun in her pocket and used the other hand to get her ‘phone out. “Did you read him? Was Gahdouani in on this?”

“No. He had feared offworlders for many years, but it was my arrival on the force that drove him over the brink. He asked, one evening when they had drinks, to see one of the condemned suits, and stole the codes then. She knew nothing, other than that an old acquaintance had caught up with her for an evening. It was in his mind, before it broke.”

Pat paused as she called the station. “He would have got away with it.” She called for some cars and an ambulance. “I’m glad it’s all over.”

“Is it?” Prix said. “Was he the last person to hate us?”

Pat didn’t know how to reply, and they waited, in silence, for the ambulance.