Chapter 1: Mondieu
January 13th, 2038 5:37am
1 hour from New London
What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is
Shun the tree---
Where the apple reddens
Never pry---
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
~Robert Browning - A Woman's Last Word
The balmy winter night was clear, as always. The artificial
irrigation producing perfect verdancy was shyly hidden, and the city required
no rain. Lush garden arrangements exuded an elegant, primal taste into the air:
violets, voluptuous rose, lip-red tulips, and the heady transcendence of pine,
maple, oak, cherrywood. A whispering breeze carried the scent of something
more, something discordant with the moonlit garden: the nauseating metallic
rust of blood, the stench of spilt viscera.
In the city of Garden, edenic night lurid with stars and silver
fox moon, the blood of two souls mingled and seeped into the earth, their
bodies denuded and eyes open wide. And there was evening, and there was night,
the first day.
.....
The city bled an efflorescence, golden on
the blur of night - a phoenix death, embers until the resurrection of morn,
where new creation begins, and begins again. It was a strange thing, a death in
undying lands, and the city's edenic appearance burned with a burr of color, a
drop of poison dye in crystal water.
The inspector rolled into the city on a
stagecoach hearse-black in the funereal palette of night. A land of shadows,
everything flickering in surreal beauty: even in darkness the city emit an
elegance, a face of perfection. But the inspector was locked deep in
thought, irregular in his introspective ignorance of the passing scene: dewy,
white limestone streets; glass and rose-chalcedony architecture, purple saffron
exuding a metallic honey scent.
What were his thoughts, then, the
dark-clad man in the long cloak and navy wool scarf, bundled, despite the balmy
morning – what were his thoughts? He took a deep drag on a thin-brown
cigarette, a relic of the distant past, and considered.
The stagecoach clattered up the main
thoroughfare toward a glass sphere at the city’s center. A park surrounded the
large sky-dome, full of fruit-bearing trees: plum, peach, pear, apple, cherry,
fig, grapefruit, filling the air with a saccharine sweetness in the pre-dawn
breeze.
The brief ember glow from the inspector’s
cigarette lit his face: shaggy, unkempt beard, hooked nose, a tired baggage of
chestnut eyes that gleamed shrewdly, and a nest of raven hair. Alert now, as
they neared the scene, the inspector’s eyes scanned his surroundings, missing
nothing: a crowd of folks standing around the glass dome in their night-things,
whispering curiously as the stagecoach pulled up; well-worn benches underneath
the flickering, candlelit streetlamps; the shift in the breeze into sudden stillness,
the fruity redolence and the subtle, metallic stain of death; the nervous
motions of animals in the trees.
A nervous man approached the stagecoach,
and waited while the inspector exited the carriage. The crowd tip-toed nearer,
curious to hear what was said.
“Greetings inspector,” the man said,
clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides while avoiding the inspector’s
eyes.
The inspector briefly gathered in the
man’s old-fashioned, almost Victorian uniform: dark blue buttoned shirt;
striped cuffs; bobby helmet; navy trousers – an almost ridiculous costume,
dredged from some ancient closet, no doubt. The nervous man was beardless and
young, not yet twenty and five to the inspector’s eye, with a false moustache
perched on his upper lip. He was lean and athletic, though his hairline receded
slightly against his forehead, matted with a thin sheen of sweat, whether from
the heat of the night, or nervousness, the inspector knew not.
“Garden welcomes you, in this direst of
circumstance,” the man continued, extending his hand in greeting.
The inspector removed his gloves with
care, and ignored the proffered hand, which the policeman dropped awkwardly.
“There is a murder, I’m told. Let us waste no time. Take me to them.”
The policeman’s eyes widened and he nodded
enthusiastically, once, thrice. “Right, sir. Right this way, then, sir.” With a
wave of his arm and a half turn, the policeman turned and began walking towards
the glass dome, an arboretum as the inspector now noticed.
The inspector moved to follow and, after a
brief moment, the crowd pressed forward in their wake. The arboretum loomed, a
wide glass sphere maybe fifty stories wide, half as many tall, and faintly
glowing a pleasant yellow. They walked between an aisle of cherry trees, laden
with ripe yellow-red bundles of fruit despite the season, and approached an
opening in the side of the dome, a sliding glass door.
Humid air gently breathed out from the
inside, suffused with a rich aroma of fruits, pine, hemlock, aspen, cherrywood,
and cedar, and a faint metallic taste of rust.
Images assaulted the inspector, a violent
vision like a waking nightmare coursed through his head, words, disconnected
words: offered a fruit,
covered in crimson, hands, feet, pools of blood and piles of the thin-stemmed
fruit, a great, deeply furrowed tree, towering and rounded, full leafed in many
colors: silver, shadow-green, early-spring green, scarlet, ember-orange,
sun-yellow, sulfur, amber, brown. Beneath this tree, they both lie, die, a
serpent at their heels, a dark, phantom hovering, holding a clawed weapon like
fangs. A breathless whisper on the breeze: oh, how we’ve fallen, fallen. Oh,
how we’ve fallen.
The inspector reeled, and the crowd,
pressing close behind, gasped in surprise at his abrupt halt before the entrance.
The policeman turned with a raised eyebrow, a twinge of fret etched across his
features, but the inspector collected himself and motioned him forward into the
great, central glass dome. They entered.
Immediately, a strong sense of an older,
primal world washed over them. The entrance of the sphere was bathed in a rich,
yellow glow, and the temperature was warm, almost hot, and lightly humid.
The path veered in a spiral around the sphere, and a straight-cut path
into the central area was impossible. Strangely, as they passed in shortening
spirals around the garden, the ambient light changed, so at one location, it
was bright as daylight, flowering plants erupting into crimson bloom, and trees
budding and dripping with fruit; while in others, wide-eyed nocturnal creatures
scampered along the shadowed limbs of towering trees, and the violin twitch of
grasshoppers hummed in the night.
No one said a word as the procession
traipsed, wearily, as though almost involuntarily pulled, around the arboretum,
ever nearer the center. Even the large-eyed lemurs and lethargic sloths, the
white-spotted deer, gazed at their passing in unblinking curiosity. An owl
swooped into the underbrush with a screech, and then leaped into the air with a
prize caught in its fierce talons.
The crowd behind the inspector and
policeman slowed, and the inspector felt the tension thick in the air, a sort
of electricity. The stench of blood was stronger here, and the birds were
silent. The center was illumined as dawn, and the inspector wondered how near
to dawn the day actually was. Probably
not far off now.
As they
turned the final round into the central glade, they all shuddered at the
ghastly scene. Even the inspector, usually emotionally taciturn and controlled,
felt a brief shiver crawl up his spine at the grisly image.
Beneath a
giant tree, a male and a female lay, mouths and eyes open wide and laying in
pools of blood that covered and stained each of them. The policeman
opened his mouth to speak, stopping ten paces before the slaughtered couple
beneath the tree, but the inspector held up his hand, and the policeman stayed
silent.
The
inspector approached the scene, surveying everything.
Two adults, one male and one
female, the male formerly dressed in dark spandex-polycotton short bottoms and
undershirt, and the female formerly dressed in khaki work pants and a similar
shirt to that of the man. Man slightly taller than average, bronzed skin and
blue eyes, and deeply calloused hands – the hands of a hard-working man –
beardless and sharply muscled, with a full head of raven-colored hair. His face
was long and sculpted, like a marble memory of a man, and pallid from the loss
of blood. Two tiny bite marks marked the jugular of the man, and from this, it
seemed, the blood poured. It
was now, the inspector noticed from the state of the wounds, at least an hour
since the deaths.
The woman, also taller than
average, though shorter by a couple hands than the man, had a heart-shaped face
with full lips and chocolate eyes, and a pointed, obstinate chin. Her hands
were also calloused, and muscles firm and toned. She had auburn hair and light
skin, and two bites marked her, one on the jugular and one at the heel. The
inspector could not discern which bled more.
Both were
naked now, their clothes tossed on either side, and the man and the woman were
twisted together in a mess of limbs.
The inspector beckoned the policeman forward, and the
entire crowd closed a few footsteps in unison with the approaching policeman.
“You called
me in for a couple snake bite victims?” the inspector said in a dry, accusatory
tone.
“Sir, we
don’t have any snakes.”
“No snakes?
You can’t imagine any just sneaking in?”
“No, sir,
that’s quite impossible.”
The
inspector ignored the inanity of the statement and examined the victims closer.
Something about his vivid vision agreed with the policeman’s assessment. Or,
rather, he intuited a malevolence about these deaths, a murderous intent. The bite marks were almost like
deep gouges of claws, without any tearing, like they were intended to mimic
snakebites, but missed some poisonous mark. How did they bleed so much?
“Tell me
what you know,” the inspector said sternly.
The nervous
man wrung his hands and shrugged, staring at the ground to the side of the
gruesome scene. “Sir, I’m afraid we don’t know much of anything at all, sir.
The gardener-”
“Where are
the police? Where are the investigators? Why isn’t this section cordoned off
and the public shooed home?”
The
policeman paled. “I am the police, sir. Or, our city has no need of police, and
since we needed a police tonight, I was instated as the policeman, sir.” The
man stammered quickly. “There are no investigators. That’s why we called you,
sir.”
“What’s
your name, lad,” the inspector said, pulling out another cigarette. This was
looking to be a long night.
“Seth, sir.
If-” started the policeman.
“Not you,”
said the inspector, striking a match against his cloak and lighting his
cigarette, puffing gently. “You.” The inspector pointed to a young man with
golden hair and stunning marine eyes. His complexion was light, but his eyes
bright and cheekbones high, which gave him a cheerful, shrewd look. He was
athletic, and stood, in a sharp stance, a little separate from the rest of the
crowd, sneaking forward to glance more closely at the bodies.
Without
even a start, the man turned toward the inspector and looked him in the eye.
“Simon Temple, sir.”
“Very good.
You may call me Inspector Mondieu. Do you know where to fetch a doctor?”
The man
thought for a moment, and then nodded.
The
inspector looked at him up and down, evaluating, and then motioned him away to
find a doctor, and returned his attention to the couple.
“Now, my
lad, tell me what you know,” the inspector said, kneeling to rifle through the
clothes of the victims. “Who are these two? Do you know of them?”
“Sir, yes,
of course. Mr. Addam and Ms. Lilya. He-”
“They were
not married?” interrupted the inspector.
“Well, no
sir, not exactly,” replied the policeman, turning red. “But sir-”
“Mondieu,
if you please. Was there any reason anyone might desire the death of these
individuals? Any enemies or angry mistresses?”
“None,
whatsoever! They are not married, but they’ve been together for quite some
time. They have kids, and everyone cherishes the work they’ve done for this
city. There hasn’t been a murder here ever, sir.”
Why is everyone so convinced this
is a murder? Why am I so convinced this is a murder?
“Interesting. Tell me, then, who were they?
Everything you know.”
“Mr. Addam
worked as the horticultural inspector for the arboretum and parks. He tended
the plants, made sure the trees received enough sunlight, the flowers bloomed.
The woman, Ms. Lilya, tends to the animals in the arboretum and around the city
of Garden. She makes sure they are eating enough, reproducing properly, and no
sickness threatens their populations. In addition, each is tasked with the
caretaking of the life tree,” at this, the policeman motioned at the tree
towering over their heads.
The
inspector studied the tree for the first time and was shocked to discover it
was the same tree he’d seen in his vision on entering the garden. How was that possible? Psychic
emanations? What was that vision anyway? Such vivid imagery, and so closely
tied to what he now saw. Had he been here before?
Closer, and
in reality, the tree was magnificent. Silver veins lined the underside of each
leaf, and thinly veined tendrils of silver climbed up and down the main stem.
The branches and leaves seemed in various stages of seasons: plum colored
leaves on one branch, red-yellow on another, like sugar maples, or the
rich-butter yellow of quaking aspen, or the many shades of green, summer
leaves: dark maple, light birch. The tree towered over them, its lofty
branches nearly rubbing the glass-globed ceiling.
Peach-colored fruits hung from long-limbed branches, almost caressing the
grassy ground in places, and beneath the tree, a layer of colorful leaves and fallen
fruit formed a rich blanket over the earth. Fascinating.
“How,
exactly, do they take care of the tree?” Mondieu asked, turning back to the
policeman, who shrugged.
“Mostly
just harvesting the fruit, I guess. And clearing away the brush or leaves and
checking on the tree’s health.”
“Are they
the only caretakers of the tree?”
“No,
Mondieu, sir. A different couple harvests the fruit each night.”
“Interesting. And who knew this particular couple was to harvest the fruit on
this night?”
“Everyone,
sir. Tuesday is their night.”
“Thank you
very much, that will be all for the moment,” the inspector said, turning away
from the policeman. “Actually, one more thing,” Mondieu said after a moment’s
hesitation, with his back still turned. “If I need find you, for whatever reason,
where might I find you? What name shall I call upon?”
“Seth, sir.
My house is south of the central garden, on Wattson Street.”
The
inspector nodded and said nothing more.
Mondieu
rubbed at his chin and looked around for a place to toss his cigarette butt.
Nothing. He capped it and tucked it into his cloak, kneeling down beside the
couple.
Questions
roiled in his brain, and the muddied waters stayed unsettled. A city without a police? What sort
of city was this? Who was this Seth? Why was he chosen as the designated
policeman? What was the importance of this tree?
The
inspector picked up a nearby lying fruit, a bite removed – probably the
couple’s last taste of life. It had a peace-fuzz to it, but the guts of a
grapefruit with tiny, multi-colored seeds. He brought it to his face: a light,
tangy citrus smell, like orange-mango. A light breeze wafted past with the
scent of rose: where did the
breeze come from?
A slight
tinkling, like that of bells, sang in the tree as the breeze passed through.
Mondieu immediately felt his nerves soothed, weariness of the morning passing.
He checked his timepiece and saw it was just shy of eight, just before sunrise.
Already, a crimson stain might be tingeing the skyline, the warrior birth of
sunlight in winter.
Mondieu
rifled through the couple’s pockets briefly, finding nothing, and turned back
to the corpses. No earrings, jewelry, watches, wallets, or items of any sort on
their persons or clothing. A
robbery, then? Or were they simply not carrying anything? What about keys?
Over near
the tree, he noticed their baskets of fruit, already over half full. What was special about this tree?
The
pattering of footsteps sounded on the path behind, and the inspector turned
around to witness the new arrival. Mondieu tucked his questions away for later.
A crowd of people still hovered on the edge of the central glade,
whispering shyly amongst themselves. The footsteps, it appeared, belonged to
Simon, racing down the path with practiced ease. Not the running, it appeared,
of frantic emergency haste, but merely practical quickness.
Simon
jogged the last paces up to the inspector, slowing gracefully to a halt. “The
doctor will arrive in a few minutes. He is not so young, nor prepared for the
morning as I.”
“Then let
us await him here. Mr. Temple, I’m instating you as go-between in this
investigation.”
“It is an
investigation then, is it?” Simon replied with a sigh, not at all short on
breath.
“Yes, it
seems so. Is there some way I can call upon you? Cell? Telegraph? Pigeon?”
“No
electronics of that sort here, I’m afraid,” Simon replied with an easy smile.
“If you require me, I’m staying on Cherry Street, just south of Wattson where
the policeman lives.”
A
quarter-hour later, the sound of steps, light and at a reasonable walking pace,
approached along the path. The doctor rounded the corner with a tired, beaming
smile. Reaching the inspector, he held out his hand. “Mondieu, I presume?
<name>. Sorry to keep everyone waiting. I’m none so young as once I was.”
The
doctor’s voice was well modulated, as a singer’s, and not left to the entropy
of age. And age, though apparent in the doctor’s steps and bearing, leaning
more favorably over his left side, affected the doctor little. He had
round-rimmed glasses; a full head of brown hair, parted on the left side and a
little unruly at the front; a long face with only tiny wrinkles around the eyes
and lips – a man fond of
smiling then – shorter than
the inspector, but by no means short.
He walked
with a swagger and a little waddle that intimated a cheerful entrance, as
though the doctor was used to beaming and blessing others upon arrival. At his
sides, the doctor’s hands were carefully still, no twitch of nervousness or
tiredness there: a surgeon’s hands. His clothing was conservative, a spare
white shirt and pants, and a surgical mask hanging around his neck.
“Mondieu,
indeed. Welcome Doctor. Seth, our friendly policeman here, will detail you on
the happenings. If you would be so kind as to inspect the victims.”
“Well,”
said the doctor with a deflated sigh. “I can say for certain, even from this
distance, that they are dead. Likely from exsanguination. What, precisely, am I
looking for? Sadly, I’m trained as a midwife, pediatrician, and light surgeon,
not an autopsy pathologist.” As he spoke, the doctor slowly pulled a pair of
sterile white gloves from a bag, and pulled them over his hands.
“I’m not
certain, yet. Anything of note will do. Just inspect everything as carefully as
you may. Where may I reach you for this information?”
“I live in
Lucille Manor, on the Southeastern corner of Garden,” the doctor replied,
kneeling to examine the victims.
“Excellent.” Mondieu glanced at the ceiling as though expecting some indication
of the time through the glass shield, but only saw the same warm glow. His eyes
were heavy and he scarcely suppressed a yawn.
Briefly, he
watched the doctor work, skeptical as to this town’s skilled workers, but the
doctor was efficient, careful, and deliberate.
Mondieu
beckoned the policeman over and instructed him to catch the doctor up to speed,
and then joined Simon on the edge of the glade.
“What do
you think?” asked the inspector, pulling out another cigarette - his third,
already? He hadn’t smoked this much in as many months.
Simon let
out a deep, long breath. “I’m not sure. It’s a bit grisly for the early morning
mind to grapple. Murder? But why?”
“I’m not
certain, yet, Simon Temple. But I intend to find out. Do you know where I might
spend my stay here?”
Simon
shrugged helplessly. “I’m not from around here, so I can’t help you there. I’ll
ask around and see what is available.”
Not from around here. Noted. “I’m grateful. I’ll be seeing you
again soon.”
Simon
nodded, and the inspector began his spiral journey out of the garden.
An interesting night indeed.
In the morning
light, the curtains of night pealed back, and Garden was created new. If truth
is beauty, here was a great truth, indeed. On entering the city, the
inspector saw only the dim outlines of vast, crystalline and glass structures,
rosy beneath the bone-white glamour of the moon, a twilight icy pallor. Now, in
the stillness of infant dawn, the air clean as a mountaintop’s, though warm, a
wholly new territory was unveiled.
The
early sunlight showered the glassy structures, burnishing them into shields of
gold. The inspector wandered around the central dome, gathered in a cursory
glance of the city. To the north, a marketplace sprawled, the food center of
the city. Shops and booths lined the streets, and farm rows grew shrub-fruit
along the edges. To the west, houses and
some larger buildings sparsely populated a lightly forested zone. South it
seemed consisted almost entirely of houses and east contained many of the
larger buildings.
It
was the east that most intrigued Inspector Mondieu. The buildings were rarely
taller than five stories, and even more scarcely taller than ten. The buildings
most frequently consisted of glass, with a few wooden structures. The
fascinating aspect, to the inspector, was the immersion of floral life. There
was no separation of buildings and plants: trees incorporated themselves into
the structural nuance of each building; vines clambered up along the glassy
sides, running into and out of windows; berries and flowers sprang up in the
eaves and drooped over the rooftops; and, from inside, plants butted against
the windows, pushing open the glass and drinking in the sunlight. If the mirror
buildings composed the gilded heart, the plants were its veins.
The
buildings were rarely uniform or square in their design, but elegant emergence
of organic life, a symbiotic mingling of creation and creative. One in
particular caught the inspector’s eye this morning.
Just
east of the central dome, near the outer rim of the city, was a building taller
than many of the others. Instead of an organic shape, it was almost ordinary,
rectangular and nearly twenty stories tall.
Around the outside of the building, no plants climbed or draped, and no
trees huddled nearby the outer edges. The glass was double-paned with a gap
between the layers of several paces. In the gap, a whole host of green plants
grew, and the outside layer of the building possessed a ramp that wrapped all
the way around the building, consisting of layers of plants in a greenhouse
that spiraled around the building. Herbs and grasses grew at the base, flowers
on the next level, strawberries, blueberries, beans, and other vegetables next,
and taller shrubs near the top. On top of the building, a fountain was barely
visible, and its waters dripped over the sides in runnels that dripped into the
greenhouse and irrigated by an intricate dripping process.
The
most fascinating aspect of the building, however, was that when the inspector
squinted, he thought he could make out wires and blinking lights in the
building – the first sign of any semblance of technology.
He
glanced at his timepiece and assumed he had at least an hour or so before Simon
Temple might need to update him. That gave him plenty of time to do some
snooping. Is it strange, finding this city more intriguing than its murder?
Or perhaps it is that the piece of the city is at odds with such a violent act.
What was missing?
As Inspector
Mondieu approached the greenhouse structure, he glanced around at the streets
around him. The general populace was awakening, and the streets filled up with
passersby, all curiously staring at the inspector. He perused for any
suspicious stares, but found everyone smiling and timidly waving in his
direction.
He
lowered his head, pocketed his hands, and picked up his speed. What an
uncanny city.
Arriving
at the building, he saw his initial inspection was correct: wires and blinking
lights were readily apparent behind the windows. Somehow, despite the lack of
sunlight streaming against the outer edges of the western half of the building,
it still gleamed with a brilliant, silver light, like a mirror pond standing
tall and unrippled, cold as winter ice. He should have seen easily into the
building’s interior, but the light still somehow masked much of the building in
a blinding sheen.
Walking
around to the eastern side, he found the door, already opened wide. No
locks, or even a place for locks.
The inside was
not as expected. Instead of twenty or thirty stories, it was a single, vast
room. Wires, monitors, cables, platforms, metal constructs, blinking lights – a
cacophony of whirring, humming, juddering, ticking electrobuzz in a static
storm of incomprehensible machinery. Computers were stacked: chassis onto
chassis, monitor onto metallic outcropping over monitor, wires forming rivers
and waterfalls in every cranny between, and hammers, screwdrivers, flashlights,
screws, and every tool imaginable strewn all about, haphazardly as though
thrown. The stacks of computers spanned from floor all the way up to the roof
of the building.
Around
the outside of the room, a double-helix of ramps crawled upward against the
wall, connecting as they reached the ceiling. This gave access to both the
towering stack of computers as well as the windows into the greenhouse which
butted up against the inside windows of the structure.
The
most fascinating aspect, perhaps, was the nature of the computers: they were
all ancient. Forty, fifty year old computers, all compressed into a single
building - controlling, what? What does a city like this even need in the
way of computing?
Inspector
Mondieu’s inner dialogue was interrupted by an angry shout from above, followed
by some invectives and a flying hammer, crashing down the ramp and bouncing off
the glass windows – stronger than they seemed – and coming to a rest near the
bottom of the ramp.
“Hello?”
called the inspector. “Do you require assistance?”
“What?
Who goes there? I say, I was not expecting visitors at such an hour,” a gruff
voice replied.
“Inspector
Mondieu. I was intrigued by-”
“Inspector
Mon Who? Never mind. Just bring me the damn hammer. Where is my wrench? This
infernal thing won’t stop spitting up nonsense.”
The
inspector wandered over and grabbed the hammer – a rusty, fifteen pound beast –
and walked up the ramp. The ramp vibrated in proximity with the machines, and
the inspector held onto the rails to steady himself. About halfway up, the
inspector bumped into the mechanic.
Halfway
buried into the machines, with only legs sticking out over the ramp, the
mechanic was cursing and hammering at something the inspector couldn’t see in
the jumble.
“Here’s
the hammer, sir.”
The
mechanic popped out with a grunt, and took the hammer gratefully. He was a larger
man, widely built and not tall. He had a large bushy moustache and wore denim
overalls and a wide shirt with a beer mug imprinted on it. Tattoos snaked along
his arms in images and words the inspector couldn’t begin to recognize, and his
blue eyes were milky and red-rimmed, likely from drinking, and his face was
gruff.
He
had very pale skin with a reddish hint that implied he got little sun, but
probably burned walking from home to work. His curly red hair pressed out from
beneath a baseball cap, sprawling in all directions.
He
was, surprisingly, smiling with a jolly beam, and slapped Mondieu on the back
with a loud clap, nearly knocking Mondieu off his feet.
“Not just any
guest, but the city’s special guest. Here to investigate the murders, huh?”
“Murders?
How do you know they are murders?”
The
mechanic waved off that question with a grimy hand, and wiped his forehead,
leaving a stain the color of ash.
“Everyone
knows they are murders. What can I do for you?”
How
did everyone know they were murders? He tucked the question away. Eventually,
he would get to the bottom of this.
“What
is all… this?” the inspector motioned towards all of the towering computers.
“This?
Why, this is a pile of junk! A bunch of lousy, old ingrates speaking in
mumbo-jumbo. Nothing worth seeing, anyhow,” replied the mechanic with a grin.
The mechanic offered a hand. “Turnings, the name. But you may call me, Bill.
Never much liked the name Turnings. C’mon, I’ll show you around.”
The
inspector followed Turnings down the ramp toward the base.
“So
what is this place for?” asked the inspector impatiently.
“Ah,
now that’s the curiosity, isn’t it? Not an electronic component in the rest of
the city, but here. And what a pile of junk,” the mechanic began, reaching the
bottom of the stairs and stopping. “Ah, what a beauty she is. An
incomprehensible, devil of a beauty.
“The
bottom floor works as a weather manager. Each of these-”
“A
weather manager? What do you mean?” interrupted Mondieu.
“It’s
the middle of winter, and you never questioned the balmy, pleasant weather? The
perfect sun, the cloudless day, the flowers blossoming everywhere? Here is
where we control that.”
“How?”
“Ah,
it’s a complicated magic, to be sure. And well beyond my expertise. Much of the
actual technology is below-ground for that sort of thing. These computers
display diagnostics and heighten or diminish the temperature and control the
real machine that controls the wind. Whatever the means, we have sunny
temperatures year round, a clear patch fifteen miles wide. Pretty fancy, huh?”
Turner finished with a wink.
“Amazing.”
The inspector had heard of the technology, but why here? Why such incredible
technology in what was otherwise a backwater agrarian city?
“The next
level,” the mechanic began, leading up higher into the building, “controls the
irrigation. The entire design relies on underground pipelines, since it never
rains. There are no sprinklers, no aboveground indication of watering, yet the
greenery of the city speaks for itself. These consoles control the timing for
watering each section of the city and the routing of the necessary quantity of
water. A simple switch and the entire city could be flooded in hours.”
“Seems
dangerous. What do you do in case of emergency?”
“Oh,
we have backups. These systems are foolproof. And I mean, it might take a real
genius to understand anything in this junkyard. Not any kid with a sledgehammer
could flood the city or change the weather.”
“Right.
A real smart kid then,” drawled the inspector skeptically.
The
mechanic beamed. “The very cleverest. But why would anyone want to flood the
city? The point is moot. Next, and highest, is miscellaneous: data, town
information, graphs, emergency notifications, odds-and-ends. It’s something of
a monitor over the monitor, if you catch my meaning.”
As
they reached the top, the inspector saw that the middle all the way down to the
base was nearly hollow, with a ladder running down the insides. Clever,
being able to work from both edges.
“Well,
that’s the top. Any questions?”
“Not
at the moment. Can I get to the roof?” replied the inspector.
“Right
over there,” the mechanic pointed to a ladder in the corner. The inspector
walked over and climbed up onto the roof. The fountain was a mother-of-pearl
water-spout, covered in reliefs of creation from different cultures. The
creation by snake gods, from the tree or the carving out of a giant’s body, or
the creation of the world in a series of days – different religions placed in
different terraces on the fountain. Around the fountain grew a low grass with
geraniums and nasturtiums, and a bench looking over the city.
Just
as he moved to sit down, the trapdoor behind him opened, and Simon Temple
crawled onto the roof.
“I’ve
been looking all over for you, Mondieu.” Simon Temple appeared to wait for the
inspector’s permission to continue.
“First,
there is a place to stay. You can stay in the hotel on Cali Street, free of
charge. They also serve breakfast, and you are welcome.”
The
inspector nodded thankfully.
“Simon
Temple, before you leave, may I ask who discovered the bodies this morning?”
“Why
of course, inspector. It was Horten, the gardener. It was he who found the clues as well.”
“Clues?”
“Yes,
of course. Everything was predicted yesterday: the murders, the place. Everyone
thought it was a hoax and ignored it.”
“What?”
the inspector said, standing up. “Why didn’t anyone inform me of this earlier? What
were the clues?”
“Hell
if I know,” replied Simon, shrugging. “Something about a snake bite and fall of
man, and death. Horten will know.”
That
explains why everyone immediately assumed it was a murder. Because everyone
already knew it had been predicted. But no one had taken it seriously. Why?
Now, two people were dead because an entire city hadn’t believed a mysterious
clue.
“Excellent,
Simon Temple. And where might I find this Horten now?”
“I’m
not sure, sir. He works grounds, I hear. I suspect he’ll be somewhere around
the central dome working at the park. I’ll find someone to bring you to him.”
“Excellent
work, Simon. You may go.”
As
Simon crawled back into the building, Mondieu sat to survey the city glistening
like dewdrops of light beneath him. The central dome and park loomed on his
western side, and the houses and trees looked like a neat rows in an elaborate
garden beneath him. The sun soared into the sky, never getting very high in the
throes of winter, though the inspector was quite warm, almost sweating, in his
long coat.
A
clue, then. Perhaps this was not a simple murder and robbery after all. Things
were getting interesting. A city untainted, beautiful in every imaginable way,
now stricken with death.
Yes, it seemed the
game was afoot. The inspector rose to meet the challenge.
