Sins of the Father (3 page)

He remembered the streets of a city called New York. In his memory it was early on a balmy summer's evening, the sun slowly falling towards the horizon. The Twentieth century had not yet died. He was a young man, the whole of his life still ahead of him. Drawn by a sudden impulse, he had decided to take a walk in Central Park. He remembered the pleasure he had taken in the green spaces, his senses glorying in every sensation. The warmth of the sun on his face. The sweet intoxicating smell of fresh-cut grass. The laughter of children as they played nearby.

Children. He loved children. Attracted by the sound, he turned to watch them. He saw their faces, smiling and innocent, clean and fresh, untouched by the cares of adulthood. A nameless emotion welled up inside him. It was a perfect moment...

Abruptly, his reverie was disturbed. The memory faded, the pleasing recollection of his youth overridden by the more pressing concerns of the present. Around his bed, Prendergast and the doctor talked in earnest voices. Negotiations continued between them. Figures were suggested, discussed, and amended. Two million credits for the doctor. Another million to recruit three new members to his surgical team on extended contracts. Plus, a five million credit "donation" to be paid to the hospital to fund one of the doctor's pet research projects. In total, eight million credits then. The doctor was a greedy man, but ultimately small-minded. Like many gifted men, he had almost no idea of the true worth of his talents. Presented with the opportunity to name his price he had let his own innate timidity rob him of the chance to press home his advantage. Eight million credits? It was barely pocket change. The old man had billions. While, given the nature of the prize at stake, he would have been willing to pay almost any price the doctor might have asked.

The prize. The mere thought of what his money and this meeting with the doctor might buy him nurtured a gently guttering flame of hope within the old man's heart. A new life. That was the prize which lay ahead of him. The old man would be reborn and re-made, his health restored. The infirmities which plagued him would be reversed and done away with entirely. He would no longer need to rely on machines to sustain him. He would walk again. He would breathe unaided. He would be able to go back into the world once more, no longer a prisoner in his bed. Above all else, he would be able to indulge in all the pleasures recently denied him by ill-health and invalidity.

His pleasures. His secret, special pleasures. The old man thought of them now. In his mind the memory of past gratifications burned brightly. With it came a terrible yearning. Of all the hardships he had endured through the last few months of illness, the inability to satisfy his most deeply held desires had been the one he had felt most keenly. It went beyond any purely physical need. It was a hunger imprinted directly into his soul. Without his pleasures, his life had no meaning. They defined his existence. He thought of them constantly: his mind churning with questions of how, where, and when he would next fulfil his desires. Throughout his long life his wealth had often made those questions easier to answer, but the predatory instincts he had developed in his youth had never left him. His instincts, like his desires, were always with him. They lurked, waiting and watchful, just below the surface of his mind. Forever alert. Never at rest. Ready to take advantage of any opportunity which might arise.

A hospital. Suddenly it occurred to him he would be going to a hospital soon. Naturally, they would put him in a surgical ward. But he wondered whether they had a ward for children...

"Mr Lowe?" A voice intruded into his thoughts. He saw Prendergast gazing down at him. Looking past him, the old man saw they were alone once more. Apparently, the doctor had left the room without saying goodbye. "It has all been settled, Mr Lowe. Dr Langstock has agreed to perform the procedure. The medical side of things is in place. As for the other matter..."

Pausing to look over his shoulder Prendergast made sure there was no one within earshot, then turned back to him once more.

"I have consulted with Gruschenko. He assures me the donor will be available in two days' time." For an instant, an emotion not unlike nervousness passed over Prendergast's face. "Do you find that acceptable?"

Two days. For a moment, the old man savoured the implications. Two days to his rebirth. Two days to the end of his illness. Two days to being able to indulge in his pleasures freely.

Two days to the beginnings of immortality.

Did he find that acceptable, Prendergast had asked.

Silent in his bed, his mind aflame with notions of the bright possibilities of the new life ahead of him, the old man smiled.

ONE

REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE

A few hours later...

She had received the call from Sector Control at 21.57. A kidnapping at Chuck Lindberg Block. The victim, a three month-old baby boy, was still missing. The street Judge investigating the crime had requested Psi-Judge backup. "Can you respond?" the dispatcher had asked her. She was coming to the end of a double shift. In the last sixteen hours she had dealt with ten murders, three attempted murders, a poltergeist haunting, two arsons, a terrorist bombing, and a psych-case tweaked out on Crystal Jesus who had tried to split her skull open with a crowbar. "Can you respond?" There had been only one answer.

"Affirmative to that, Control. Psi-Judge Anderson responding. ETA to Chuck Lindberg: seven minutes. Tell them I'm on my way."

She had made it in six; the powerful engine of her Lawmaster eating up the distance to her destination like it had something to prove. As she arrived at Lindberg and pulled her bike into the block forecourt, a tall stern-featured street Judge named Bryson was waiting. As they rode up in the elevator together, he filled her in on the details.

"The victim is a male infant named Garret Cooley," Bryson said. "He was snatched four hours ago from a municipal child care crèche while the parents were shopping in the block mall. Surveillance footage from the crime scene identifies the perp as one Lucas Allan Verne - a Lindberg resident, just like the parents."

Opening one of the pouches on his utility belt, Bryson handed her a 2-D surveillance image printed on a folded square of glossy paper. She saw a grainy close-up of a thin, bearded man in his forties, carrying the baby wrapped in a blanket.

"He's a psych-case, sentenced to the psycho-cubes three times in the last four years and diagnosed as suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia with religious delusions."

"A paranoid schizophrenic?" Anderson said. "And they released him back into the community? Sounds like someone dropped the ball over at the Psycho Unit."

"I wouldn't disagree." Bryson shrugged. "Though, in their defence, there's nothing in the perp's history to suggest a tendency towards violence. Verne's previous arrests were for Public Order and Noise Annoyance offences: he likes to preach in public without a licence. Last time they released him, the doctors put him on mood stabilisers and anti-psychotics to control his behaviour." He shrugged again. "Looks like he stopped taking his meds."

"All right, so we've got a missing child who's been kidnapped by a psych-case," Anderson grimaced. "I'm taking it that's the bad news. Assuming the baby is still alive, do we have any idea where Verne might have taken him?"

"That's why I called in a Psi-Judge," Bryson told her. The elevator stopped, the doors opening on the thirty-second floor. "The perp lives in Apartment 27-C, on the same floor as the Cooley family. I was hoping a psychometric scan of his apartment might be able to turn up some leads..."

If the interior of the perp's apartment was any kind of guide to his mental state, Anderson did not want to dwell too long on the Cooley baby's chances. As Bryson opened the door and ushered her inside, she was greeted at once by a scene of chaos. The apartment was a mess. The floor was strewn with discarded take-out cartons and rotting leftovers. The furniture was stained, mildewed and in an advanced state of disrepair. The walls were plastered in religious images and pieces of text held in place with a variety of pins, adhesive tape and sticky-tak.

"Well, I don't see this place getting a write-up in any of the Better Homes 'zines," Anderson said as she stepped forward to inspect the apartment more closely. "Looks like the perp isn't much into housekeeping. Now, let's see what he is into."

Turning to scrutinise the written materials stuck to the walls, she found a mixture of pages from the Bible and news-zine articles downloaded onto cheap paper from the Megaweb. The Biblical passages were mostly from the Book of Revelations, with references to the signs and portents of the Last Judgement highlighted in red marker pen. The news items concentrated on the Apocalypse War: she saw articles discussing the lingering radioactive legacy left by the nuclear exchanges during the war, the increased incidence of mutation among the Big Meg's population in its aftermath, images of devastated streets and of fallout victims covered in burns and tumours. Taken together, the apocalypse in both its secular and religious incarnations seemed to loom large in the inner world of Lucas Verne. Even as she rifled through more of the flotsam materials around her though, Anderson realised such insights brought her no closer to discovering where the perp might have headed after he abducted the baby.

"You getting anything?" Bryson asked her. She noticed he was still standing in the apartment doorway, as though he was wary of getting too close while she did her voodoo.

"You'll have to give me a minute," she told him. "Before I start the scan, it would help if we could find something that's special to the perp. If I scan the apartment cold, I'm just as likely to pick up random thoughts about what he had for dinner last night. I need something that belongs to him. Something personal. It'll help me get a better lock on him."

"Uh-huh." Pulling back the edge of the gauntlet on his left hand Bryson checked his watch, then tapped its face. "Not trying to tell you your business, Anderson. But the clock's ticking on this one."

"I know it is, Bryson," Anderson pursed her lips, trying to keep her temper. "But you're the one who called for a Psi-Judge. If you want me to find you any leads, you're going to have to let me do things my way."

Sighing inwardly, Anderson returned her attention to the apartment's interior. Bryson's attitude was wearingly familiar to her. In common with most street Judges, he seemed to have no concept of the difficulties involved in a psychometric scan. She could understand the reasons. By the nature of their job, street Judges tended to be well grounded in everyday reality: they were accustomed to a world of hard and fast rules, where the answer to every question was unequivocally yes or no. Psi-Judges inhabited a different world. The psychic realm was vague and mysterious, almost by definition: its answers often far from clear-cut. From experience, she knew it was no good trying to tell a street Judge that. They did not seem to have the equipment to cope with a world without easy answers.

In course of her twenty-odd years as a Psi-Judge, Anderson had performed literally thousands of psychometric scans. She was all too aware of the problems of the technique, and how hard it could be to achieve a worthwhile result. She had not been joking when she told Bryson she might end up with nothing more useful than the perp's memories of what he had had for dinner. Scanning a person's home would frequently reveal little to aid an investigation: a welter of trivial and inconsequential thoughts crowding out anything that might be of value. Her chances of conducting a successful scan would be much improved if she could find one of the perp's belongings - something he cared about - to help her link more directly with the things that were important to him. The kind of things which might have persuaded him to kidnap a child in the first place.

Then, she saw it. Set carefully apart from the clutter disfiguring the apartment, she noticed an old leather-bound Bible lying open on a table beside the sofa. It stood out at once: in an age where every book was available as a data-slug or in downloadable format on the Megaweb, no one owned the real thing anymore. Much less leather-bound, with cloth ribbons inside it to mark out favoured pages. It had the look of an ancient and valuable family heirloom, passed down through the generations. Skimming through the book, she saw a series of names written on the first page: some of them faded and worn with age. They all had the surname 'Verne', with Lucas Verne's name written in blocky letters below the others at the bottom of the page. Running a hand over it, Anderson knew instinctively she had found exactly what she was looking for. If there was a way into the world of Lucas Verne, this would be it.

It must have been in Verne's family for generations, she thought. It's probably his most treasured possession. And, given his religious views, it's obvious he reads it all the time. I doubt there's anything more important to him in the world than what's in this book.

Closing the book's cover, Anderson removed one of her gloves before placing her hand on the Bible once more. She felt the coolness of the leather beneath her palm and the richness of its grain. Drawing a deep breath, she began to steel herself for what lay ahead.

There were dangers, always, in attempting to pick up the psychic impressions from a disturbed mind. Madness could be contagious: the human mind was fragile, and even a highly trained Psi-Judge like Anderson had reason to fear becoming too closely embroiled with the damaged psyche of a madman. Granted, the impressions experienced through a psychometric scan were rarely that powerful, but sometimes insanity could make a mind burn more brightly. It was entirely possible Lucas Verne had left more of himself imprinted in the pages of the book than a well-adjusted person might do. By scanning it, Anderson would be running the risk of direct exposure to his delusions. With the life of a child at stake though, she did not see how she had any other choice.

All right, Cass, here goes nothing, she told herself. Let's see if you can get through this one without getting a free trip to the funny farm thrown in as a bonus.