The Forever Drug (5 page)
"This is Detective Mchawi," I said. "Do you mind if she sits in on our interview?"
Jane shrugged. "I don't mind." Her eyes were locked on Dass' shirt, following the drummers as they strobed through their patterns. As Dass sat down, Jane reached across the table and stroked the fabric with a fingertip. The gesture—and the expression of awe on her face—reminded me of a child discovering something new and wonderful. It made her look quite beautiful.
"Do we have your permission to use magic?" I asked. "You have the right to refuse."
"Magic?" Something sparked behind her eyes as she glanced sharply in my direction. She seemed about to speak—and then the twinkle faded. She nodded. "You have my permission."
I nodded to Dass. She wove her fingers together in a complex pattern, spoke a few words of Swahili, and cast the spell. Then she peered intently at Jane.
I asked Jane the same questions I'd asked earlier. Once again, her answers were the same: "I don't know."
We ran through the preliminary questions—a process that took less than a minute—and I tried prompting her by recapping what she'd told me earlier. I was asking leading questions—something a good interviewer avoids—but by this time I was desperate. When I got the same non-answers, once again, I excused myself and motioned Dass out into the hallway.
"Well?" I asked.
"She's telling the truth. She has absolutely no idea who she is or where she's from." Dass stared in through the one-way glass at Jane, who waited patiently in the empty room, her hands neatly folded in her lap. No, not neatly folded. Her fingers were locked in a gesture identical to the one Dass had used to cast the detection spell that helped her differentiate truth from falsehood. Jane's gold-flecked eyes stared back into mine, as if she could see through the tinted glass and into my thoughts. I tore my eyes away.
"When I met her on Georges Island, she told me her name was Jane," I told Dass.
She laughed. "As in Jane Doe?"
"I suppose so," I said with a sigh. "Is she lying when she claims not to remember what she told me earlier, about her 'friends' who smuggle blackberry cats?"
"She's not lying. She's forgotten all about it, just like everything else."
"So she's got amnesia?" I frowned. "What would cause that?"
"Beats me," Dass said. "I'm no shrink."
She glanced at her wristwatch. I caught the hint.
"Thanks for your help, Dass," I said quickly. "But can I ask just one more favor? Would you authorize a retinal and DNA scan? Maybe that will tell us who Jane Doe is."
Dass hesitated and I could catch a whiff of irritation. Had I pushed our friendship too far? But then she nodded. "I'll clear it for you," she said.
I opened the door to the interview room and waved Jane out into the hallway. "Thanks for your cooperation," I told her. "There's just one last thing I'd like to ask for. A retinal and DNA scan. It will only take about five minutes, and won't hurt. Just a brief flash of light in the eye, and a slight prick in the arm. We don't normally request scans of witnesses, but it may help me figure out who you are."
She agreed, and we headed down the hall to the scanning lab. I gave the records clerk the little data I had on Jane, gave her last name as Doe, just for the hell of it, then used the stylus to highlight the IDENT records check.
The retinal scan only took a minute. But we had to wait twenty minutes more for the lab techs to do a watch changeover. Jane seemed to be getting progressively more nervous the longer we sat in the waiting room. I could smell a faint whiff of fear coming from her, but it was overlaid by the disinfectant that left the lab smelling like a harsh chemical interpretation of a pine forest.
When her turn came, Jane passively followed the lab tech—a dwarf in medical whites—into the testing cubicle. I tagged along, and settled into a plastic chair in one corner of the crowded room. As the dwarf prepared the syringe, Jane stared curiously at his beard, which was styled in a "pharaoh shave." His face was clean-shaven except for his chin, where a wide growth of beard was braided and bound with leather thongs into a shape reminiscent of a handle.
Jane sat quietly while the tech tightened the rubber tubing around her arm. But as soon as he swabbed her inner elbow with metallic-smelling iodine, all hell broke loose.
"No!" Jane screamed. She smashed the syringe out of the dwarf's hand, drew her knees to her chest and kicked. The lab technician was caught completely by surprise as Jane's feet connected with his chest. Bowled over backward, he crashed into the cart behind him, tipping it over and sending plastic slides and syringes skittering out into the hallway.
As other techs ran toward the cubicle, the dwarf picked himself up off the floor, eyes blazing. "What the frig's her problem?" he sputtered, his beard quivering with anger. "She consented to this test, yeah?"
I had jumped up from my seat to restrain Jane, but there was no need. She'd fallen out of her chair and lay curled up on the floor in a fetal position. Tears spilled from shut eyes and her breath came in short gasps that sounded like sobs. I waved back the techs who were trying to crowd into the cubicle, knelt down, and touched her shoulder.
"Jane?"
"No," she whispered. "Not the mask. Please don't ..." Then she jammed her fingers into her mouth and sucked on them, a look of intense agony twisting her face. She stank of fear.
I shook her slightly. "Jane?"
After a long moment, she lowered her fingers from her mouth. Her eyes opened. They were full of confusion as they met mine.
"Where—?" She gulped. "What—?"
"You're in the Lone Star police station in Halifax," I told her. "In the scanning lab. The technician is just going to draw some blood for a DNA sample."
"No, I'm friggin' well not," the dwarf said, holding his chest with one hand. "Yer Jane Doe can go skag herself."
I glared back at him. "She's mentally ill," I growled. "She's not responsible for her actions. She—" I stopped myself. What was I doing, defending this complete stranger? Yet as I looked at her tear-stained face, something tugged at my emotions. Cut off from her memories, Jane was alone in the world. Just as I had once been.
Jane suddenly rose to her feet and sat down in the chair, making an odd motion with her hands that suggested smoothing out a wide skirt. Then she placed her right arm, which was still bound by the rubber tubing, onto the counter next to her. "I am anxious to see the sphygmomanometer in operation,
Herr
doctor," she said to the dwarf. "Please do demonstrate your device."
I turned to look at her, startled. Although she was speaking English, Jane's voice had taken on a thick German accent. She sat erect, her chin lifted in a haughty expression. Just the way she held her body transformed her. Even though I'd known her only a short time, I could see a distinct difference. She even
smelled
different. More confident, less fearful. She was no longer Jane Doe. She was someone ... else.
Even the dwarf could see the change. He kept a cautious distance. "What the frig's she trying to pull now?" His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"I don't know." I picked up a syringe and showed it to Jane. "Any objections to having a blood sample taken?" I asked her.
"Proceed," she said curtly.
I offered the syringe to the dwarf. But he turned his head and raised his hands, palms out in a silent refusal. I turned toward the doorway, but the other lab techs had melted away, except for one who was cleaning up the debris from the spilled cart.
"Will you take the sample?" I asked her, holding up the syringe.
She shook her head. "No way," she said. "That woman's nuts."
I glared my frustration at the tech. When I looked back at Jane, her posture had changed again. She no longer sat with a laser-straight spine, nor did she carry her chin quite so high. She shook her head slightly and blinked, as if she'd just woken up. "Is it over?" she asked.
I sighed and set the syringe down. "It's over," I said.
The retinal scan would have to be enough.
I had the techs run the retinal scan through the databases. It drew a blank: Jane didn't have a System Identification Number, nor was there any record of her in any Lone Star database. If she had ever been arrested, it wasn't within any of Lone Star's jurisdictions. And they cover most of North America.
"All right, Jane," I said, touching her arm. "We're finished here. You can go—"
I had been about to suggest that she go home, but then I realized that Jane didn't know where "home" was. Instead I fished a card out of my pocket. It had the name and address of a shelter for the SINless, down on Barrington Street near the docks. Not the nicest part of town, but she'd be safe enough once she got inside. I scrawled my name on the back of the card.
"Here," I told Jane as I walked her out of the scanning lab, toward the police station's Rainnie Street exit. "This is a shelter where you can go and doss down. Show them this card at the door and tell them Romulus sent you. Otherwise they'll tell you the place is full."
I held the door open for her. The sun was just rising, painting the sky over the Halifax Citadel a bright pinkish orange. She followed my gaze, looking up at the 19th-century military fort—now a high-security Lone Star prison—and her face took on a look of intense sorrow. Then her eyes rose to the sunlight-dappled sky behind it, and her expression softened.
"It's beautiful," she whispered. "It feels so good to be ..."
I interrupted her thought by pressing a credstick into her hand. It had maybe ten nuyen left on it, but that was more than enough for a local call. Even though I doubted Jane could give me any more information, I didn't want to lose touch with her.
"If you remember anything more, use this to give me a call," I said. I took the business card back from her and added a telecom number to it.
She blinked, then pocketed the credstick.
I pointed in the direction of Barrington Street. "The shelter is that way. Good luck."
"Thank you, Romulus," she said. "
Se'seterin
."
Bright morning? The word was Sperethiel, the language of the elves. Where had she picked up that expression? From her cat-smuggling "friends"?
I yawned, and watched her go. It had been a long night. As Jane walked away, I wondered if I would see her again.
I took a jander down to the Public Gardens that evening. I waited until it was dark. The city's quieter then—fewer humans on the streets—and the night always feels like a much more natural time to be out and about.
The Gardens used to be a public park, up until the beginning of this century. But once simsense was developed, there wasn't any need for people to physically visit the place. Not when they could walk through it virtually and avoid unpleasant weather and encounters. In the mind, every day is a sunny day. And there aren't any gangers to mug you.
I walked between the trees along a path that was more garbage than gravel. The flower beds on either side were overgrown with weeds, the fish ponds had dried up to crusted mud, and the fountains had stopped working long ago. Gang graffiti was scrawled across the tumbled stonework walls. The Gardens had become a haven for the SINless, squatters who'd built homes for themselves in the trees out of scrap wood and metal. Firelight flickered through the cracks in the tree house walls, and loud, thumping music filled the park as boom boxes competed with one another for territory. Above the cacophony of wailing guitars and thudding bass, I could hear rough voices laughing, and occasionally a thud or splatter as garbage was dumped from one of the tree houses.
The ground was covered with litter; a foul smell of spoiled food rose to my nostrils as my feet scuffed through the plastic wrappers. Acrid smoke from the cooking fires drifted down from above, and I caught the occasional whiff of hashish or sweet crack smoke. There were also more pleasant smells, like lingering memories of the Gardens' former glory. I passed by a tangled rose bush that had probably survived only because of its tough thorns, and drank in its rich velvet scent.
I heard a faint hissing noise and spun around just in time to see a ganger sliding down a rope that hung from one of the tree houses overhead. One gloved hand clutched the rope; the other held a Streetline Special. The gun was tiny, its lightweight composite body hidden by the ganger's slim hand. It was a cheap factory knock-off, and not terribly accurate. But at this close range, the ganger probably wouldn't miss.
I stared her down as her feet touched ground, ignoring the rustling noises in the branches overhead that told me that other gangers were moving into position, closing the circle around me. I knew from police reports that they liked to use monofilament nooses: molecule-thin, weighted wires that would slice a victim's head off with one sharp yank. I fought the urge to tuck my chin defensively in against my neck—it wouldn't do any good, anyway—and concentrated on the ganger descending the rope. She would be the leader, the one who would decide whether the gang would parlay with me—or whether they would cut me up like meat and argue over the pieces later.
The gang leader was a wiry human with slanted eyes and a mop of bleach-white hair. She'd had her eyes replaced with anime-eyes, a style of cybereye modeled after a cartoon character that was popular just before the turn of the millennium. They were wide and staring, giving her a childlike appearance that didn't match her malicious smile. She was probably in her twenties, but with those eyes I couldn't think of her as anything other than a girl.
