For the third day running, the fog refuses to lift. As Percy’s water taxi makes its way towards Mayor Friedler’s residence, the canal-side lamps are of little use, merely serving to diffuse through the mist an ethereal whiteness that obscures as much as it illuminates. Even his mechanical pilot must inch its way, feeling blindly out with the old-school fallbacks of radar and ultrasonics.
Though situated in the Outside, the mayor’s town house makes no pretence to civic humility or accessibility, a six-floor fortified bastion set safely apart from the press and welter of those he’s elected to serve. His Outside will be different to theirs.
As the destination nears, two dark shapes congeal out of the vagueness, solidifying into men, stood sentry either side of the residence’s water gate. They move forward in step as he docks, one to steady the boat while the other helps him onto the jetty. The taxi departs. Should he have paid for it to wait? Too late now.
The gates clang shut behind him and immediately the atmosphere begins to lift, the lung-clogging humidity disperses, replaced by an airy freshness shipped in from some healthier, happier clime. He is gestured up stone steps towards two great wooden doors that usher him into colonial opulence, chandeliers and gilt-framed mirrors, a sea of mahogany and dark-red patterned carpet; a single wide staircase leads up. Percy begins to make that way, but is checked from behind by a heavy hand – “He’s in the Zoo.” The owner of the hand moves ahead of him, making to one side of the stairs, and Percy follows a back beefily upholstered with unnatural muscle through to the rear of the building and eventually towards a stone staircase leading down. Three flights later and some degrees cooler, they emerge through more wooden doors into a welcome warmth.
Mayor Friedler sits next to a log fire in the room’s only chair, in one hand a cigar while the other leafs slowly through a book, a half glass of wine – well, some dark, ruddy liquid – on the table in front of him. The flagstone floor and rough-hewn walls give the oblong room an appropriately medieval feel, which sections of wood panelling, tasteful furniture, shelves of little objets d’art and hardbound books elevate to a tastefully repurposed dungeon.
Friedler finally looks up from his book – an expensive-looking work on natural history, judging by the full-colour illustrated plates of brightly plumed birds. The mayor moves his cigar toward an ashtray on the table, into the cupped palms of a dark-skinned Art Deco figurine of a naked kneeling woman, head bowed, arms now moving up toward him in readiness. Not a figurine, then. Friedler picks up the glass, holding it an appreciative moment in the firelight, warming the dark liquid’s plums and purples into a bloodier hue, and sips.
“So how do you like the Menagerie, Inspector,” he says, gesturing to the walls, upon which – unnoticed until now amidst the flickering shadows – are a gallery of mounted heads, stretching down the length of the room into its far end, and obviously meant to resemble hunting trophies. Except that they are all human – or at least, human-like, their various tusks, gills, horns, fur, snouts and beaks combining into assorted forms of anthropomorphic hybrid; artificially created, of course – trophies of the studio or the lab, not the hunt – but crassly intended to imply otherwise.
“Your man called it the Zoo.”
Friedler shrugs. “I didn’t hire him for his vocabulary.” He stands up, replaces the wine glass on the table, and sets about a tour of the room, admiring his own collection. Percy follows. “So you want footage, I understand.”
“Streets leading to the area around the back of the Arc, northern entrance. Any comings and goings from last Monday evening through early Tuesday morning.”
“I see. And the Arc itself can’t help you with that?
“Surveillance blind spot. Apparently.”
“Apparently.” The mayor nods. “I see. For?”
“An ongoing investigation.”
“Well, I didn’t think you wanted it to jack off to.” Friedler laughs. “What sort of investigation?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to share details at this precise moment.”
“Not at liberty.” Friedler huffs. “Information is currency, Inspector. Spend a little, you might get something in return.”
“A suicide,” Percy relents. “Potentially.”
“Apparently. Potentially. Either you’re a very circumspect sort of chap, or a very suspicious one. So which is it?”
“Just doing my job.”
Percy stops before a head that is half girl, half fawn: large dark-lashed doe eyes, a small delicate mouth, the dappled-white skin subtly furred, two large protruding fur-lined ears.
“So have you found out who the dead girl is yet?” the mayor asks.
He resists the urge to glance back at Friedler, depriving him of the satisfaction of his surprise at this knowledge, but keeps staring at the fawn. The loose-lipped pathologist is a municipal employee, after all, codes of confidentiality aside.
The fawn blinks.
“We could run face rec for you, if you want? A DNA search? You may find our databases more comprehensive than the Company’s.”
“Just the footage for now, thank you.” Percy moves off further down the room, and as he does so, a door opens at the far end and a man wearing dark glasses and dressed head to toe in black – so black it is almost an absence – emerges through it, closing it behind him, and stands there, hands clasped in front of him, politely forbidding Percy’s further explorations.
“But if she’s a citizen of the municipality, Inspector, then strictly speaking, you know, it’s my jurisdiction, not the Company’s.” Friedler moves past him toward the final mounted head in the collection. “So important to observe jurisdictional precedence, don’t you think? We start barging around, stepping on each other’s toes, waving warrants that have no force, intimidating witnesses we have no right to question … well, who knows where all that might lead?”
It is the head of a young woman; no bestial accoutrements, just a pretty face, strong cheekbones, long dark hair and dark eyes.
It is Cherri with an i.
“No one wants that,” says Friedler, “do they.”
Percy nods numbly through the rest of the meeting, trying not to betray his terror and disgust. It is agreed that Friedler will send him what footage they have. (“But remember, Inspector: if you want a little quid, you must give a little quo, yes?”)
He instructs his virtual assistant to call ahead, and thankfully the water taxi is waiting for him as he arrives at the jetty. He manages to hold on until the dark sentinels have merged back into the fog before emptying the contents of his stomach into the passing waters.
Disembarking back at the Empire, he heads instead across the bridge and out into the night, trying to breathe, to clear his head, to stabilise his panic, guilt and fear. He was stupid to push her. He was stupid to talk to her at all.
At the food square, a different single stall now open – perhaps they take it in turns.
And there she is, back in her professional battle gear, eating something deep fried from a brown bag in her shivering hands.
“Well, if we don’t meet again, Not-Antonio. We don’t want people to get the wrong idea, now, don’t we.”
He stares at her.
“Wassup?” asks Cherri with an i. “Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“What is it?” Friedler asks.
“She’s awake,” the man in black replies.
They exit the trophy room back through the door from which the man in black had emerged, moving down a corridor lined along the left with tall glass-fronted cells, each the size of a mid-sized room, and which always remind Friedler of the museum; well, before the museum became what it is now.
Each cell they pass is a different habitat, a climate in miniature – baking desert, tropical rainforest, snowy waste – each environment precisely tailored to its occupant’s needs. And what occupants they contain: cats that are not cats, birds that are not birds, and in some of them, humans that are not human; experimental hybrids of all kinds.
They pass a cell like a large aquarium, two-thirds filled with murky water, its only furniture a slimy lichen-encrusted rock emerging through its surface. But she is shy today and her favoured perch is bare. Where is she?
“You know, I still think we should have done the Cherri girl for real,” Friedler says, musing into the empty cell. “Sent a stronger message.”
The man in black considers this, though his eyes are hidden behind his black lenses.
“You would only have sent him the message that you are a psychopath,” he says. “Now he has received the much stronger message that you are clever, deceitful and resourceful – and also probably a psychopath.”
“OK.” Friedler turns and nods, reluctantly acknowledging the wisdom of this. “We’ll do it your way for now. But you put too much store in this Art-of-War shit, Camillo.”
There is a startling thump from the cell and there she is, not so shy after all, sucking at the glass like a demented toddler, the round O of her mouth like that of a fish, her webbed hands straining at the surface, squashing her breasts flat with the predator’s urge to reach her prey. Her eyes stare blackly, hungrily into his, and blink in that distinctive, creepy way, the third nictitating membrane sweeping from in to out like a windscreen wiper – that’s the seal DNA, apparently. Intriguing, but not exactly alluring. Too much mer and not enough maid. Maybe the next one will be better. Still, useful for some things.
They walk on, reaching a habitat that is as homely as the others are wild – well, more human, anyway: a bed, a table, a chair. The man in black lays a hand on Friedler’s arm.
“Best not to look her in the eyes,” he reminds him.
The occupant of the room is little older than a child, a scrawny straggle-haired girl, sat up in the bed, knees pulled up, head down, scratching at the back of her hand where she has recently pulled out the cannula.
“She doesn’t even know what’s good for her.” Friedler tuts. “Just like an animal. Perhaps we should get her one of those plastic cones.” He laughs.
She looks up at them, a look every bit as predatory as that of the creature in the previous cell. As advised, Friedler looks away, but can almost sense her searching, seeking connection through her burgeoning powers – which he has none of himself, unfortunately. That is why he has the man in black; why he needs her.
“I’m glad to see you are improving,” he says to her, to no response, just the same peripherally sensed malevolent stare. “I expect you are starving. Would you like a little something to eat?”
And in response she spits, a gobbet of sputum spattering the glass, making him flinch – and then laugh.
“Maybe in a while, then,” he says and smiles.
They move off down the corridor.
“She’ll come round,” the man in black says. “She can’t live on air. Then we can dose her more easily.”
Friedler nods.
“And the parents? Family?”
“Orphan. Refugee. She doesn’t even have her own name.”
“So what does she call herself?”
“Squirrel, apparently.”
And they both laugh.
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi/fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. All instalments are free, but you can support my writing by taking out a paid subscription, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments.