“Cow muscle?” asked Pawn Clements.
“Cows are strong,” said Odette. “And convenient. I’ve got a few pockets of cow muscle in me. Growing human muscle takes too long. Anyway, he’d had bladed teeth installed and some sort of projectile launcher. Multiple lungs, I’m not sure why, maybe they got a job lot or something, and his ribs had been heavily reinforced. Also, his genitals had been, um, enlarged.” She flushed a little. “And, of course, there was that Tartarus gourd they left as a booby trap.”
“Squirmy little bastard that was,” said Rook Thomas. “I was holding on to it right up until the fire was activated.”
“That gourd is very concerning,” said Marie. “They should not have been able to get hold of one. Those items are incredibly rare and dangerous to make — we haven’t grown any new ones since 1976 — and there is a strictly limited number in the vaults.” She sighed. “I’ll have to order an inventory. God knows what else they’ve managed to snatch.”
“Could its contents have survived the fire?” asked Chief Clovis. “Do I need to fill the room?”
“You said that before,” remembered Odette. “What do you fill the room with?”
“Concrete,” said Clovis. “We’ve a mass of wet concrete churning above the examination room — if something goes really wrong, we can just pour it in.”
“You were talking about filling the room with us in it!” shouted Odette. She looked to Dr. Bastion for support in her outrage, but he just shrugged.
“We can’t be too careful,” said Dr. Bastion. “We work with dangerous things. Dangerous people. Room two got filled in three years ago when one of the Pawns had a very bad reaction to some routine inoculations. The Pawn and his doctor and a nurse were all entombed in there. It won’t be unsealed for another two years.”
“Oh,” said Odette. Then something occurred to her. “Did someone let Marcel know? Isn’t he working on one of the other corpses?”
“Yes, we’ve pulled him out,” said Clovis.
“Anyway,” said Marie, who seemed to approve of the Checquy’s security measures, “the fact that they all suffered simultaneous seizures is not good news. Odette, did you see anything that might give us a lead?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“You’ll need to provide us with files,” said Security Chief Clovis. “All the information you have on the Antagonists. We’ll want photos —”
“Photos won’t do you any good,” interrupted Odette. “They’ll be wearing new faces. It would have been the first thing they did.”
“Sure, right after they murdered the house,” said Rook Thomas. “They couldn’t just abscond to St. Barts to tan with all the other rebellious rich kids.”
“This isn’t a tantrum!” said Odette sharply. “They believe this is the right thing to do. To them, the changes you’re making — all of you,” she said, including Grootvader Ernst, “are unforgivable. They’ll die for this if they have to.”
“Passionate little clique, aren’t they?” mused Clovis.
“They’re young.” Marie shrugged.
“Be that as it may,” said Rook Thomas, “they constitute a significant threat. Which leads me to a point. We can’t be pulling any punches. If it comes down to it, we’ll kill them rather than risk their escaping. But if we do capture them? Frankly, I don’t like the idea of trying to imprison them. Gallows Keep is the most secure facility on these islands, but word would leak out to the Checquy troops eventually.”
“We can execute them,” said Ernst coldly. Odette felt like she’d been punched in the stomach, and she made an involuntary sound of distress. “But there is another possibility. The Broederschap possesses the means to strip them of their memories and their knowledge.” Odette looked away. She could almost feel scaly lips on her own and a writhing mass of slender tentacles pressing at her mouth. She shuddered and noticed that, oddly, Rook Thomas looked a little nauseated as well.
“Well, we’ll discuss it if the situation arises,” said Rook Thomas finally. “But where is this going? What’s their endgame?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Odette.
“Do they even know?” Clovis snorted.
“I think they want everything to go back to the way it was,” said Odette helplessly. She winced under Rook Thomas’s scornful look.
“The way it was,” said the Rook. “Where they enjoyed immeasurable privileges and no responsibilities.”
“They don’t know if they’re conservatives or radicals,” said Ernst. “You almost have to pity them.”
“Sure,” said Rook Thomas in a tone that suggested no such pity would be forthcoming. “Now, we’ve got only one lead left, so let’s see whether he’s of any use at all.”
35
Rook Thomas swept through the hallways of the Hammerstrom Building, Odette and Pawn Clements hurrying behind her. Various Checquy personnel stood back against the walls to make a path for the Rook and her entourage. Each person made a hurried obeisance to the Rook, a nod or a slight bow. Then they saw Odette and did a double take (or, in the case of the Pawn with three heads, a sextuple take), followed by a narrowing of the eyes (or, in the case of the Pawn with no eyes, a pursing of the lips). Many of them tried to back even farther against the wall, as if they were in danger of being infected by her.
By the time a pair of massive iron doors leading to the detention area of the Rookery split open in front of them, Odette was completely lost. They had passed through so many security checkpoints and signed so many release forms that she half expected to go through a door and see the crown jewels on display, possibly while still on the monarch.
The part of the Rookery in which prisoners were kept, although it was several stories underground, was quite bright and airy. Or at least the administration area was. A warm light filled the room, and several large displays of flowers were scattered about.
“Hello, Rook Thomas. We weren’t expecting you until later today,” said the head of the section, a burly woman the sight of whom made Odette’s head ache. It looked like someone had taken a blade of unutterable sharpness and sliced her down the middle, from the crown of her head to, presumably, the base of her torso. However, instead of settling for being two parts of a dead body, the woman, whose name was Pawn Camden, had elected to continue going about her business in a position of some responsibility in the Rookery’s detention facility.
At least, that was how it appeared. Although Odette doubted that the woman had come to this situation late in life. For one thing, the two halves of her were separated by about four centimeters of empty space and were contained in a business suit. For another, she seemed entirely unconcerned by her situation.
Be cool, Odette thought. Don’t stare at her. She could see the gap only down to where it vanished into the woman’s collar. She took a cautious step sideways so that she could see into the gap. Huh, fascinating. The inside surfaces of each half of her head, where Odette might have expected to see a cross section of brain and other head matter, was covered in tight, smooth skin. Does that gap go all the way down? How does she hold together? How does she walk? And what about the connection between the two hemispheres of her brain? And her spine? And her bowels? Pawn Camden’s eyes blinked in unison, she smiled like one person, and when she spoke, both half-mouths moved simultaneously, producing a strangely choral effect.
“How’s the prisoner?” asked Rook Thomas, looking over the file Pawn Camden had handed her.
“Sleeping like a comatose baby,” said both halves of Pawn Camden. “Pawn Motha said he was clear of any booby traps —”
“Oh, good, I feel so much safer,” muttered Clements.
“— and we’ve scanned him, done MRIs and x-rays, taken photos and samples. He was deadly still for all of them.”
“So... vegetative state?” asked the Rook.