The Lucifer desk

2

Carla leaned over the shoulder of Wayne, the on-line editor, watching as the letters on the trideo monitor did a slow reveal: “H… U… M…” Gradually they spelled out Humanis Policlub, then turned from black to silver and oozed bright drops of red. Behind them, a man’s face resolved itself. His forehead was puckered into an angry frown, and his white teeth gleamed in a feral smile against his dark skin. His hair was neatly clipped, his face clean-shaven.

“Special rights for metahumans?” The man’s nose flared. “I’d sooner give special rights to a ghoul. They’re animals. Subhuman. Oh, I know, some say that metahumanity was always part of the gene pool. But that’s nonsense. It’s bad magic at work. These people have impure thought processes. That’s why they goblinize when they hit puberty.”

Wayne shook his head and keyed in an edit command. “This guy’s argument isn’t even logical. What about the kids who are born meta? Babies with ‘impure thoughts’? Gimnie a break.”

Behind him, Carla laughed. “The public doesn’t want logic,” she answered. “Just infotainment.”

The screen dissolved to a close-up of Carla’s face. The on-screen image asked a question: “And what does the Humanis Policlub advocate as the solution to the ‘problem’ of metahumans? More brain-bashings?”

Wayne’s fingers flicked across the keyboard, pulling in a series of one-second clips of some of the recent bash victims. Then he froze the screen.

Carla studied it a moment. “Toss in the ‘bash back’ quote from the Orc Rights Committee piece we aired yesterday, and wrap the piece up with a five-second clip of the Los Angeles Meta Madness concert. The part where the lead singer leans into the tens and spits on it, then screams, 'Frag the securi-goons. Madness must rule.’ That ought to stir something up.”

Wayne looked uneasily over his shoulder. “You sure you want to do that?”

Carla smiled. “The only way I’ll ever get noticed by the majors is if I get down n dirty and prove I can muckrake with the best of them.”

As her editor worked, she watched her image on the second monitor. Long black hair pulled back in a single braid, dark hungry eyes. The right eye tracked a fraction of a second faster than the left; hidden behind its iris was a miniaturized cyberoptic camera. Subdermal fiber-optic cables one-tenth the diameter of a human hair carried the images it recorded to a data display link implanted behind her right ear, next to an audio recorder. A datajack just below it had allowed her to download the images that Wayne was manipulating. The shots of herself, repeating the questions she’d asked earlier, had been mixed in later.

Two years after her surgery, Carla was still getting used to her new face. Wider cheekbones, a slightly flared nose, and melanin boosting had shaped her into a passable replica of an Indian. The Native American Broadcasting System actively denied any racial bias in its hiring practices, but one look at its anchors told the story. Someday soon, Carla hoped to leave KKRU’s nuyen-pinching behind and move up to NABS. Their producer had promised her a slot if she could demonstrate to him that she had what it took to “play hardball with the big boys.” By that, he’d meant the ability to do tough, investigative pieces-the kind that probed deep into the dark underbelly of the corporate beast. “Show me something worthy of NABS, and I’ll give serious consideration to your application,” he’d said.

Carla was determined to do just that. And soon. Her exclusive interview with the leader of the local Humanis Policlub chapter was a good start. But it would take a bigger story than that to prove herself.

On the trideo screen, the Humanis Policlub leader was droning on. “We do not advocate violence.” He favored the camera with a sickly smile. “Just segregation. Metahumans belong with their own kind. They’re not happy in the general society. Those of us of pure stock make them feel inferior. And we don’t want them mixing with us. Can you imagine one of those rabid, hulking orks, dating your daughter?” His mouth curled as if he’d eaten a spoonful of warm drek. “Or your son? Do you really want a goblinized grandchild?”

“And cut,” Carla said, stabbing a finger against the on-screen menu. “Add a clip of those three ork kids that were bashed the other night, and fade with some Meta Madness music. Then patch in my usual sign-off and the station call letters and it’s a wrap.”

Stretching, she looked around the editing booth. Someone was tapping on the glass window. Opening the door beside it, Carla stepped out into the studio. “Yes?”

Masaki, one of the other reporters, jerked a thumb at the monitors that lined one end of the newsroom. One of the screens showed a view of the front entrance of the KKRU building. A young ork sat on one of the synthleather lobby chairs, hands clenching the fabric of his jeans. The kid’s eyes darted nervously around the room.

“Some ork kid claims to have a hot story. Won’t talk to anyone but Carla Harris, ‘ace snoop’ for KKRU Trideo News.”

Carla stifled a yawn. It had been a long shift, with three hours’ overtime. “Did he say what it was about?”

“She.” Masaki shrugged. He was overweight, and spoke with a wheezy voice. A graying mustache and beard framed his soft mouth, but his cheeks were clean-shaven. “The kid muttered something about your series on Humanis Policlub. When I pushed for more, she froze up. Hard to tell if she’s got anything worth saying. But there might be something there.”

Carla snorted. “Trying to steal my story, eh, Masaki?”

He grinned at her. “Can’t blame a snoop for trying.”

Carla walked down the hail toward the lobby. Pausing before the reception area’s tinted door, she put her cybereye in record mode. The kid was probably just another streeter, vying for her fifteen seconds of fame. But it didn’t hurt to shoot a little trid, just in case.

“Hi, kid.” Carla crossed the room with smooth. graceful strides, intending to settle on the chair beside the ork. But halfway across she caught the odor that clung to the kid. Had the girl been sleeping in a trash heap? Wrinkling her nose, Carla chose a chair a couple of meters away. Her cybereye whirred as it telephotoed in on a tight head shot, then automatically focused.

The girl visibly started at the greeting. Synthleather creaked as she leaned forward, resting on the very edge of her seat. The toes of her sneakers were poised on the polished tiles of the floor as if she were a sprinter preparing to run. Carla leaned forward in her best reassuring pose. “You got a story for me, kid?”

The ork wet her lips and glanced up at the videocam that monitored the lobby. “Not here.” she whispered.

“Before I’ll let you in the studio, you’re gonna have to convince me you’ve got something,” Carla prompted.

While the ork chewed her lip, trying to decide whether or not to talk, Carla let her camera pan the girl. It was hard to tell how old these ork kids were. They bulked up quicker than normal children. Carla guessed the girl was in her mid-teens. A street waif, by the look of her torn clothes. And by the smell of her. Carla half rose, as if tired of waiting.

“Wait!” The girl cracked her knuckles with nervous twists of her hands. Carla groaned inwardly. If the interview really cooked, she’d have to edit the noise out later.

“That Story you did, on the three orks that died.” The girl’s lip quivered for a moment as she sucked in a deep breath. “Those were my friends.”

“Sorry to hear that, Miz-”

“Pa… Pita.” The girl answered.

“No last name?”

Pita shook her head.

“And you want to make a comment on their deaths?”

The girl nodded.

“Sorry,” Carla answered. “Old news. They died two nights ago. We gave it a thirty-second spot. Quite a long piece, considering the fact that it was the tenth Humanis Policlub bashing this year. Only the fact that their blood was used to paint the slogans made it newsworthy at all.”

The girl’s face suddenly paled. Carla sighed and hoped the kid wasn’t going to heave on the floor. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so blunt. But then, news was a hard-ass business.

Carla nearly missed the girl’s whisper as she walked back to the door. Only the amplified hearing mod in her right ear picked it up.

“Humanis Policlub didn’t kill my friends. Lone Star Security did.”

“What?” Carla spun around, cursing herself for not getting it on trideo. “You got proof of that, kid?”

The ork met Carla’s eyes for a fleeting second, then dropped her gaze back to the floor. “1 saw the whole thing. They were shot from a Lone Star patrol car. The cops tried to scrag me, too, but I ran away. Later I came back and saw… and saw…”

Tears spilled down the girl’s cheeks. Carla crouched low, giving her cybercam a better angle. She did a slow zoom until the girl’s face filled the eye’s field of view, let it linger there for a full three seconds, then pulled back to frame a head-and-shoulders shot.

“My friends were already dead, but the cops were cutting the bodies with machetes,” Pita whispered. “Then they used their blood to paint the slogans on the walls.”

“The autopsy didn’t find any bullet fragments in the bodies” Carla pointed out. “The pathologist said the wounds were consistent with an attack by edged weapons. I trust my sources. If there’d been anything unusual, I’d have heard about it.”

“But there must have been bullet holes in the buildings where it happened.” The girl looked up hopefully. “That would prove-”

“It proves nothing, kid.” Carla resisted the urge to shake her head. She kept the eyecam locked on the girl, waiting for any reaction. “Columbia’s a rough part of Seattle. Every building in it has its share of scars, many of them carved out by Lone Star guns.”

“One of the cops had a cyber hand. If you could find him, you could-”

“Cybernetic enhancements are pretty common among cops,” Carla countered. “There must be dozens of officers with cyberhands.”

“I know it was cybernetic, because it gleamed like chrome,” Pita continued. “I couldn’t see the cop’s face, but I could see that.”

“A chrome cyberhand?” Carla asked. “It sounds like you got that one out of a comic vid. What you saw was probably an interface on the cop’s glove that caught and reflected the light.”

The girl winced, then stared up at Carla with angry eyes. “I’m not making this up.”

“I never said you were, kid.”

Carla sighed and deactivated her cybercam “You tell a very passionate story. Pita, but the Star could refute every word you’ve told me. You’ve got no concrete proof to back you up. No firm details. And without proof, I haven’t got a news story.”

The ork girl dropped her eyes, her shoulders bunching in a defensive slump. Carla keyed her security code and opened the door that led back to the studio. She paused on the threshold, debating whether to offer the kid a few words of reassurance. She’d seen the bodies after the Policlub was through with them, If those were really the girl’s friends.

But when Carla turned back again, the lobby was empty.