The Lucifer desk

19

Pita watched through the grimy, wire-renforced window of the Lone Star transport van as the vehicle backed up against a building with gray concrete walls and a large, metal-plated door. She swayed as the van bumped to a stop with its rear doors flush against the door in the building’s wall. Slowly, with a loud squealing noise, the building’s armored door slid up. Then heavy mechanical locks in the van’s rear doors clicked. The doors popped open a crack, letting in a slant of flickering fluorescent light.

A speaker in the prisoner transport section of the van crackled to life. A pleasant, well-modulated female voice emerged from it. “You have arrived at the Lone Star pretrial containment facility in downtown Seattle. Please exit from the rear of the vehicle in a quiet and orderly fash-”

One of the dozen orks who shared the back of the van with Pita roared, drowning out the rest of the instructions. Rearing up from the bench seat that lined the wall he aimed a booted foot at the speaker. The ork was extraordinarily flexible, able to keep his balance and kick high above his head despite the fact that his hands were firmly cinched together behind his back. But his foot just bounced off the thick, perforated plexiglass that protected the speaker, leaving only a dirty smudge.

“… will be admitted, one at a time, into the station’s booking room, where you will be processed before moving on to detention cells. Please proceed now into the arrivals bay.”

An ork in her twenties with a bioluminescent tattoo of a golden spiderweb decorating her bald head pushed the doors open with her shoulder and jumped out. “This is it, chummers. First floor: cyberware scans, retinal scans, blood tests, and DNA typing. A bargain at zero nuyen down, zero per month.”

The others broke into tired laughter, then shuffled forward with heads slightly bent to avoid the van’s low ceiling. One by one, they jumped down onto the cement floor of the tubelike arrivals bay. Pita, still a little woozy from the effects of the stun baton, stumbled. The woman with the biolum tattoo caught her and propped her up with a shoulder.

“You all right, kid?” the woman asked.

Pita nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Never been arrested before, huh?” the woman continued. “Well, don’t try taking a poke at a cop when your cuffs come off or tossing magic around. If you do, they’ll slap you into pulse cuffs or pull a magemask over your head.”

As the last of the prisoners clambered out of the back of the van, a voice came from an overhead speaker. This time it was male, but equally mechanical. “The outer door is about to close. Please stay well clear of the yellow line.” On the wall beside the door, a red light began to flash. A buzzer beeped softly in time with it. “The door will be closing in five, four, three, two, one…”

With the same ear-splitting squeak that it had given upon opening, the outer door slid down, sealing one end of the arrivals bay and hiding the back of the police van from view. Over the noise, the prisoners began to chant. “Hell, no, we won’t go. Tell Lone Star to let us go! Hell no…”

Their voices reverberated in the enclosed space, echoing back and forth. The orks stamped their feet in time with the chant, increasing the noise volume further. After a moment, Pita joined in, thumping one heel on the floor. Even though it wouldn’t get her out of here, shouting slogans with the other prisoners made her feel better. She felt protected by the small mob around her, defiant. It didn’t matter that one of the prisoners was bleeding profusely from a gash on his cheek and another was hobbling along on what was probably a broken foot. If they stuck together, fought back against the cops…

Pita suddenly felt a low vibration deep in her bones. All of a sudden her stomach felt as if it were being twisted by a pair of invisible hands. She doubled over, fighting the urge to be sick. She heard someone next to her heaving and then the pungent smell of vomit filled the air. Beside her, the woman with the bio-lum tattoo gritted something through clenched teeth: “Bastards. They’re pumping in low-frequency noise.” Then Pita lost her supper. Now she had to concentrate on her bowels, which felt as if they were full of ice water.

Mercifully, the vibrations stopped just before she lost control. The orks in the arrival bay straightened slowly, hands still clutching their stomachs. One or two were crying-either with fear or frustration-as they wiped vomit from their lips.

Pita spat on the floor, trying to get the taste of partially digested Growlie bars out of her mouth. The air in the tunnel was foul. She breathed as shallowly as she could; her stomach was still heaving. Given the fact that the floor had been clean when they entered the arrivals bay and now was slick with vomit, Pita’s group must have been the first of those arrested at the demonstration to arrive here. Or perhaps they were just the most vocal. She decided to be as quiet and non-confrontational as possible. Maybe the cops wouldn’t notice her.

The voice resumed its toneless instructions: “Please proceed, one at a time, into the inner airlock for processing. Please proceed, one at a time…”

This time, the orks moved silently forward. As the voice droned on they formed a line and shuffled, one by one, through a smaller door at the far end of the tunnel. The bald woman with the tattoo was just ahead of Pita. She offered Pita a big-toothed smile, then trotted into the airlock, head up, with a defiant step. With a soft sigh, the door closed behind her.

After a minute or two, it was Pita’s turn. She stepped nervously into the tiny space between two airlock doors. The door behind her slid shut, leaving her in complete darkness. She had the strong sense of eyes watching her, and felt a prickling sensation that raised the hairs on her arms. “Magic,” she whispered to herself; she’d become familiar with the feel of it, after the attack by the dreadlocked mage. They were doing something to her. What? She gnawed her lip with an oversized canine and prayed that this was only a harmless magical scan of some sort. She didn’t think they’d be able to detect her newly awakened magical abilities if she wasn’t in contact with Cat, but she couldn’t be sure.

Pita didn’t want to think of the other possibilities-that the cops might be messing up her mind, sapping her life energies, or… She forced those fears from her mind and strained her eyes, trying to see. But the blackness was absolute; she couldn’t even see the door that was a few centimeters in front of her. Why weren’t the cops opening it? She blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. Should she call out? Had they forgotten about her? Should she kick on the door with her feet or would that only make the cops…

The door in front of her slid open. Dazzled by the sudden brilliance of bright lights, Pita was unable to focus her eyes. Hands seized her arms and shoulders, dragging her out of the airlock. As she stumbled forward she heard the buzz of many voices and the humming of electrical equipment. Then she was pushed into a chair. Something attached to the back of the chair she was sitting on snugged against the back of her neck-a clamp of some sort, by the cold feel of the metal. Pita swallowed hard, wondering what it was for.

At last her vision returned. She looked around and saw that she was inside one of several cubicles that lined the walls of a central room where armed and uniformed guards stood watch. The walls of the cubicles were made of plexiglass, once clear but now scuffed and dirty. Through them, Pita could see a few of the orks who’d been with her in the arrival bay. Each was undergoing a different test at the hands of uniformed officers. Before she had a chance to look for the woman with the web tattoo, two officers strode into the cubicle. Pita cringed away from them, crushing her handcuffed arms into the hard plastic of the chair on which she sat. But the two barely looked at her. One forced her head into the metal clamp on the back of the chair while the other pulled down a camera that was attached to the ceiling by an extendible arm.

“Look into the retinal scanner, please,” one of the cops said in a bored voice. “And keep your eyes still, or it will take longer.”

“Don’t get cute and try to close your eyes,” the other cop added.

The scan took only a moment. The camera emitted a faint hum, and a flash of red dazzled Pita’s eyes. Then a baton-wielding cop hustled her to the next cubicle.

In rapid, orderly succession the cops took Pita’s photograph, pricked her finger for a blood and DNA sample, snipped a lock of her hair for some other obscure test. and at last took her fingerprints with an electronic scanner that was pressed to each finger and thumb in turn while her hands were still cuffed behind her back. Presumably all of the testing equipment was on-line; the only person entering data into a computer was the female cop who asked her name, age, race-as if that wasn’t fragging obvious-address, and next of kin. Pita was asked if she had taken any drugs and was warned once more of her rights. Then a bored-looking female cop wearing latex gloves frisked her, patting down her clothes. The cop removed everything from Pita’s pockets: her book on shamanism, the few coins she’d boosted after some drek-stupid customer had left a tip on a street-side restaurant table earlier that day, the silver ring Chen had given her that now was too small for her fat ork fingers-even a half-eaten Growlie bar in its crumpled wrapper-and heat-sealed these meager possessions inside a plastic bag. Taking a black marker, she wrote on the front of it: “Patti Dewar, PID 500387378.”

Pita locked her eyes on the plastic bag as it was set aside “When will I get my stuff back?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“No personal possessions are allowed in the detention cells,” the cop answered in an irritated voice. “These items will be returned to you later, after your first court appearance. If you make bail, that is.”

“But couldn’t I just have my-”

“Move along, please.” The cop was already looking at the next woman she’d be frisking. “Next!”

Glancing behind her at the plastic bag that held her stuff, Pita reluctantly let herself be directed to a door in a side wall. When it opened, she was met by two uniformed officers carrying stun batons. She moved in the direction they indicated, trotting quickly ahead to keep some distance between herself and the batons. She didn’t like the way one cop kept his thumb posed over charge button.

The corridor led to a row of cells. The first one held two scruffy-looking humans and a dozen female orks. The prisoners milled about, muttering angrily. They shouted catcalls at the cops herding Pita. The cops ignored them, turning Pita to face the barred door of the cells and applying something hot to the plasticuffs that encircled her wrists. She smelled burning plastic, and then her arms sprang apart as the cuffs released.

The cops motioned for the women inside the cell to move back, threatening to poke their stun batons through the bars at those who moved too slowly. Then they opened the door and shoved Pita inside. Before he could turn around, the cell door slammed shut behind her with a loud clang.

Pita scanned the other orks who shared the cell with her. Three of them had been with her in the Lone Star van and the arrivals bay. But she didn’t see the woman who had helped her earlier. Despite the physical proximity of the other women, she felt completely alone. Her eyes began to sting and she blinked to hide her tears. Don’t be such a slot-head, she told herself. You're in a detention center. Even if the cops who scragged Chen and the others do show up, they can’t do anything to you while you’re here. Taking a deep breath, she looked around.

The cell was maybe ten meters wide and deep. It was rapidly filling up; the cops kept bringing in more ork women. More than one had a bloody scalp or white patches where a stun baton had grazed her. A few seemed to know each other, and were greeted with a fist in the air and an Ork Rights Committee slogan. These women shouted and spat at the cops who escorted other prisoners past the row of cells and laughed in the cops’ faces when the cops called them “porkies.” Other prisoners-particularly those who were better dressed-seemed as dazed and confused by their incarceration as Pita did.

Pita glanced from face to face, looking for someone who would befriend her. Then she beard a ringing noise as something metal struck the bars of the cell.

“Hey, you!” a male voice said. “The young one. Turn around and face the door of the cell!”

Pita glanced over her shoulder. On the other side of the door, looking in through the bars, stood a cop. He wore the padded leather jacket and heavy boots of a patrol officer, as well as a helmet. Its shaded visor hid his eyes completely, making him look even more threatening. Somewhere behind it, a red light blinked on briefly; he must have a cybereye. Light gleamed off the chromed letters on the upper-right side of his jacket: 709.

Pita turned away, moving slowly to the back of the cell. There were more than two dozen women inside it now. If she could just hide behind some of them, she might avoid the cop’s gaze. Maybe-just maybe-he really was looking for someone else. But Pita didn’t think so. She was the youngest one in the cell.

She started chanting the mantra that had saved her in the alley, the night she’d hidden in the dumpster. Don’t let him notice me. Don’t let him see me. But then the clang of metal on metal made her jump and broke her concentration.

“Hey, you!” the cop said, louder this time. “The girl in the black jacket and torn jeans. Prisoner Number 500387378. 1 said turn around. Now!”

A clear space had suddenly formed around Pita. So much for the ORC slogans of solidarity. The “sisters” had abandoned her. Swallowing her fear, she turned to face the cop. She nearly fainted when she saw what he’d rapped on the bars with. His ungloved hand. It was made of articulated metal joints covered with gleaming chrome. She recognized the distinctive licking and whirring noise it made as he extended a finger, pointing it at her. It had made the same noise as he wielded the machete that had carved up Chen and her other two chummers.

The flutter returned to her stomach. Pita was certain she was going to be sick again. She put out a hand, hoping one of the other prisoners would sense her plight and rush to her side to support her.

No one did.

“Is this yours?” the cop asked. In his other, meat hand, he held the book Pita had stolen from Aziz’s shop. Pita opened her mouth but was unable to speak. She managed only a slight nod. Her eyes were wide and round, locked on the cop’s metal hand.

“Are you a shaman?”

“I-” Pita was unable to croak out any more. Her legs felt as if all the muscles in them had lost their elasticity. She was certain they would collapse under her at any moment.

“Where’s your thaumaturgy license?” the cop asked. “If you’re practicing magic within the city limits, you need a license.”

Pita almost laughed with relief. Was that all the cop wanted? To enforce some stupid little bylaw? Maybe he hadn’t recognized her, after all. The street where Chen and the others had been shot had been dimly lit. Perhaps the cops hadn’t gotten a good look at her through the tinted windows of their patrol car.

The officer cocked a metallic finger at Pita. “Come with me. There’s some special processing we’ve got do.”

Pita’s hands began to tremble. Had the cop emphasized the word “special”? What did he mean by it? She didn’t want to find out. She searched, desperately, for somewhere to hide.

But it was too late. The cop had already tucked the book under one arm and was opening the door of the cell.