The Quick Way Down

Excerpt

I set off at a brisk walk and the clean air cleared the smell of sweat and cheap cologne from my sinuses. Rust-coloured dust coated my scuffed old shoes. A lifetime of nervous tension fell away; the clear, bright light, the open air, the verdant smell of green growing things. I passed along a raised ridge that rolled down to the shore of the lake and puffed on my vape.

A group of school kids with fishing nets and magnifying glasses splashed about in the reeds by the shore. I off-gassed a gout of nicotine steam and one of their babysitters scowled over at me and broke my pleasant illusion for the second time. You only get to feel comfortable in a place if you can trick yourself into believing that you belong. Judging by the po-faced look I was getting from this woman, I sure didn’t belong in Crystal Park.

Down on the marshy shore, one of the kids had stopped spelunking for amphibians and was pointing up into the lights far above. One of the babysitters noticed and followed her gaze and just had time to cover her mouth in shock.

The tumbling body hit the water with a smack. A wave rolled up onto the shore and took the feet out from a couple of rubber-booted children and dunked them into the shallow water. The kids squealed and splashed about in terror until they remembered that the water only came up to their shins.

Nobody seemed inclined to get their feet wet. I have my first two badges in ankle-wading and so I flicked off my shoes and splashed out towards the body, doing that awkward high-step when the water is too deep to walk but too shallow to swim.

The body was young, male, and naked; lean and lanky, with wiry musculature and hair that was wavy and long but well cared-for. On his back was an intricate snake tattoo in white ink that ran from the C1 vertebra between his shoulders, right down to the knobbly tip of the coccyx.

I flipped him over. His face had a thin ridge of brow over an unremarkable nose and a fortnight’s worth of sparse-growing beard on a narrow chin. He was completely naked and the hair on his chest was thin and wiry, his pubis was a water-bedraggled mass. His face and skin were rich and dark and didn’t have the normal grey pallor of the average mole rat denizen of City-235.

Most of us are not lucky enough to live in one of the farm districts with an actually sufficient level of artificial sunlight. This makes even those of us with genetically dark skin grey and pale and wraithlike.

The health of his skin alone pegged him as a member of a froo-froo upper-caste districts, and probably Crystal Park itself. The main incongruity was that he was so skinny; his ribcage and pelvis looked like they were carved into a block of wax. But then again, even the privileged and powerful can be anorexic.

The impact had cracked a couple of ribs. Which was fine, there wasn’t much interest in them anyway. The spine had not been severed, which was a blessing, but the internal organs would probably be pulp. There was so little subcutaneous fat that I could see even without palpating them that ankles, knees, shoulders, elbows, and wrists would add nicely to our credit.

I looked back to shore and the child-caretaker who had scowled at my innocent steam-off-gassing was scowling at me again as she talked to Enforcement on her communicator. I couldn’t hear the words but I knew it was Enforcement because who else would it be?

I left the young guy to float and waded back to shore. The scowling woman scowled at me some more and tapped off her communicator. She had short-cropped hair on a nearly spherical head and eyes like diamond drill tips. She didn’t like me one bit.

“Are you just going to leave him out there?”

“Protocol. Enforcement doesn’t like it when non-uniform types fiddle with a crime scene.”

The little girl who had seen the body falling came over and tugged at the knee of the woman’s elegantly baggy pants. Her eyes were full of concern and the woman’s scowl softened. The kid was young and small and still had her chirrupy munchkin voice.

“Is he dead?”

The caretaker’s face became grave and then she looked up at me. I nodded.

“Yes, Binnie, he is.”

The child’s eyes brightened, “Can we go see?”

The caretaker’s face flushed. I was amused, but not surprised. Out in the reeds, the caretaker’s partner was having a hard time corralling the children at the bank and stopping them from wading out to inspect the body for themselves. Kids are morbid little fuckers.

The caretaker resumed her gentle authority and gave Binnie a gentle push up the bank.

“You go up and wait by the bench over there. The Enforcement Individuals will be here soon and we don’t want them to get angry with us for ruining their evidence.”

The child stabbed a finger at me, “But he went all the way out there and touched it. He touched it all over, I saw him. Why does he get to?” Pivoting to me, she said, “How come you got to touch it?”

She glared up at me, and I actually started to feel nervous.

“Not everybody gets to, but I can because it’s my job. I’m a disassembler.”

It’s hard to tell how people will react when you tell them that your chosen career is dissecting corpses. The name disassembler is pure public relations. Not many people like the idea of butchering humans, so we “dis-assemble” them. Sometimes I get a hug and sometimes they take a swing, depending entirely on whether they’ve had a faulty organ replaced or not. The closer to death they were, the nicer they generally are. Most of the time they did what the caretaker now did; a sudden glare and tension through the shoulders that softens into a step backwards and a wary distance behind the eyes. It’s rare to meet someone like Binnie who got a look of hungry fascination.

“Really mister? You get to cut people up?”

I nodded and pulled out my city security lanyard and looped it around my neck, “Really really.”

The kid’s eyes widened and I knew then I was looking at an enthusiastic future member of the Guild of Morticians and Disassemblers. The disgust on the caretaker’s face deepened and she stumped over to Binnie and took her by the arm. She dragged her over to the bench and plumped her down on it. Then she sat down beside her and put a restraining hand on the girl’s shoulder. Their voices were thinned by distance.

“We are staying here and not going to move until the Enforcement Individuals tell us we can leave.”

“But miss…”