Interzone #244 Jan - Feb 2013 Read Online Free PDF Page B

shift; he could see how thin she was.
    Achimwene said, “Tell me what happened yesterday.”
    Carmel shrugged. “Is there any coffee?”
    “You know where it is.”
    He sat up, feeling self-conscious and angry. Pulling the blanket over his legs. Carmel went to the primus stove, filled the pot with water from the tap, added spoons of black coffee carelessly. Set it to cook.
    “The boy is…a sort of strigoi ,” she said. “Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know.”
    “What did he do?”
    “He gave me something. He took something away. A memory. Mine or someone else’s. It’s no longer there.”
    “What did he give you?”
    “Knowledge. That he exists.”
    “Nakaimas.”
    “Yes.” She laughed, a sound as bitter as the coffee. “Black magic. Like me. Not like me.”
    “You were a weapon,” he said. She turned, sharply. There were two coffee cups on the table. Glass on varnished wood. “What?”
    “I read about it.”
    “Always your books .”
    He couldn’t tell by her tone how she meant it. He said, “There are silences in your Conversation. Holes.” Could not quite picture it, to him there was only a silence. Said, “The books have answers.”
    She poured coffee, stirred sugar into the glasses. Came over and sat beside him, her side pressing into his. Passed him a cup. “Tell me,” she said.
    He took a sip. The coffee burned his tongue. Sweet. He began to talk quickly. “I read up on the condition. Strigoi. Shambleau. There are references from the era of the Shangri-La Virus, contemporary accounts. The Kunming Labs were working on genetic weapons, but the war ended before the strain could be deployed – they sold it off-world, it went loose, it spread. It never worked right. There are hints – I need access to a bigger library. Rumours. Cryptic footnotes.”
    “Saying what?”
    “Suggesting a deeper purpose. Or that strigoi was but a side-effect of something else. A secret purpose…”
    Perhaps they wanted to believe. Everyone needs a mystery.
    She stirred beside him. Turned to face him. Smiled. It was perhaps the first time she ever truly smiled at him. Her teeth were long, and sharp.
    “We could find out,” she said.
    “Together,” he said. He drank his coffee, to hide his excitement. But he knew she could tell.
    “We could be detectives.”
    “Like Judge Dee,” he said.
    “Who?”
    “Some detective.”
    “Book detective,” she said, dismissively.
    “Like Bill Glimmung, then,” he said. Her face lit up. For a moment she looked very young. “I love those stories,” she said.
    Even Achimwene had seen Glimmung features. They had been made in 2D, 3D, full-immersion, as scent narratives, as touch-tapestry – Martian Hardboiled, they called the genre, the Phobos Studios cranked out hundreds of them over decades if not centuries, Elvis Mandela had made the character his own.
    “Like Bill Glimmung, then,” she said solemnly, and he laughed.
    “Like Glimmung,” he said.
    And so the lovers, by complicit agreement, became detectives.
    * *
    MARTIAN HARDBOILED, genre of. Flourished in the CENTURY OF DRAGON. Most prominent character: Bill GLIMMUNG, played most memorably by Elvis MANDELA (for which see separate entry). The genre is well-known, indeed notorious, for the liberal use of sex and violence, transplanted from old EARTH (also see MANHOME; HUMANITY PRIME) hardboiled into a Martian setting, sometimes realistically-portrayed, often with implicit or explicit elements of FANTASY.
    While early stories stuck faithfully to the mean streets of TONG YUN CITY, with its triads, hafmek pushers and Israeli, Red Chinese and Red Soviet agents, later narratives took in off-world adventures, including in the BELT, the VENUSIAN NO-GO ZONE and the OUTER PLANETS. Elements of SOAP OPERA intruded as the narratives became ever more complex and on-going (see entry for long-running Martian soap CHAINS OF ASSEMBLY for separate discussion).
    * *
    “There was something else,” Carmel said.
    Achimwene said,