Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013
him as he slept, an alcove within an
alcove.
    Carmel came down. Her hair moved sluggishly
around her skull. She wore a thin cotton 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
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