The Lot of a Lichnik/7
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It was not my usual practice to start my my work day at a Shrubway outlet. Nor to spend a solid hour in there, sucking on a lichcookie, before doing anything. Parked outside was a Reaper squad car in green and white - my transport for the day - and across the table from me was the driver of that car, a middle-aged breather in the white-cuffed uniform of a Reaper traffic officer. He, unlike me, was in no hurry to get back on the road.
The Houndmaster, ever peculiar in his motivations, had dismissed my protests when he ordered me on a three-week secondment to the Reapers. I had been recruited from their ranks in the first place, and was fairly certain that they had nothing new to teach me. Even the prospect of meeting old friends was unlikely; the breathers I knew had retired and died, most of the liches had moved on to other work as I had, and a few had been lost in action. But the Houndmaster had been insistent that no exceptions be made, so I was sent among the Reapers' number nonetheless. One saving grace of the assignment was that it was with a traffic patrol - this had been Shepilov's occupation when he was a Reaper, and I vaguely looked forward to witnessing the kind of environment which spawned the mildly-unhinged Lichnik I knew now. That is, until I realised each day would begin with a whole lot of nothing.
As my Reaper companion, one Sergeant Agni, tucked into his tenth Deathgivin' Donut of the hour, I put a question to him:
"So how many traffic stops do you make an hour, on average?"
"On average?" said Agni, spitting out crumbs and wiping sugar frosting from his stubbly chin. "About two, I'd say."
"And your shift is ten hours. So twenty stops a day."
"Right."
"Except it'd only be eighteen stops a day."
Agni took a slurp of coffee from his flimsy paper cup. "How so? Two stops an hour in a ten hour shift adds up to twenty," he said. "I may be a breather but I can count."
"Oh I'm well aware of that," I said. "I also learned to count when I was a breather. But we've spent an hour of the shift sat in a Shrubway." I checked my watch. "An hour and seven minutes, that is. Not much traffic to inspect in here, is there?"
"Is this your way of telling me you're a little bored?"
"Well I think I've learned all I can from the Shrubway aspect of your job... vital as I'm sure it is."
"It is vital!" said Agni. "You dead'uns should count yourselves lucky you don't have to worry about a thing like vitality any more! But I take your point..." He rose to his feet, brushed the crumbs off his uniform and put on his white-banded patrol cap. "...The roads won't patrol themselves."
After so long, it was strange to be in a car driven by a non-zombot. The Reapers' zombots had never quite mastered the art of pursuit driving - those few which did were generally poached for service with us Lichniks - so their traffic patrols used a sentient driver, the old fashioned way.
Ironically enough, it was another such vehicle which led Agni to utilise his Reaper's privilege and pull a swift u-turn at an intersection - forcing the traffic zombot standing in the middle to perform all manner of baton-waving gymnastics to prevent him being immediately t-boned by oncoming vehicles. I held onto the back of my seat as we rapidly swung around the way we had come.
"What have you got?" I said.
"Third car ahead," said Agni. "Breather driving. Had a lich in the back but wasn't dressed like a chauffeur. A little rough. Some people just have 'invalid licence' written on their faces, you know?"
"If you say so," I said.
Agni flicked on the lazy wail of our car's siren and the traffic in front of us duly parted, allowing Agni to draw alongside the target vehicle - a standard enough 'Novoz' brand saloon car in maroon - and jab his gloved thumb at it in a 'pull over' gesture. This it did, turn signal and all. I hung back a little from Agni as he stepped out, marched forward and stopped at the open window of the Novoz to throw up the customary salute.
"Sergeant Agni, Novodolorsk Reapers," he snapped. "Your licence and identification please."
A fistful of documents were held out to him, and he began to flick through them while I looked at the lich sitting in the back. This lich was smartly dressed in a waistcoat and cravat, as if he were on the way to an upscale but slighly louche lichgravy party. He stared straight ahead, seemingly avoiding my gaze through the window. I was silently amused by his apparent embarrassment, if a little offended by his refusal to acknowledge the uniformed lichnik glaring right at him.
"You know this licence is expired?" said Agni, tapping at the laminated licence card as if it were the real offender.
"Only last Pleaseday!" said the driver, a young man in a t-shirt and sunglasses - always an optimistic statement in Novodolor where the weather tended to be consistently grim. "I've had it renewed! Check your records if you want! The new one just hasn't arrived yet!"
"You shouldn't be on the road until it has, you know," said Agni.
While he and the driver got into a minor argument, I continued to admire the composure of the lich in the back. He was, in fact, completely motionless and appeared unresponsive to any kind of stimulus. I slid the baton from my belt and tapped the glass right by his head. Not even a flicker of the eyes. This lich was not unwilling to look at me - he was unable.
"I'll let you off this time," continued Agni as he handed the papers back to the driver. "But I want you to go straight home, understand? And don't get back in this thing until..."
"Hang on," I said, going to the driver's window. "Before you go, I'd like to ask you about your passenger. He doesn't seem..."
"Hey!" Agni suddenly snapped at the driver. "Keep your hands on the wheel, please. No, I said keep your... hey!..."
Agni tried to lunge at the driver but it was too late. The crackle of the car's ignition was followed by an immediate roar of its engine, and Agni was knocked off his feet as the car tore off into the traffic in a cloud of dust. To his credit he managed to get up and leap back into his own patrol car before I - already in the driver's seat - floored the accelerator and took off after the fleeing suspect. It had been a long time since I chased down anyone on the road without the assistance of a zombot, and this secondment was suddenly giving me a harder re-introduction to the art than I expected. In Novodolorsk, as in most cities of the Lichnina where the undead renunciation of sleep made every hour rush hour, the density of traffic I had to weave through demanded my full concentration. Worse still, I was accustomed to powering through it in the epitome of biodiesel-guzzling horsepower that was the lichnik staff car - all I had now was a beaten-up old Reaper job. Every lurch and bump was transmitted through the steering wheel into my shaking hands as I finally caught up with the target, just in time to watch him barrel across an intersection in a squealing turn. I followed him in a tighter curve to close the distance, and as I felt the car rise onto two wheels there was a hearty thud as the traffic zombot for this intersection slammed across the hood, headbutting the windscreen into a maze of cracked glass before disappearing over the roof. I shifted up a gear and drove on.
Agni, who had begun this journey in the seat beside me, had somehow ended up in the back and could be seen holding onto his hat in the rear view mirror as he bounced around. He was saying something, but I wasn't listening. Now I was directly on the tail of the maroon Novoz, making a few tentative nudges of his rear bumper in an attempt to throw him off the road. In the end, at the next intersection, I backed off a little in anticipation of a new oppurtunity; the suspect was apparently oblivious to the emergence of an enormous articulated truck to his right, as he jumped the zombot's baton and roared across the intersection. I was content to let the truck slam into his side, which it duly did - completely destroying the car's front end and sending it spinning across the intersection in a plume of wreckage. The truck - a heavy-duty Hall of Roots affair carrying construction materials - was carried some distance up the road by its own momentum until its zombot driver brought it to a gentle, confused stop.
I was the first to walk over to the remnants of the suspect's car - Agni was busy blowing a whistle and waving his white baton around to organise oncoming traffic into some semblance of order. The damage on the wrecked car was fairly complete - the driver's head had been compressed into a pancake of seeping gore and skull fragments by the flying engine block, which now lay on the back seat next to the motionless lich. The lich was relatively undamaged, unlike his driver who would have been beyond the help of Minarborian medicine even if he were not a breather. But now, at last, the lich appeared to be stirring into motion; it had taken a violent car crash to do it, by the Shrub, but he was moving. Groggily, he turned his head to survey the scene.
"Oh dear..." he rasped. Then he saw me looking at him, and his jaw dropped with the reaction of involuntary terror to which a Lichnik is well accustomed.
"Oh... dear..."
It was interesting to be working in a Hall of Reapers detention block again. Unlike the Lichnik dungeons, where sworn enemies of the necrarchy have their will slowly broken by a Ragdoller who has all the time in the world, the focus of the Reapers was on cleanliness and efficiency. Their customers were, for the most part, minor offenders whose Shrubliness could be redeemed with gentler corrective measures than an eternity in a rotting basement. The cells here were immaculately well-maintained, the lighting was bright and the Reapers were gentle and polite, if a little weary of the constant stream of un-Shrubly characters who passed through their doors. After so long with the Lichniks, it was strange to remember that I had come from this kind of world. Now it all seemed so innocent and toylike to me, given all the things I had seen since.
The officer leading the interrogation - a lich with little pince-nez spectacles, reached over to a box-like device on the table and flicked a switch, causing a small red light to come on. Then he began speaking to it:
"It is sixteen thirty-two hours on Byeday, Summerfall the twenty-first, eleven sixty. The location is Hall of Reapers detention facility number seventeen, Novodolorsk. Can those present please introduce themselves for the recording?"
'Ah yes, I remember,' I thought. 'They actually record interrogations here. How quaint!' I leaned into the speaker of the recording device. "I am Inquisitor Harkavin six eight four zero nine two of the Novodolor Lichnina."
"And I am Inspector Verdi thirty five seventy six of the Hall of Reapers," said the officer. "The subject of today's session is one Albert Hemsworthy, undead, resident at number thirty eight Fishy Rise, Novodolorsk. Can you confirm your presence for the recording, Mister Hemsworthy?"
The lich sitting opposite, still dressed in the blood-spattered silk finery in which he had been plucked from the car wreck, hissed feebly into the recorder. "Umm, yes, I'm here... hello."
"Very good!" smiled Verdi, as if congratulating a preschooler on a particularly vibrant work of crayon. "Now, I understand that at zero nine fourteen hours today, you were a passenger in a car which fled from a routine traffic stop by Sergeant Agni one eight four fifteen of the Hall of Reapers Highway Patrol, who was accompanied by Inquisitor Harkavin here. Can you confirm this?"
Hemsworthy squirmed a little, pondering the implications of this minor answer. Having caught sight of my fixed glare and slow, suggestive nod, he sheepishly pouted. "Yes... yes that is correct, inspector."
"Good," said Verdi. "Now unfortunately your driver is no longer in a condition to give a..."
"Yes about that," Hemsworthy cut in, tugging animatedly at his silk waistcoat. "Would you be able to have this sent away for dry cleaning? The blood staining is quite intolerable."
Verdi wrinkled his brow. "All in good time, Mister Hemsworthy. But first we'd like to know just why the driver fled. We were wondering if you had anything to tell us on that matter."
"Well, every man has his own motivations. I can hardly be expected to know the details of his."
"You didn't know him well, then?"
"Not especially. Only that his name was Timmy."
"Timothy Birch of Girdle Green, Novodolorsk? That's what his papers tell us."
"I wouldn't know, inspector."
"If I may," I cut in, "Mister Birch attempted to flee us when I drew attention to Mister Hemsworthy here, who was in a state of suspended lucidity at the time and was unresponsive to all stimuli. An unusual condition for a lich as well-manicured as he is. I suspect this condition is the real reason behind Mister Birch's flight from us, and that Mister Hemsworthy could do us a great service by explaining the circumstances behind his loss of function."
It was, of course, an understatement. Had Hemsworthy been in the Lichniks' kennel, Shepilov would have had his phylactery in a vise and the case would have been solved an hour ago. But the Reapers had their own methods, and I had to play their game - a game which got deeper when there was a knock at the door, cauting Verdi to jump in irritation. "What is it?" he said.
The door opened and a Reaper sergeant, a young breather, poked his head into the room. "Forgive the interruption, sir, but the lab have found something pretty important?"
"Can it not wait?" said Verdi.
"The lab called for you immediately," said the sergeant.
"Alright, alright," said Verdi, rising to his feet. "Take our detainee back to the cells. And give him some fresh clothes." He reached over to the recorder. "Session suspended at sixteen thirty eight," he said, flicking the switch off and looking sheepishly at me. "Sorry about this, inquisitor."
I waved a hand. "Do what you must, inspector," I said. "I'll be in the cafeteria if you need me, sampling the lich gravy."
Alas, I had only pipetted two vaporous drops of 'Highbloom Dew' lich gravy into my oral cavity when the speaker of an address system crackled overhead:
"Inquisitor Harkavin six eight four zero nine two to the forensic lab, please. I repeat, Harkavin six eight four zero nine two to the forensic lab. Thank you."
It was with some irritation that I proceeded to the laboratory, having only the vaguest recollection of where it was from my Reaper service long ago. On reporting to its lobby I was escorted to a vehicle garage adjoining the laboratory proper, in which I was reunited with the shattered remains of the car I had been chasing. It was as I had left it, complete with the mangled breather corpse which was now beginning to attract flies. Beside the car stood a folding table, and upon that lay a row of packages wrapped in brown paper. One of them had been sliced open and a glittery powder was seeping out of it. Inspector Verdi stood with half a dozen Reapers - breather, lich and Singer alike - looking bemusedly at the items. All of them turned expectantly toward me as I approached.
"What have we here?" I said. "Narcotics?"
"Well," said Inspector Verdi. "That's what we thought. Reaper Rethel here smelled something funny around the rear bumper of the vehicle..." He nodded toward one of his companions, a rather unhandsome Deep Singer with four nostrils the size of walnuts. For all his olfactory ability, I marvelled that he could pick out any smell besides the driver whose remains has been stewing gently in the Summerfall heat all day. "So we opened it up," continued Verdi, "and we found these packages concealed inside. Our lab is fully equipped to test for all controlled substances. The equipment can return a result in minutes. Only one problem..."
"Go on," I said.
"...we ran this substance through it and it wasn't recognised. Well, the spectrometer may have picked something up but the substance amplified its beam and reflected it back. Probably due to all that glitter in it. The machine's sensors were burned out before it could return a result. I've never seen anything like it..."
I stooped over the powder and studied it. 'No,' I thought, 'it can't be.' But the more I studied it, the more it confirmed my suspicion. The glitter consisted of freshly crushed iron filings, only now beginning to acquire the slightest rusty hue. Mixed in with it were shredded particles of a rubbery-looking substance, in roughly equal proportion.
"Reaper Rethel," I muttered without looking up. "What does this substance smell like, exactly? I'm afraid my lich nose can't get around the necrotic stench in the driver's seat."
"It smells like rust, sir," he said. "Oh, and mushrooms."
My head whipped round, causing the onlookers to jump. "Mushrooms? And you're sure of this?"
"It's fungi of some kind, sir, yes," said Rethel.
"A hallucinogen, perhaps?" said Verdi.
"Maybe, but that's not the point." I said. "A hallucinogen wouldn't work on a lich."
There was a ripple of laughter from the assembled Reapers. "You think it's a lich narcotic?" cackled Verdi. "I didn't know such a thing existed!"
"Officially it doesn't," I said. "But some months ago I was briefed on the existence of Wilhelmide. This is the first time I've seen it for real. It's a phylacteric depressant. Also known as an orgone dilutor."
"Orgone energy," muttered Rethel. "That's an old-fashioned word for carnosa, isn't it? I'm sure I heard it on a field woundmending course."
"Correct," I said. "Most famously used for positive carnosa among the living, amplifying the concentration of it by layering living and inanimate matter. It can also be used for the negative carnosa of the undead, by substituting the living matter with unliving matter, such as fungi."
"So where does the narcotic effect come in?" said Verdi.
"It creates an osmotic draw on the phylactery of a lich and dilutes its power. Causes a powerful floating feeling and a sense of energetic harmony. It explains the condition of Mister Hemsworthy without a doubt. The trouble is, too much of it can break the phylacteric field entirely. Hence its prohibition outside the strictest conditions. Only the most accomplished Deathgivers are licensed to produce it or use it."
"So there's a rogue Deathgiver putting it on the streets?" said Verdi. "Now there'd be a scandal."
I frowned at Verdi's casual questioning of the most respected profession in all lichdom. As a traveller on the eternal road of undeath himself, he should have known better. I made a mental note to add this tendency to his Lichnik file while simulataneously formulating an answer to his suggestion. "Dear Shrub no," I said. "It's an easy enough substance to make. It could have been rustled up by anyone. Breather gangs, foreign agents, maybe even Mister Hemsworthy himself. And he's no Deathgiver, I can tell you that."
"Well at least I have line of enquiry to pursue now," said Verdi.
"It pains me to tell you this, inspector," I said, "but the enquiry is no longer yours to pursue at all. Your laboratory work has been most helpful - might I commend Reaper Rethel here - but lich narcotics are, I'm afraid, Lichnik business. By the power vested in me by Her Jolliness' Lichnina, I'll have to take over the investigation. I'm terribly sorry."
I was, in fact, not sorry at all. The Reapers had played their part, and played it well - but before me lay a resumed interrogation of Mr. Hemsworthy, and a case like this needed the most persuasive interrogator possible. Luckily, I knew such an interrogator.
"What slimy deception got you past the Deathgivers!?" roared Shepilov, leaning over the table into Mr. Hemsworthy's trembling undead face. "They gave your the rites of lichdom out of the Shrubliness of their absent hearts, and this is how you repay society!? By getting off your face on Wilhelmide!? Dear sweet Minarbor, how can a candiate zombot like you look yourself in the mirror!?"
"Please, sir," croaked Hemsworthy, glancing down at his silk cravat which was now buried in Shepilov's clenched fist. "The fabric is very delicate..."
"Oh is it now?" hissed Shepilov. He gave it a sharp tug, and a rasp of tearing fabric could be heard. "So it is!" he said. "I wonder if this fancy waistcoat of yours rips too..."
Beside me sat Inspector Verdi, who I had invited to the Lichniks' Kennel as a consolation for stealing his case, and in return for letting me sit in on his interrogation. He looked at me in alarm as Shepilov continued to rough up Mr. Hemsworthy, and I quietly congratulated myself on having the foresight to make the poor Reaper sign a non-disclosure document before I let him in. The world of the Lichniks was, to say the least, unfamiliar to him.
Shepilov had now moved to Mr. Hemsworthy's side of the table and was standing directly over him. Assisted by this motivating presence, I put forth a question:
"What exactly is your occupation, Mister Hemsworthy?"
"I... I..." stuttered Hemsworthy, involuntarily glancing at Shepilov stood over him. "...I am a lich of leisure, sir."
A lich of leisure. No rare thing in a realm where all but the most cerebral work is done by zombots. "And what are your leisurely pursuits, exactly?" I asked. "Aside from indulgence in controlled narcotics, that is."
Hemsworthy squirmed, as he did at every reminder of his shameful habit. "I paint... pictures," he said. "Landscapes mainly. No commissions. Just for my own enlightenment. Also I am involved with a thespian group at..."
Here he paused, suddenly mindful of the social annihilation he would suffer when the Lichniks approached said group to enquire about him. A sharp kick to his ankle by Shepilov's jackboot prompted him to spit out the rest. "...at Novodolorsk Repertory Theatre number three." His gaze sank as he said it.
"I thought your kind were content with the Apsinthos lich gravy," I said. "The old green fairy, to summon your creative muses. Was that brew not hard enough for you? What possessed you to go to Wilhelmide, of all things?"
"I only wanted to prove myself!" rasped Hemsworthy. "Everyone else was so full of good ideas, such insights... the kind that can only sprout from complete inner peace. But the gravy wasn't doing it for me. My stage work hit a plateau. And my paintings began to feel.. sub-standard..."
"So you turned to one of them for something a little stronger?"
"At the theatre? Oh Shrub no... they wouldn't approve. Wouldn't approve at all."
"So?" I said. "Where did you get it?"
"From Timmy, of course!"
"From Mister Birch? No you did not. We have searched his house, and the houses of his family. He was only a courier who escorted customers to the supplier. Unfortunately driving you home caused him to be killed, so instead we have to ask you who that supplier was."
"I didn't mean for him to die..."
Shepilov grabbed Hemsworthy's cravat and ripped it clean off his collar, causing him to honk in fright. "Don't dodge the question," he growled. "Who... did you get... the Wilhelmide from? Hm?"
"But they said..." squeaked Hemsworthy, "...they said nothing good would come of me if I told anyone who..."
He was interrupted by cackles of laughter from Shepilov, who looked at me and Verdi and nodded back to Hemsworthy. "Are you hearing this?" he chuckled. Then he sat beside Hemsworthy, draped a thick gloved arm around him and leaned into his ear. "Mister Hemsworthy, my dear fellow," he said, "Bad things may well come of you out there, but they are as nothing compared to what you will experience in here if you continue to evade our questions. Do you understand?"
Hemsworthy, leaning as far away from Shepilov's uncomfortable proximity as he could, only gave a feeble nod.
"You will find it helps," growled Shepilov with a mischievous grin, "If you consider yourself compost already. Flushed of all preservative, macerated, turned into the ground. A lich no more. If, hypothetically, you were to achieve anything short of that... it would be a bonus, would it not?" Shepilov emphasised his point by a brotherly shake of Hemsworthy's shoulders, sufficiently violent to emit a loud cartaliginous crack. "Eh?"
Hemsworthy, now trembling harder then ever, nodded again. Nor was he the only lich in the room to be shaken; in the corner of my gaze I watched Inspector Verdi conceal his own shuddering hands under the table.
It was in fairly short order that Hemsworthy led us to a storage shed belonging to Olivio Purgattori and Jerome Steedshod, two young breathers on a ticket to lichdom who had been expelled from the necrophysics faculty at the University of &zeter for an insufficient standard of Latin in the notation of ritual processes. They were, in essence, dropouts who had put the limited knowledge gained during their studies to illicit uses in an attempt to regain some kind of social standing in the wake of their rejection. After their storage shed was raided with all its Wilhelmide-producing paraphernalia, the Novodolorsk Lichniks duly swooped on their shared condo apartment in the south of the city where they were plucked from their beds, unable to offer any resistance on account of painful lich gravy hangovers they were suffering at the time. Steedshod did not survive his time in the care of the Novodolorsk Kennel Ragdoller, and Purgattori was eventually sentenced to an indefinite period of religious re-orientation at the Shrubly Shade correctional colony in Whisperwood.
Albert Hemsworthy, the naive lich of stage and easel who had become acquainted with the two dropouts on a train from &zeter to Novodolorsk, was sentenced to a period of rehabilitation at the Novodolorsk Sanatorium. He was, I heard, able to kick his Wilhelmide habit with the help of specialists from the Hall of Prunings and eventually granted his freedom. His social standing in the Lichnina was, however, in ruins, and he elected to emigrate to Leichenberg upon his release.
Inspector Verdi had the good grace to thank me for enlightening him with an experience of Lichnik procedures, although he was doubtful they would be in any way applicable among the Reapers. My experience with him, however, did lead to the rare achievement of getting the Houndmaster to agree with a suggestion I had made; namely that the Novodolorsk Kennel should have a narcotics testing lab as the Reapers had; one customised for undead substances. Thus the Novodolorsk Kennel gained the first fast-track Wilhelmide testing facility in all the Lichnina, before even Sansabury. The Houndmaster took all the credit for the idea, of course.
As for Sergeant Agni? The bastard pulled me over just last week, for a loose hubcap.
