Earth Hour Read Free

the ice.
    Above the screaming from outside and the peal of alarms came the sound of jets. A police VTOL descended on the plaza, downdraft blowing tables away like litter in a breeze. The side opened and a cop, visored and armored, leapt out and sprinted across.
    Angus stood up, blood-drenched from head to foot, knife in hand, arms wrapped awkwardly around the two ice buckets, from which the victims’ hair and foreheads grotesquely protruded.
    The copper halted in the doorway, taking in the scene in about a second.
    “Well done, mate,” he said. He reached out for the buckets. “Quick thinking. Now let’s get these people to hospital.”

    Monstrous, sticky with blood, Angus crossed the street and stood in the alleyway at a barrier of black-and-yellow crime-scene tape. Backtracking the darts’ trajectory had been the work of moments for the second cop out of the VTOL: even minutes after the attack, the lines in the smart soot had glowed like vapor trails in any enhanced gaze. An investigator in an isolation suit lifted the crossbow with gloved reverent hands. Cat-sized sniffing devices stalked about, extending sensors and sampling pads.
    “What’s with the bicycle wheels?” Angus asked, pointing.
    “Surplus to requirements,” the investigator said, standing up, holding the crossbow. She turned it over and around. “Collapsible bike, pre-grown tubular wood, synthetic. See, the handlebars form the bow, the crossbar the stock, the saddle the shoulder piece, the chain and pedal the winding mechanism, and the brake cable is the string. The darts were stashed inside one of the pieces.”
    “Seen that trick before?”
    “Yeah, it’s a hunting model.”
    “People go hunting on bicycles?”
    “It’s a sport.” She laughed. “Offended any hunters lately?”
    Angus wished he could see her face. He liked her voice.
    “I offend a lot of people.”
    The investigator’s head tilted. “Oh. So you do. Lord Valtos, huh?”
    “Just call me—“ He remembered what had happened to the last person he’d said that to, then decided not to be superstitious. “Just call me Angus. Angus Cameron.”
    “Whatever.” She pulled off her hood and shook out her hair. “Fuck.” She looked disgustedly at the cat things. “No traces. No surprise. Probably a spray job. You know, plastic skin? Even distorts the smart dust readings and street cam footage.”
    “You can do that?”
    “Sure. It’s expensive.” She gave him a look. “I guess you’re worth it.”
    Angus shrugged. “I’m rich, but my enemies are richer.”
    “So you’re in deep shit.”
    “Only if they’re smarter as well as richer, which I doubt.”
    “If you’re smart, you’ll not walk back to the hotel.”
    He took the hint, and the lift. They shrouded him in plastic for it, so the blood wouldn’t get on the seats.

    The reaction caught up with Angus as soon as the hotel room door closed behind him. He rushed to the bathroom and vomited. Shaking, he stripped off. As he emptied his pockets before throwing the clothes in the basket he found he’d picked up Glenda’s lighter and cigarette pack. He put them to one side and showered. Afterwards he sat in a bathrobe on the balcony, sipping malt on an empty stomach and chain-smoking Glenda’s remaining cigarettes. She wouldn’t be needing these for a few months. By then she might not even want them–the hospital would no doubt throw in a fix for her addiction, at least on the physical level, as it regrew her body and repaired her brain. Angus’s earlier celebratory cigarillo had left him with a craving, and for the moment he indulged it. He’d take something to cure it in the morning.
    When he felt steady enough, he closed his eyes and looked at the news. He found himself a prominent item on it. Spokespersons for various Green and Aboriginal coalitions had already disclaimed responsibility and deplored the attempt on his life. At this moment a sheepish representative of a nuclear-waste-handling company