The Forever Drug Read Free Page B

sympathy and turned back to her computer.
    I slunk down the hall to Raymond's office. I found the sergeant leaning back in his chair, smoking a cigarette. The smoke from it stung my nostrils.
    The sergeant was big for a human, over two meters tall, with piercing blue eyes and hair that, despite his angry denials, was going gray at the temples. He wore civilian clothes—a conservative, crisply pressed business suit—but with an air of authority that suggested he was used to wearing a uniform.
    With a twitch of his finger, he used telekinesis to direct one of the chips on his desk into his computer. Then he used the same spell to push a datapad toward me. Spirits forbid he should actually have to hand me something. He might accidentally touch a hand that was really a paw ...
    I forced myself to listen closely to the sergeant's instructions.
    "This is the report our harbor patrol officers just sent in," he said. "You can use the datapad to scan it on your way out to the site. The cat's been making a pest of itself, getting aboard boats and causing passengers and crew to jump overboard. It's currently aboard a yacht named the Party Animal ." He rolled his eyes at the irony of the name. "Witnesses report that the cat was wet, as if it had fallen into the ocean itself. And there's nothing meaner than a wet cat. Except maybe a rabid dog..
    He glanced up, waited for a reaction, but I didn't give him the satisfaction.
    "So far," he continued, "this complaint is only at the nuisance level. But if that cat forces someone overboard who doesn't know how to swim ..."
    I filled in the blank: "Homicide."
    "Hardly." The sergeant looked at me as if I was an idiot. "This is a dumb animal we're talking about. It's just following its instincts. You might as well put a house cat on trial for murdering mice." His steel-blue eyes fixed me with a stare and acrid-smelling cigarette smoke puffed out of his mouth, punctuating his words. "Remember, Romulus, you're not going out there to arrest a criminal. You're doing animal containment. Now scan that report, grab the hover, and get to it. Let's cage that cat and send the little para back to Europe, where it belongs."
    "Right." I stifled the growl that was forming in my throat. The "dumb animal" crack had been deliberate, as had the comment about putting paras back where they belonged. But I held my anger in check, once again. Sergeant Raymond was just looking for an excuse to send me back to the K9 patrol. I didn't want to give him one.
    "How much do I get for this one?" I asked.
    "Same as for the last. Two hundred and fifty nuyen on delivery."
    "What about the corpselight?" I asked. "Do I get that assignment as well?"
    "The what?"
    "The tentacled para—the one that killed three people in the North End parking garage tonight. I can track it. I know its scent."
    "So that's what it was," the sergeant said. I could see he was impressed by the fact that I'd identified it. But only for a moment. "Uh-uh. That's way out of your league, boy. Stick to what you know best: chasing cats."
    He looked down at his desk, dismissing me.
    I jogged down to the parking garage, using the datapad to listen to the information on the chip Raymond had given me. I reviewed the harbor patrol officers' report, watching images of wet and shivering people as they described how they'd suddenly felt an overwhelming compulsion to climb over the ship's railing and jump into the sea. Those who'd gone for a midnight swim included three deckhands from a fish boat and the pilot of a tug, but most of those picked up by the harbor patrol were passengers aboard a "booze cruiser"—a yacht chartered by a wedding party to tour the harbor at night. Even the bride had gone overboard; her long white dress now sodden, its bedraggled lace covered with a sheen of oil from the dirty harbor water. Talk about a memorable honeymoon.
    That was where the blackberry cat had last been sighted: aboard the rent-a-yacht. Which, according to the report, was