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  Then Beatrice noticed something which she didn’t at all expect.

  “What are these marks?”

  “The marks on his body?” The doctor seemed surprised by her question. “Leech bites.”

  “Why would he have leech bites all over his body?”

  “Evidently, someone covered him with leeches.”

  “Do you have the leeches?”

  “No.”

  “Is there any chance that the leeches could have killed him?”

  “No.”

  “Taken his eyes?”

  “Absolutely not. Something...someone else did that. They were scooped out.”

  Beatrice raised an eyebrow, prompting the doctor to explain what she meant.

  “Like with a spoon.”

  “So something else is the cause of death.” It wasn’t a question. It was an attempt to steer the discussion away from the boy’s face. Beatrice felt a little queasy just thinking about how that would happen.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can you find out what?”

  “Find out… How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Inspect the body. Something.”

  “You want me to perform an autopsy?”

  “A what?”

  “An autopsy. It’s what medical examiners used to do when they received a corpse, but no one has done an autopsy in years. Decades.”

  “Yes. An autopsy. To find out what caused the boy’s death. Pay particular attention to the boy’s bodily fluids, in case someone or something on the platform poisoned him. Test his blood.”

  “Excuse me, but what kind of doctor do you think I am?”

  “The Alpine’s doctor.”

  “And what does that mean to you?”

  “You are responsible for all matters aboard this platform of a medical nature.” Beatrice didn’t like how the doctor was testing her skills.

  “Beatrice, this is an oil rig. I deal with burns and cuts. The occasional concussion. I tell Roughnecks to limit their exposure to noxious chemicals and I tell the Squatters to maybe go outside once in awhile. When someone comes to me because their head is pulsating, I tell them to drink some tea and sit in a quiet room. I have never done an autopsy. What makes you even think that I have the equipment needed to perform that kind of procedure in this place?”

  “You’re not the only one here that has to do something she knows nothing about. Are you saying that you can't do it?”

  “I am telling you that I’m a doctor. Not a chemist. Certainly not a forensic scientist. No one on this platform is equipped to perform an autopsy, much less test someone’s blood for some unknown toxin. I doubt that anyone in the entire world can do what Sycamore expects us to do.”

  “So there is nothing that you can do?”

  “If you could tell me what to look for, then maybe I can see if it’s there. There are tens of thousands of possible chemical combinations, any number of which I may or may not find in this boy's body. This isn't magic and I don't have much equipment. Civilization took a few huge steps backwards after the continents burned. Let me assure you that medicine took some of the biggest.”

  “This is important. I need you to do what you can. Figure it out.”

  Dr. Gossamer sighed. “I don’t want this mystery hanging over my head any more than you do, Beatrice. I have some books. Maybe I can figure out some way to test his blood for some of the more common chemicals that we use on the rig. It's a place to start. I can't make any promises and I doubt that I can manage anything beyond that.”

  “Very well. Do what you can. Just do it. Fast. Both of us are out of our element here, but Sycamore doesn't care. He expects answers.”

  “Such as the boy's name?”

  “His what?”

  “Maybe you would like to tell Sycamore the boy's name.”

  “You know this child?”

  “He was a patient. His name is Hector. He lived in one of the lower pods.”

  “Hector. Fine. Is there anything important about the boy's eyes that you should tell me?”

  “He used to have two of them.”

  “Could the trauma to the boy’s eyes be the cause?”

  “Unlikely. That would make him blind. Not dead. He didn’t bleed to death from his eye sockets, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  The cause of death may not be immediately known, but something had to cause the boy’s death. Beatrice was sure that she could figure out what caused his death, or at least confident enough that Dr. Gossamer would find some answers to the problem, despite her reservations. Then maybe Beatrice could determine who it was that actually killed the boy. The boy didn’t have any marks from a knife or a pipe or any other common object. He wasn’t drowned. His body wasn’t anywhere near the main derrick or any of the chemicals stored on the surface, though the body could have been moved.

  Anything could have happened, unnoticed, after the explosion or during the riots. This led her to believe that a poison was the most likely cause. Suppose the boy wasn’t poisoned by inhaling some chemical on the surface, and suppose that his body wasn’t moved to the lower corridor. Suppose…suppose…that would mean that he had to be poisoned in the corridor…

  “Is there anything else?”

  “What?” The Braided Woman looked up at the doctor. The doctor interrupted her train of thought. She felt like she was on to something. “Yes, there is. How many syringes are on the platform?”

  “The supply of syringes is in a cabinet over there,” Dr. Gossamer said, nodding to the far side of the medical bay. “I have a supply of eighty.”

  “Just eighty?”

  “Just eighty. We have to sterilize them after each use. Tedious work, and the process isn’t perfect, but it is necessary. We can’t exactly make any more needles. That kind of manufacturing prowess doesn’t exist anymore, and if it did exist, it wouldn’t exist here. We would have to wait months, years, between shipments from our trading partners.”

  “Who else has access to them?”

  “Just me, really. A handful of nurses. The place is unlocked only when I’m here.”

  “And you’ve been here all night?”

  “Ever since the explosion. I haven't left.”

  “Are there any syringes missing?”

  “I haven’t checked. You are free to inspect the cabinet if you like.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  Beatrice turned towards the cabinet while Dr. Gossamer returned the rolling bed to its freezer. It would be too much to hope for, Beatrice thought, a missing syringe from the doctor. How to proceed? Confirm that a syringe is missing and then... Beatrice stopped short at the cabinet.

  “Doctor?”

  “Yes?’

  “Does anyone else have access to this cabinet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s unlocked.”

  “Of course it’s unlocked. Nothing here is locked. Where do you think I would get locks?”

  “So anyone could have pulled a syringe? Or pulled a syringe and put it back?”

  Dr. Gossamer turned to Beatrice. “I suppose so.”

  “Who has been in here recently?” Beatrice realized it was a silly question as she looked out over the medical bay to see dozens of bodies. Some were sprawled out on the few beds, others prostrate on the medical bay’s floor. The place was a mess from the earlier explosions. There was no way to pinpoint who had been here.

  Dr. Gossamer laughed. “Who hasn’t?”

  Beatrice opened the cabinet. There were ten flat cases with eight syringes in each. The boxes looked worn, but the syringes were there, each in its place. If the boy was murdered with a syringe, then maybe it was someone that had came to medical bay, left with the syringe, and then returned.

  Dr. Gossamer spoke up. “You know, just because all of my syringes are accounted for doesn’t mean that some other occupant doesn’t have one. Anyone on this place could have a medical kit for their own purposes.”

>   The doctor was right, Beatrice had to admit.

  “But I will see if there are any injection marks on the boy’s body,” the doctor conceded. “That might give you something to work with.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  Fifteen minutes into her investigation and Beatrice already felt defeated. She didn’t have anything close to a cause of death, much less a suspect. If the only doctor on this platform wasn’t likely to come up with anything that would help, then this whole undertaking would be a waste of time. Maybe she should just march right into Sycamore’s office and tell him that he should try to solve his own problems. She might as well just swim to the bottom of the ocean right then and there. At least that was a problem she knew something about.

  What she did have so far? Trauma to the boy’s eye sockets. It’s gross but had nothing to do with the cause of death, even if someone inflicted that injury on the boy at around the same time. It’s not as though there were any other murders on the platform with a similar identifying feature. Eyes or no eyes, she had to solve the boy’s murder. The platform was in total disarray when the Walrus found the body. Beatrice still didn’t have a precise time of death. She couldn’t account for everyone on the platform. Even the Mousy Girl couldn’t account for all of the medical supplies the people here might have stashed away.

  She could conceivably eliminate suspects whose movements could be verified, but she couldn’t account for everyone. There were too many stragglers. Hundreds of them. Too few of them served any meaningful purpose in this forsaken place.

  It was late evening already. Beatrice was exhausted.

  The whole platform was on high alert ever since the previous night’s madness. Through all of that, she didn’t have a chance to rest, to shut her eyes. She felt a stifled numbness in her face. But she couldn’t rest now. The storm would eventually pass, and with it, the possibility that the murderer could flee on the next boat that passed through. She had to make whatever progress she could in the investigation before the witnesses and the evidence disappeared. If she failed, then her future on the platform would fail with her.

  So what did she know? An explosion devastated the surface of the platform, throttling everyone out of their pods. Injured Roughnecks were dragged to the medical bay, on the western edge of the platform. Sometime in the early afternoon, the Walrus found the boy’s body in the lower corridors, on the eastern side of the platform. Some of the chairs were pushed to the side or had fallen over, but nothing that would suggest a struggle.

  Except the leeches. She had no idea what those meant.

  Why the eyes? What kind of monster would do that to a boy’s eyes? What was the reason or impulse behind that? Beatrice had no idea. That was something she would have to return to later. Sycamore had told her about some of the more sadistic stories that occurred on the platform, but there was always some mad logic to that history, something that drove people to desperation and insanity. The platform wasn’t even a full day removed from the explosion on the main deck. Hell, pretty much anything about this place could trigger a stir-crazy madness that would turn its people on each other, even resort to such gruesome tactics for sheer pleasure.

  What did she have?

  There was the Walrus. However, all he did was trip on the boy's body in the dark. It could have been anyone. Actually, for all she knew, someone else could have stumbled on the boy's body before the Walrus and neglected to tell anyone out of sheer apathy. Maybe it was for the best that someone as enterprising as Walter Turpentine came across the boy when he did.

  Anything else?

  Beatrice wanted to focus on identifying the cause of death. At the moment, that meant a syringe. If the syringe came from the medical bay, and was returned to the medical bay after, then whoever killed the boy had to move between the two locations, locations that were at two opposite ends of the platform. That’s not a quick walk. It took her fifteen minutes to travel from Sycamore’s office to the medical bay itself, wandering through all of the narrow corridors on the platform. No one could do anything efficiently in the lower bowels of this place. This meant something, but what? Were there witnesses? Maybe, if some occupant went back and forth, then that person would have been seen. Or was it that there weren’t likely to be any witnesses? If everyone’s attention was focused on the medical bay for the injured people from the surface, then some of the other sections of the platform would have been emptied. Could she know this for sure? No. But it did allow her to make some logical assumption about all of this. If someone took the boy to the lower corridor because they wouldn’t be seen, then they wouldn’t risk the maze to the medical bay.

  Dr. Gossamer was on to something. The syringe didn’t come from the medical bay. Someone else on the platform had access to that kind of medical supply. Maybe she could figure out whom. Of course, none of this made any difference if the boy was not actually injected with a poison. But it was a place to start. He obviously wasn’t clubbed over the head with a wrench. Maybe someone on the platform was seen having fresh eyeballs in their soup.

  There was the lower corridor where the Walrus found the boy. Maybe there was some clue left behind. That made some sense.

  There was also the boy's pod. She would have to see if there was anything there that might point her in the right direction.

  Beatrice couldn't believe it. The boy's pod. The boy's parents. The thought smacked her in the forehead. Do they know? It’s only been a few hours. They might not even know. Beatrice had no idea who the boy's parents were. For all she knew, they were waiting in line for the daily rations while someone else murdered their child. She cringed at the thought.

  “Actually,” Dr. Gossamer chimed in, “I do have a small centrifuge in the pod. If it still works, I could use that on some of the boy’s blood and separate out the compounds. I can’t make any promises, but I might be able to isolate something that shouldn’t be there.”

  This was the second time that the doctor interrupted her train of thought just when she was on to something. “I thought that you weren’t a chemist?”

  “I’m not. I’m making this up just as much as you are. By the way, when you see Vector, please tell him to come up here. I need to see him.”

  “Vector?”

  “Yes, Vector. Hector’s brother.”

  “Hector has a brother?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SAGE

  In the lower levels, occupants prayed to God to ferry them safely from the Alpine. Sage crossed a group of about twenty worshipers crowded into a small corridor. They were kneeling, shoulder to shoulder, and completely blocking access to the passageway. Bare from the waist up, their lower attire was pale, worn and damp from the surges of incoming water. They were flagellating themselves as penance and worship with thin blades attached to a light chain, an ancient custom from before the Second Plagues and the High Fires.

  Many people sought forgiveness and repentance. The pattern was straightforward: they recited a short chant, and then each worshipper took a chain, flicked it up and over their shoulders, and whipped themselves twice on the back, each time inflicting slim sharp punctures with the blades. Their backs were moist, preventing the blood from drying. They were streaked with bright red slashes of discolored scars from prior lashings. The language was alien to Sage, but their purpose was plain and understood.

  They were obviously anxious, agitated in their movements.

  It wasn't at all like Naamah's congregation.

  The chants were percussive lines of resonant tones that vibrated in deafening echoes. She intuitively knew that it was best to avoid interrupting their worship. That couldn’t lead to anything helpful. It was common knowledge that some of these groups kept bodyguards on hand, armed with swords. Some were Old World relics. Rusted antiques that couldn’t cut through manatee butter. Most were makeshift pieces of scrap metal. Shaped and sharpened into something that would be more useful as a club than a slashing weapon. She circled around another network of stairs and ladders and hatche
s.

  Sage opened the door to the platform’s bath house, a large towel wrapped around her body.

  A solar-cell pool provided electricity for a water heater, but the water returned to its frigid state once the sun set. Even though the sun was setting, there might still be enough power to produce some lukewarm water.

  Warm or not, she desperately needed a bath. She stunk like a dead horse. Stupid fights in the upper corridors.

  All pods were outfitted with a stainless steel sink and shared toilets on each level, but the only baths on the entire platform were in the old locker rooms. The Alpine used to have two baths, facilities from when the platform was a working rig, but one of the rooms had been converted into a chemical and food processing plant, crowded with vats and other equipment to process the algae. The place was lit with the same bioluminescence as the lower levels. However, unlike the neon glow that splashed against the corridor walls, the water vapor from the baths gave the air itself a green discoloration.

  Rows of brass faucets and small tubs lined the near wall. Shower heads ran along the far end with tiled ledges for sitting. The slight difference in temperature generated wafting clouds of steam. The bath’s filtered waters were an ideal decompression from the exhaustion outside or the suffocation from within the Alpine itself. In this case, they were a necessary reprieve from the madness in the platform’s corridors.

  Feret often mocked her for bothering with the baths. “Little girl has to take a dainty bath, huh? Where do you think we are? Bathing ourselves because our pits get a wee smelly. Why bathe when you could simply strip down during the next rain? It rains often enough as it is, and the acids will wash away anything a little girl wouldn’t want on her skin.”