Matterpunk (Twinmaker)

The Missing Metatarsals

The moment I stepped from the booth and saw Inspector Forest waiting for me, I knew something was up.

"You're wearing your inscrutable face," I told him.

"This is my usual face."

His head swiveled to track me as we walked in lockstep through security. A birth defect called Möbius syndrome inherited from distant Nepalese ancestors left him with underdeveloped VI and VII cranial nerves, so he can't blink, bite or form expressions without the help of a series of tiny implants. My girlfriend Billie is a muscle artist, and she's tweaked the inspector's presets a couple of times, giving him conscious control of his face, but that's not the same as the real thing. Not the same at all.

"I would like your perspective on a rather interesting situation, if you have time."

"Sure." I was a peacekeeper not for the status, but for a chance to crack cases with the legendary PK Forest. "What's up?"

"A theft."

"I didn't think data crime was your bag."

"This has nothing to do with data."

"Someone actually stole something?"

"So it seems." One eyelid drooped, very precisely. "Let me get my coat and we will be on our way."

#

It was like the inspector to wear a coat when there was no need to go outside. Peacekeeper HQ was in the New York Archipelago that week, and the crime had occurred in Washington D.C., so we took an internal booth and stepped into a mahogany foyer that left me feeling as though I'd moved in time as well as space.

My augmented reality lenses synced with the Air on arrival, giving me a brief rundown of our new location. It was the home of a private collection belonging to a Mister Antoine Bayazati, but what the collection consisted of, exactly, the Air didn't say. Antiques, I guessed, judging by the foyer. I was close.

"PK Forest." A smartly-dressed Caucasian woman stepped out of a doorway to greet us, her hand outstretched to take the inspector's in a firm grip.

"This is my assistant, PK Sargent."

I took the woman's hand in turn, noting green eyes that danced away too quickly, several strands of hair that had sprung free of a tight, auburn bun, and a not unpleasant smell of dust. The fingernail of her thumb was bitten short, her palm faintly damp.

"Diana Scullen, curator of Mister Bayazati's collection," she told me. "Please, this way."

She led us through a series of dimly lit corridors, heels inaudible on thick, burgundy carpet. I examined a series of framed pictures as they swept past, expecting the usual portraits or landscapes, but they were in fact old paintings of dinosaurs. Their proportions were off, and everyone knows that T. Rex ran with its body parallel to the ground rather than upright like a kangaroo.

"Mister Bayazati is an eminent dinophiliac," the inspector said, noting my interest.

"Is that a word?"

"Most would say preeminent," said Scullen, waving us ahead of her through a double door. The office beyond left no doubt of the owner's opinion regarding the prefix.

Mister Bayazati had a crown of curly gray hair that contrasted magisterially with his black skin. The tallest person in the room by almost a full head, followed by me, Scullen and Inspector Forest, he loomed in a blue three-piece suit over an enormous, leather-topped desk.

"Good of you to come," he said in a voice that was high-pitched with anxiety. He didn't offer us a seat, but he didn't sit himself so I supposed that wasn't impolite. "I'm desperate."