Part two: The Middle
CHAPTER ONE
The green-blue phosphorescence of the streetlight cast lilting shadows across the length of Salter Street. The street was nearly deserted, most shoppers having headed home by now, as all the shops in this area of Millers rest shut at around 6:00. The only real activity continuing was in the office blocks, as the workers on the swing-shift finished their last cup of coffee before getting down to work. The coffee the workers drank bore little resemblance to the brew enjoyed by most humans. Caterpillar coffee was made by distilling the juices from the fresh berries, not drying, grinding and boiling them. This meant that whilst the coffee still had caffeine in it, in fact had around fifteen times the caffeine of our coffee, the tannin was removed. The result was a clear, colourless distillate which was re-heated, and could also have sugars added as flavouring. Caterpillars did not drink tea, as the original workers and residents on the Ceres space station were South American, and so were more used to the drinking of coffee. The only Indian and Chinese crops grown in the hydroponics plant were some very interesting poppies, which aroused a lot of interest in the hydroponics gardens, and subsequently led to the arrest of the chief hydroponics engineer, on charges of production of opium, with intent to supply.
Walking in a manner which suggested promenading down the length of Salter Street was a large and well built aphid, one almost as tall as a caterpillar, albeit a short caterpillar. The aphid was wearing a dark suit, expensive enough for the owner's bad taste to go from normal bad taste into the realms of the flamboyant. The suit seemed to scream at passers by, "Look at me! The man wearing me has enough money to buy a Cocoon-silk shirt, a genuine Ravensgate jacket, and a David Cook kilt15 , and he chooses these ones! OK, they're expensive, admittedly they're well tailored, but they're horrible!". The suit was, indeed, horrible, but the owner would never ever be told this. Nico Felattii was a powerful aphid, one with enough power and money to buy very expensive clothes - in fact ones made from caterpillar silk, which was by now as rare as finding human clothes knitted from hair - but without enough common sense to choose ones that matched, or were at all suited. The suit clashed like a civil war. The colour were mismatched to the point of being painful to look at, the patterns gave people a headache to look at, the net effect was a circus clown as designed by a colour blind Jean Paul Gaultier.
Not that anyone would ever tell him this. Felattii was high enough up in Banderas that no-one would insult anything about him, or his appearance, so he wandered around like an aphid Emperor, resplendent in his new clothes. The jacket was a pattern of iridescent luminous leaves, that spelt out Felattii's name when seen from the right angle. The trousers were blue, patterned with tight orange pinstripes, crossed horizontally every two inches with rainbow colours, the pinstripe sweeping to the side as the line crossed it, giving the trousers the appearance of a psychedelic Bakewell tart. The shirt itself was decent enough, silver outlined hexagons, patterning a black background, the threads produced in black and silver, not dyed, but it was a shirt designed to be worn loosely. Felattii had had his shirt tailored to be chitin-tight, in the mistaken belief that he had a well built body, and in one respect he had, but his body was well built like a steel foundry was well built, in other words, not for its looks. The only reason that people did not burst out laughing in the street, and children did not run away crying, when faced with this apparition, was that Felattii's aides had persuaded him to wear a long black raincoat when he went out, so he did not get his lovely suit wet. Felattii agreed to this, but topped it off with a wide-brimmed black hat, festooned with preserved scarlet petals from a fuchsia, like the plumes in a knight's helmet. Felattii continued his progress along the street, thinking he looked like the king of the world, and looking more like a wounded crow.
Felattii was not going to an office, he was heading home. Many in Banderas kept their home address very well hidden, knowing that many anti-equality groups would consider the early death of prominent members of Banderas to be a very good thing, but Felattii was not one to hide himself away, or worry about his safety. Felattii was, for reasons best known to himself, convinced that he was well liked, and so made no secret of his home address, a large house in the Yamaha Hills estate. The only concessions made to security by this ridiculously attired aphid was a group of eight Banderas security guards positioned at various locations in the house. After an uneventful limousine ride, he arrived at the outer gates of his home. Leaving his limousine, and dismissing the chauffeur and boduguards for the night, Felattii walked through his garden. Even at night, he found the garden beautiful. Specially imported plants from at far away as Tanmouth and Mendip's Pass were arranged in elegant displays. It is worth noting here that one reason for the tasteful nature of Felattii's garden was that he left the design and care of the garden to his staff. Stopping to admire a tiger-reed which was normally found in Wirral Bridge, he wondered why Antoine, his head gardener, wasn't around this evening. This thought led to wondering why Emile, his butler, hadn't met him at the gate. In truth, he hadn't seen anyone since arriving back at the house. For a long paranoid moment he froze, convinced that there would be a high-power Tazer aimed at the back of his head, waiting for a possibility to burn him to a crisp. When no such discharge of energy came, he relaxed slightly, but not so much that his progress towards the house was not swift and accompanied by a terrified whimper.
Inside the house, the lights were on, everything seemed normal, except that the place was totally deserted. Felattii began to feel dismissing the bodyguards was a big, big mistake. He considered calling for Emile, just to see if there were anyone around, but decided that if there were intruders, the last thing he wanted was to alert them to his presence. He crept slowly up the stairs, treading as lightly as he could, and nearly fainting with terror every time the stairs creaked. Finally he reached the upstairs landing, a gallery that overlooked his entrance hall. From this vantage point he nervously scanned the area for assassins and thugs with murderous intent. For the first time in his life, he became painfully aware of the fact that he was a target. Such thoughts had never crossed his mind before and came as quite a shock, not just from the 'somebody is trying to kill me' point of view, but also from the 'maybe they don't all love me' angle. This was such an alien idea to him that he pushed it out of his mind and concentrated on finding his way to safety. The safest place he could think of was his office, where he kept, by insistence of his security people, a tazer pistol, and where there was a telephone to call for help. Everything was going to be all right.
Upon reaching his office, Felattii was struck by the paranoia that there might be someone inside. He opened the door millimetre by millimetre, looking around the room as thoroughly as he could. After opening the door enough to reach inside, he reached ever so slowly into the room, flicked the lights on and withdrew his hand as if he'd been given an electric shock. Light bathed the room, revealing no brutes with coshes waiting to stove his head in, no tripwires waiting to bring him to the ground, just a standard unthreatening office. Opening the door wider, he began to feel calmer. He walked into his office, letting out a sigh of relief.
"We need to talk," a voice cut through the silence, inches from his ear.
Felattii tried to spin around to face this unexpected intrusion, but a strong Caterpillar hand shot up from behind him and covered his mouth. The caterpillar's other arm twisted Felattii's right arm into a half-nelson, twisting it to a point just shy of pain.
"Don't try to move unless I say," the voice hissed, angry but controlled, and close to Felattii's ear, "Don't make a sound unless I say, don't fucking breathe unless I say. The only time I want you to open your mouth is to tell me exactly what I want to know"
The hand relented the pressure on his mouth slightly, and, Felattii was able to talk, "What do you want to know?" he whispered, terrified of offending whoever it was who grappled with him so roughly. Felattii was not a soldier, his position in Banderas was due to the funding he gave to the organisation. Even the gun in his office was there only at his security team's insistence, he had never even held the damn thing. Felattii knew, therefore, that he did not have the fighting ability to overpower anyone, especially not the individual who had such an iron grip upon him.
The voice paused for a moment, as if coming here had been very much a spur of the moment thing, not that this lessened the terror one iota for Felattii. The voice continued.
"Gali." The voice began, clear, decisive but utterly unenlightening, "Tell me everything you know about Lieutenant Gali"
Terror for a moment gave over to confusion, "I don't know who you're talking about, I've never heard of a Lieutenant Gali"
The grip tightened as if in anger, almost to the point of splintering Felattii's chitin, definitely to the point of ripping his shirt, "Don't give me any of that shit!" the voice snarled, furious, close to losing control, "You're in charge of Banderas personnel for Miller's Rest, Gali is an officer in Banderas, you have to fucking know him!"
"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I've never heard of him. Please don't kill me." Felattii's voice was whimpering now, apologetic, as if he wished that Gali was in Banderas, just to appease his attacker's anger, "I can show you the records, they're in my desk drawer, there is no Lieutenant Gali working for Banderas in Miller's Rest, I should know, I did the paperwork yesterday. As far as I know there's no Gali in Banderas anywhere. Let me get to my desk drawer, I can show you the ledger."
"Do you really expect me to fall for that?" the voice was sneering, contemptuous, "I know your game, we go over to the desk drawer, you open it, pull out a tazer pistol, and Wham! I'm on the floor, how stupid do you think I am?"
"I promise, there's nothing like that anywhere in here, I've never handled a gun, I'm an abject coward, I'm only in Banderas because I give them money. I'm a backer, not a player."
The voice allowed a pause to hang in the air, as if looking over the figure that it held in its power. Finally, it seemed to be convinced.
"OK, but no tricks, If I see anything suspicious in the drawer, you're dead before you can move a muscle. Clear?"
A new pressure became evident to Felattii. The hand that had been holding his mouth shut swung back into view, holding a vicious looking diamond knife16, which was then pressed into Felattii's midsection in a way that did not even damage the silk shirt, but gave the impression that with a slight increase in pressure it could gut the terrified aphid in one movement. Other than the knife, however, his assailant's grip loosened, and Felattii found he had more freedom of movement, and could walk, as the figure clutching him prompted him to do, to his desk. Felattii picked the key up from the desk, and inserted it in the lock on the drawer. A moment's nervous fumbling, and the tumblers in the lock allowed the opening of the drawer. As the drawer opened, Felattii's assailant's grip tightened, the knife pressing into the gut with more force, until it was revealed that the drawer contained nothing but a large ring-bound folder. Felattii opened the folder on the desk at the Commissioned Officer's Register, he ran his finger down the list, through "G", and, sure enough, there was no mention of Gali.
"See? No Gali. I told you, I've never heard of him. I'm sorry." Felattii announced in an apologetic manner. The grip instantly tightened, and he realised that the individual who held him in a half-nelson wanted more than a ledger A lot more. Fear galvanised Felattii's mind into thinking through all the possibilities, running its way back through his memories. Suddenly a spark of recognition hit him. "Wait! I remember something!" he cried. The grip loosened, very, very slightly.
"What?"
"I don't know, the name, it rings a bell from somewhere."
"Think" the voice behind Felattii ordered, "Where have you seen the name Gali before?"
"I'm trying to remember. It- It wasn't long ago," Felattii began, trying to jog his memory, and thus save his life, "I've got it! It was in an official memo about people impersonating officers. Gali's name was in it, as the leader of a gang in downtown Miller's Rest."
"Show me."
"I don't have it here, it's in my office. I'm sorry."
"What else did it say? Tell me."
"Not much more, I think he's active near Cocker's Way, I can't remember!"
Suddenly all pressure from behind Felattii ceased, and a tall caterpillar, dressed in black with black camouflage paint on his face stepped into Felattii's field of vision. The caterpillar held a knife, and had a Tazer rifle slung across his back. The caterpillar opened his mouth and spoke in a voice much softer than the threatening hiss he had used earlier.
Copyright 1999 Ian Rennie, for Remiel Productions.
"Gali is a killer." he informed Felattii in a tone that sounded like what he was about to say was the most important thing in the world to him, "He killed my best friend, one of the few people left who I honestly cared about. He mugged him, and tortured him to death, after Cornelius got the better of him in a fight. I'm sorry about threatening you like this, and I'm sorry about breaking into your house, but Gali has to be brought to justice for what he has done. You might say I'm an obsessive, and you'd be right, but, for a while at least, that's the way it's got to be."
Felattii stood, dumbfounded, taking in nothing except the fact that he was OK, he wasn't going to die. "How- how did you get in?" he said, the words catching in his dry throat as the after-effects of his fear caught up with him.
The caterpillar paused for a second and coughed apologetically, "I'm sorry about that," he blushed, looking at the aphid in front of him in a bashful manner, "I didn't mean to hurt anyone too badly, but there was no other way of getting the guards out of the way except by knocking them out. They're in the cellar, if I timed the blows correctly, they'll wake up with little more than a bruise, and a stiff neck."
Felattii was still in a state of considerable shock, as only moments before, this caterpillar had him in a half nelson with a knife pressed into his gut. The caterpillar, who was still anonymous, and whose face was unrecognisable behind its mask of face-paint, fidgeted nervously, as if to suggest that he had not intended to be seen face to face. He definitely seemed to be uncomfortable keeping up the hard-line assailant image, when out in front of people, as was suggested by the slack awkwardness of his tall frame, and the general uneasiness which seemed to emanate from him.
"Who are you anyway?" Felattii found himself asking.
For a second, the hard-line appearance returned, the caterpillar's grip on the knife strengthened, and a strange look came into his eyes.
"I can't tell you that" The phrase was careful, stressed, tense as a bowstring, as if he was keeping himself totally in check, to stop anything from happening. The look faded, a certain air of relief at the passing of the mood crept into the caterpillar, "I'm going now, please don't try to follow me." he announced over his shoulder as he approached the large stained glass windows, which opened onto the balcony.
"Hey!" Felattii called at his retreating back, stopping the caterpillar before he left, "I'm- I'm sorry about your friend."
The caterpillar turned his head and looked Felattii straight in the eye.
Without waiting for a reply, he dived through the window, over the balcony and into the garden, landing in a spongy area of moss, and running, leaving Felattii still wondering what exactly had happened.
The caterpillar ran out of the garden, and straight out of Yamaha Hills without stopping. He kept running until he reached an area near the city centre, and hung a sharp right into a deserted alleyway, dark now that the globe had gone off. The caterpillar retrieved his black canvas bag of clothing from the skip where he had left it earlier, pulled of his black jersey, the black T-shirt underneath it, and his black kilt, and put on his normal tunic and kilt. This done, he removed his camouflage paint with an old rag, checking his face with a mirror and a torch, until he was satisfied that his face was completely clear of the paint. The cloth was abandoned, although the T-shirt, jersey and kilt were put in the bag, in case they were needed again. His actions complete, and his appearance changed enough to completely avoid detection, Remiel left the alleyway.