Quester

 an old Sf story I wrote years ago, revamped; post apocalyptic and dystopian, in which the earth has been much flooded by the rise in sea level due to global warming, and the effects of that halted by nuclear winter from various wars and accidents. An empire has arisen which initially banned religion as it caused wars, but has taken veneration of heroes, ironically, into a new religion. And yes, this is deliberate satire  An oppressive regime where heresy and mutancy is suppressed.  Higher technology is used but not understood, and the search for Lost tech is important. The hero of the tale is Leo Quester, a Judiciary, who has ultimate power as judge, jury, and executioner, and like the judges of old China must also undertake his own investigations. A roving troubleshooter, in fact.  And Quester is dumped into a boondocks military camp to investigate the murder of a political officer who has friends at court... 

Chapter 1  

 

“My thanks for your consideration, Lieutenant,” said Justicior Quester. “I appreciate being set down closer  to the barracks. I hope the manoeuvring of the ornithopter will not be difficult.”

“You are welcome, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “This rain is nasty; I’d rather have a proper downpour than this steady, penetrating rain, it seems to find its way into every garment.”

Quester agreed, but it would be a loss of dignity to the Inquisition to admit to it.  It was nice, however, not to be saturated, which was also a loss of face.  His grey cloak and deep cowl protected him from a lot of weather , but having to cross the parade ground would not have been comfortable. He nodded to the ornithopter pilot, and gave him a half-smile to indicate approval.

The colonel was awaiting him, and looked like a drowned rat. The scarlet tunic of the Mountas Militia was darkened by rain and his dark blue trousers clung unbecomingly to rather skinny legs. Quester noted, with some disapproval, that the man’s shirt collar, visible above the tunic, was less than clean, even in the rain.

The colonel was also trying to hide his nervousness, continually trying to loosen his collar, and shifting from one foot to the other. And well he might be nervous, reflected Quester.  After all, finding your Zampolit dead from violence did not generally happen in well-ordered Militia Regiments. Especially not a Mountas regiment, one of the elite units of purebred humans. He was probably an imposing enough figure when not saturated, and maybe even good-looking, with light brown hair darkened by the rain, a fair complexion and even features unmarred by radiation burns or the ravages of disease.  The way he kept tugging at his collar might explain why it was so soiled.

 

At least this island, or this region of it, was relatively pastoral, so that rain was just the standard slightly carbonated water.  No heavy pollutants to worry about.  It was a far-flung lump of rock, with some resources, chiefly carbons in deep mines. The local currents also made the location good for wave power and there was a hydrogen extraction plant on the far end of the island, to use in Imperial Zeppelins. Helium was too rare and precious to use for common transports, and only available from a secret underwater base in the Imperial Central Islands.  The greater number of the population of this Lincon-forsaken rock were Augsheep, augmented sheep, seeded with nanites to convert the carbons in the atmosphere into polymers to grow polywool fibres in the fleeces for greater durability.

The ornithopter  hummed behind Quester as the pilot took it closer to the unloading area.  They would be up and down for several days from the cramped, uncomfortable Zeppelin on which Quester was currently a passenger.  He considered sardonically that the Colonel must have received news that an Justicior was aboard with mixed feelings – relief at being able to pass the buck of his murdered Zampolit, tinged with a healthy drop of fear.

 

 

The Colonel surveyed Quester gloomily as they passed together into the dry of the main barracks block. It was a plain building of plascrete, with little attempt at decoration beyond a minimally ornamented neo-heroic archway to the main entrance.  Even the stocky telamones supporters of the arch were undistinguished and miserable looking.  Inside was little better.  The passageway was narrow and dark.  Sometime in the past, scenes of the lives of Heroes had been painted along the walls, but it had been so long since they had been renewed that they were cracked and peeling.  Somehow the result was worse than if the walls had been left bare, the peeling saints appearing reproachful in their decrepit dignity.

Quester had been requested to attend Colonel Rebet Strong at the small barracks on the Island of Cumry.  The Justicior had agreed to break his journey since the stopover was a scheduled one for the supply zeppelin.  The Colonel had seemed strained when he had spoken on the Skyph-link when he reported the murder of the Zampolit, as well he might; and now Quester wanted him to expand upon that bald statement.

“You said your Zampolit had been murdered; and you needed my presence,” said Quester.  “Is there some problem over what happened, that you need an Justicior? It is not an open-and-shut case?”

“My Zampolit was brutally murdered in his own room,”  Colonel Strong said.  “And he’s not been with us that long – the previous one died in battle.  It is an open-and-shut case, but I thought I ought to report this … since you had arrived ...”

Quester nodded, more encouraging him to go on than as a signal of agreement. Politically it was a sensible thing to do, to pass the buck to an Justicior. It was too much to expect any Zampolit, the Political Officer, to be much missed by anyone. Indeed, most people probably would cheer to lose the member of their regiment who kept them politically reliable, save when it brought a member of the Inquisition upon them. Few would have the sheer impudence to murder a man who held their political morals in his grasp, but that of course was why the colonel was glad to pass the buck.

“He was murdered,” repeated Strong, as though he could hardly believe it. “And by his own bodyguard!  I could scarcely believe it – but the evidence… you’ll want to see it…”  a tic started in his face, and he tugged tremulously at the gold braid on his scarlet tunic.

“I’ll see the evidence and see what it says to me,” Quester said quietly.  “You have held the bodyguard?”

 “Oh yes, Justicior, he’s in the cells,”

 “Does he confess to the crime?”

 “Well… sort of,”

 Quester stared at the man.

 “‘Sort of’?  What kind of reply is that?  Either he admits or denies guilt.  ‘Sort of’ sounds to me like a confession obtained by coercion, Colonel,”   He fixed the frightened officer with a piercing gaze over his high hooked nose.   Strong swallowed.

“He said it was his fault, Justicior.  He wouldn’t say any more.  No one’s coerced him at all,”  He tried to explain hastily.  Quester snorted.

 “It doesn’t occur to you that a conscientious bodyguard might just consider his principal’s death to be his fault by his failure to protect him?”  he asked scathingly.  “This man does not sound over endowed with brains – but I suppose that’s not a requirement for a minder,”

The colonel smiled thinly.

“Burdock’s an Ogroid.  Smarts aren’t their long suit,” he said dryly.  “But it’s not just his claim that it’s his fault that is the reason I have to suspect him – Clintwood’s head was stove in.  Surely only an Ogroid hand could do something like that.  Or, of course, a Highbred, but of course we have no Highbred troops stationed here, even if they were likely to stoop to murder one of we lesser beings ...” he lost himself in half sentences, as Quester scowled. Criticising the Highbred was sedition.  The colonel hastily went on, “Moreover, Burdock was stumbling around and confused when I got there.  Poor man, he must have suffered a brainstorm.  I don’t think he remembers anything about the incident,”

Quester grunted non-committally.  He had no intention of forming a theory without being in possession of all the facts; and he told the colonel so.

“And,” he added pompously, “I need to see the body before I can proceed any further,”

“Certainly, Justicior,” Colonel Strong gave no sign that the Justicior’s fussy and pedantic manner might irritate him.  A mere Colonel of the Militias, even the vaunted Mountas, did not criticise an Justicior!

 

 

Strong led Quester to the officers’ quarters.  The corridor was a little wider here, and a standard nine feet in height, and had been finished in synthstone effect panelling.  It had been painted as black marble, however, and the dark walls appeared to converge overhead. A few tracts and icons had been hung haphazardly along the walls; Quester played a game with himself as they proceeded of trying to guess who the icons were supposed to represent. The one channelling lightning had to be Benfrankin, the first ever Tech Savant, and saintly hero of their order, the Tech Wardens. The rest, on the whole, might have been of almost anyone. The one shooting someone might be Levyaswald, who had killed the heretical Kinny Dee, the doomed anti-hero who had started the Great Destruction by ordering the heretical penetration of space. Quester sighed; any man who held a lasrifle like that would be so deformed he would be disposed of as a mutant. However, Quester was pulled up short by one at the contrast it made with the others in its sheer staggering beauty. Unlike the gaudy, flat and unimaginative attempts that had preceded it, this painting was redolent with life.  It showed an unmistakable image of the saintly hero Jyowoshinton teaching the heathen how to fell a tree for firewood, with a small figure of the noble Psion Benfrankin in the background.  It seemed to glow with light and hope.

“This is good,” Quester commented.

“You think so?”  The Colonel sounded surprised.  “It was hung there to cover a wet patch.  I find it rather dull and colourless compared to the others,”

“Who did it?”

The Colonel shrugged.

“One of the men.  He was always daubing.  He got killed in the last campaign against the Commutants.  Not much of a soldier, anyway,”

Quester counted slowly to ten.

“Move this to a place that is not damp,” he said.  “It could be a treasure of your regiment one day.  And if there are other paintings, I would like to see them,”

The Colonel looked surprised.

“I expect they were burned,” he said, indifferently.  “The body is this way,”

`Quester resented the attempt at a subtle rebuke.

“It’s waited several hours for me,”he said mildly. “It will wait a few minutes more,”

Tenderly he unhooked the painting and exchanged its position for that of one of the undistinguished daubs.  Then he contemplated it whilst praying fervently to the Holy God-Hero Abe for patience in this uncultured hole.  When he was ready, he nodded to Strong.

“I am at your disposal,” he said.

 

 

Zampolit Clintwood’s day room was a contrast to the corridor.  It was mellow and light, with a large window overlooking the chapel.  The walls displayed synthwood panelling, and the wood colour chosen had been light ash, and someone had tried with a modicum of success to enhance the moulded grain with thinned darker paint run into the moulding.  Rich hangings of polywool velvet added to the atmosphere of comfort, and although the room exuded more of an air of luxury than Quester approved of, it was at least a welcome change from the dreary corridor. A single picture hung on the wall between a pair of golden velvet drapes, made of truesilk, Quester thought; and he had no trouble recognising the style of the dead soldier artist.  It showed the God-Hero enthroned, chin in hand, gazing thoughtfully out from sad, loving eyes.  Quester caught his breath.  Even the scorch marks along one edge did not mar its beauty. It was similar to the reproductions of the lost painting from Capital, showing a simple throne, as befitted the divine humility of the Holy Abe.

“Since this unit seems so sacrilegious as to try to burn sacred paintings, even of the Holy God-Hero,” he remarked, angrily, “I trust you will not object if I take this painting into my own care.  Unless the deceased has relatives,”

“Take whatever you want!”  The Colonel said, hastily. “I know of no relatives.  But I assure you, no sacrilege was intended – we can’t store the work of every common soldier who thinks he can profane the saints with his messes,”

It was that he was a common soldier, Quester decided.  Had the painter been an officer, perhaps this boor would have seen some merit because he expected to.  He wanted to say a lot; but contented himself with,

“From simple hearts and minds come forth true praise and worship.” Gravely he genuflected before the portrait of the God-Hero, and went to work. So beautiful a representation would inspire him in his work, he thought. 

 

 

 

The body had not been moved,; Quester supposed he should at least be glad of that.  The Zampolit had been a big man, and even death had not erased the laughter lines around the one identifiable eye.  The other eye was not merely missing; it, and the majority of the left hand side of the man’s face had been driven inwards, the skull crushed like an eggshell, brains seeping in a reproachful grey ooze from what remained of the cranium.  Strong retched dry, and Quester suspected that it was not for the first time.

“I do not require you to stay in here,” he said. Strong fled, gratefully. Quester knelt, with a grimace, to examine the wound more closely.  Blood and brain had spattered far, and he was obliged to kneel in some of the human detritus in order to get a better look.  He peered at the wound, noting its ovoid shape, deepest in the middle of the blow.  He frowned, thoughtfully.  The blow had been from a smooth object perhaps a little smaller than a man’s head, carrying great force or weight behind it.  The blow had been to the left temple, and seemed to have knocked Clintwood right out of his chair at the desk on to the floor.  He had been seated, then, when his assailant had struck.

Quester took his tweezers and several bags from his utility pouch, and a number of swabs, and began to take systematic samples from the wound.  God-Hero knew if he’d turn anything up, but he could swear that there was a greyish silver mark on a shattered shard of bone that was something other than brain matter.  It bore further investigation under lenses and with the alchemical analytical engine he had….acquired….from the Tech-Wardens. Quester grinned to himself remembering the verbal battle royal he had had with that self important fool  of a chief savant.  He, Quester, had managed to put the most pompous, the most sesquipedalian, the most polishedly specious arguments as to why he required this marvellous machine – and training in how to use it.  A reputation for pompous fussiness made most people write him off as a finical fool and give way more easily for a quiet life – and also covered his meticulous investigations under a cloak of sheer nosiness and interference.    Quester did not think that he would meet with the bland resistance so often presented from this colonel; he seemed at least genuinely concerned for the matter to be dealt with.  But one never knew.  No, one never knew.  Quester got gingerly to his feet, trying not to touch the revolting stickiness around him, and started to look around the room.  As he searched he whistled a praise to the God-Hero tunelessly between his teeth.  It was a bad habit, he knew, and his Father Justicior had sometimes commented that those who did not know him might think it heretical, but it helped him to think.

Something was missing.  Something very important.

Quester had not expected to find a blunt instrument left for him to discover; but there were certain items standard to the equipment of a Zampolit.  And one of them was a Datatab.  But the dead man’s datatab was nowhere to be found.

Quester exited the room.

“The Ogroid did not kill his officer,” he said bluntly.