The Night Mayor by Kim Newman Read Free Book Online Page B

of my head. Water ran down my face.
    It was two thirty in the morning, and raining.

6
    V aclav Trefusis received Susan in his spacious office. He evidently took seriously his position as governor. Behind his antique, formica-topped deskslab, he sat in a swivel throne, kitted up like the stereotypical New Carolian: mutton-chop whiskers, starched collar, frock coat, mirror shades and medal ribbons. One wall was decorated entirely with pics of Princetown jail from the 1800s to the present day, an evolving monolith, and portraits of past governors. Another was hung with the black-framed trids of the various notable felons who had been incarcerated here. Of course, the governors looked far less trustworthy than the felons. Life doesn’t believe in typecasting. Through a huge, one-way view, Governor Trefusis could overlook his charges. Currently the scene was a hydroponics plant.
    ‘Food for the refugees in Kansas, Ms Bishopric.’ Trefusis pulled a cigar out of a recess, chopped it in a miniature guillotine and sparked it with a tiny zapgun. ‘We find that forgers and stranglers make the best viviculturalists. Assassins and rapists get the reclamation duties. Black economists process DHSS forms, meatleggers work the kitchens, and ransackers still break up rocks with picks and sledgehammers. This institution is a machine. Its function is to punish trespassers, but I have streamlined its workings. There are side effects profitable for all society.’
    Trefusis exhaled a cloud of scented smoke. Susan sipped her green tea and nodded. She still had no idea what was going on. Trefusis tapped his slab, and the toilers among vats disappeared. A tridvid mugsnap appeared in the view, full face, revolving to left profile, back of head, right profile and full face again. And the face was indeed full. Not flabby, but full. The face of a general regarded as a homicidal maniac in his time but reassessed as a national hero after he was safely dead for centuries; the face of a great technician hailed as an artist of genius by his peers and contemporaries, but contemptuously forgotten by posterity once he was no longer around to fuel the vogue with his personality; the face of an emperor – a Nero, an Alexander, a Napoleon, a Heseltine, a Dweezil.
    Susan whistled. ‘Truro Daine.’
    ‘You’re familiar with the man?’ asked Trefusis, holding the dopesmoke in the back of his throat.
    ‘I’ve heard of him.’
    ‘The world has heard of Truro Daine. In an era when criminals are largely imbecile sociopaths, politico-religious fanatics, disadvantaged simpletons or overenthusiastic executives, he is unique.’
    ‘Fu Manchu.’
    ‘I beg pardon?’
    ‘Fu Manchu, the Great Enchanter, Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Zenith the Albino, Dr Mabuse, Lex Luthor, Ernst Stavros Blofeld, Dr Doom, Eugene Smedley, Cardinal Synn. A master criminal.’
    ‘Quite. Popular culture is, of course, your field. I was misremembering. That’s why you’re with us. Truro Daine is indeed a master criminal. Even in this place, his fluence remains. He remainders more people annually than motorways. When he commenced his career, some of your colleagues in the mediocracy chose to project him as a romantic figure, a swashbuckling throwback to an earlier, somehow more exciting, age. Naturally, I cannot be expected to share that opinion.’
    Trefusis’s fingers did a little dance on his slab, and a montage of tridvid clips passed through the view. Ruined banks, sundered museums, devastated cities, blasted heaths. Trefusis gave her a series of corpse close-ups, one dead face after another. Men, women, children, animals. ‘For Truro Daine, human life is a poor commodity. Like many great men – and I do not begrudge him that epithet – he has a deep-seated belief that other people aren’t real. In his solipsism, he has experimented with murder on an unprecedented scale, convincing himself with each zilched life that he alone is truly sapient. That is a crucial insight.