Random acts of violence: part 5

Uncovering a series of truths

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: A raging koth attacked a busy street in London in the early evening without warning, seemingly radicalised by incendiary literature found in their home. The SDC detectives are investigating…

Late shift
On duty: DC Yannick Clarke & DC Frank Holland

London.
1974. June.

It was a full crew complement at the SDC. Everyone had been called in regardless of shifts, in an attempt to accelerate the investigation. Clarke welcomed the assistance, not least because it meant he didn’t only have to deal with Holland. The television was playing in the corner, the main channel having been taken over by rolling news, broadcasting footage of the riots coming in from across London.

What had started as a protest at Ganhkran’s home had turned quickly violent, spreading from there towards the city and the office building where the koth worked. It was nonsensical, and Clarke had no doubts that there were unsavoury types deliberately riling up the crowds, but the mob had taken on a life of its own, a throbbing mass of anger and pent-up prejudice. The koth that had attacked Mayfair was already dead, so they’d gone after the next most obvious target: the koth that had stopped the rampage.

Clarke rubbed the bridge of his nose, then ran his fingers through what little hair he had left. There was fear at the root of the rioting, but it wasn’t based on reason or facts, which made it impossible to counter. The best the SDC could do was continue the investigation, track down the group at the centre of the incendiary literature Koloch had been reading, and attempt to put a lid on it all. The rest of the police were handling the trouble in the streets.

The news broadcast switched to an interview between the newsreader and Ambassador Vahko. Despite everything, Vahko looked calm and contemplative. Clarke wondered how they could be anything but angry. First the attack on the ambassadorial suite during the bombings, now this.

“Why do you think it is,” the newsreader was saying, sounding falsely reasonable, “that koth so often get the blame for these incidents? What is it about your community that makes it a target in this way?”

Vahko leaned back in their chair. “There is nothing in the koth community to explain this situation,” they said. “I believe we need to look to wider patterns in society to understand both the tragic events of yesterday evening and the current unrest on London streets and across the country.”

“That sounds almost as if you are trying to move the blame elsewhere, Ambassador.”

“I was not aware that this discussion was about apportioning blame, Susan.”

“But you are equating the horrendous attack last night to the protests now taking place?”

“They are clearly very different events, but I do believe there are wider issues that relate to both.”

“But do you concede that usually where there is smoke there is also fire?”

“I believe the actions and thoughts of one individual do not represent those of an entire people.”

“And yet this isn’t the first time we’ve sat here and talked about this, Ambassador. Whether it’s attacks on school children, or bombings at the koth embassy, or now this vicious attack on civilians, the koth are often at the centre of unrest.”

Jesus. She was trying to use the bombing of their own embassy against them. No wonder people were getting confused about what was really happening.

Vahko sat there and took it. Come on, get up. Storm out. Flip the desk. Make a scene. They had every right to. Clarke ground his teeth together. Still, there was a reason Clarke was a cop and not a politician. Politely, patiently, like talking to a child, Vahko leaned forwards and tented their fingers on the desk. “There has long been a misconception that because our communities on Palinor superficially resemble insect hives, at least as depicted in the early photography by your own explorers, that we also think as one. There is no koth monomind. We are individuals, with free thought, just as much as any human. There are good koth, there are bad koth, and everything in-between. Just as with humans.”

“Yes,” the newsreader said, smiling, “but are you doing enough to root out the bad koth?”

There was the sound of a fist slamming down on a desk across the SDC office, and Kaminski jumped up. “Got something!” He was clutching one of the pamphlets taken from Koloch’s room. “The boys down at the lab identified the paper stock. It’s unusual, as is the ink, apparently.” He turned it over in his hand. “Looks pretty standard to me, but that’s why I’m not in the lab.” He shrugged.

Holland walked across to inspect the pamphlet. “So, what’s it give us? Do we know the printer?”

Holding up his notebook with two addresses scrawled into it, Kaminski nodded. “Yep, got it right here. Only two printers in London offer this particular combination.”

“Good,” Clarke said, grabbing his jacket. “You and Chakraborty take the first one. Give us the second.”

The factory unit housing the printers was a storm of noise, as the presses clacked and paper was shuttled back and forth and cut to shape. Workers in overalls busied back and forth, operating the huge rows of machines. The whole setup was more mechanical and labour intensive than Clarke had expected.

“We print tens of thousands of pages per day,” the manager said proudly, raising his voice above the din, leading Clarke and Holland across the floor and up a set of metal stairs towards his office. “Books, brochures, posters, maps, newspapers, invitations, magazines, billboards, packaging, you name it. If it involves paper and ink, it’s our business.”

“Yeah,” Holland said, “we’re not here for the sales pitch.”

The manager waved a hand above his head as he unlocked the door to the office. “No, no, of course not, of course not. I just get excited about this stuff, you know? We’re the best in London. Best in the kingdom, most likely. But still affordable. We can scale up big or small.” He glanced back and grinned. “Sorry, I can’t help myself. In here, detectives, we’ll find what you need.”

A deceptively rickety filing cabinet revealed meticulous customer records, the manager thumbing through the files at speed. “We’ve got everything categorised by type. Shouldn’t be hard to find that pamphlet of yours, if we did it. And it looks like we did - quality is good.”

Clarke looked out of the office window at the factory floor. There was so much passing through the printers, more than he’d ever thought about - and this was just one of many printers in London. The sheer amount of print was staggering. “You print a lot of political material?”

“Hey, look,” the manager said, shrugging, “we print whatever comes in. The customer has a design ready to go and the money to pay, we print it. Not our job to run editorial, or judge what’s OK to print. We follow the law, of course, but there’s nothing to stop someone printing something disagreeable.”

He pulled out a file, slammed it down on his desk and flicked it open. “Here we go. Group calling themselves ‘LAR’. That mean anything to you? Ordered a print run of those pamphlets two months back. But they’ve got a history, looks like we did other orders for them six months back, and a year back.”

Holland took the pamphlet back, turned it over and pointed at a motif. “Here’s that acronym. ‘LAR’. The League of Aligned Races. Looks like you’ve found the right file.”

The manager stood up, looking as if his professional pride had been insulted. “Of course I did. We run a tight ship here, detective.”

Clarke had never heard of a League of Aligned Races, or seen the motif or acronym ‘LAR’, yet it sounded like the group had been around for a while. If it was an underground group of discontented Palinese, the SDC really should have picked up on it. There hadn’t been organised cross-portal trouble at scale for a long time.

“Got an address here,” the manager said. “Delivery address, matches up to the payment. You want to talk to them, that’s where I’d go.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Holland said, copying down the details.

Holland and Clarke stood on the pavement opposite the address, looking up at the smart, three-storey London town house. The street was lined with trees and was quiet, its neatly mowed lawns and flower displays promoting its inhabitants affluence. Not the kind of place Holland tended to frequent.

“Well, this is very suburban,” Holland said. Something seemed off. Perhaps the guy at the printing firm had given them the wrong information after all.

“Strike you as a hotbed for Palinese insurgents?”

“I’d be amazed if we find a single koth or aen’fa on this entire street. Some piano lessons and a wine club, perhaps.”

It was a Saturday afternoon, which would hopefully mean that there was someone at home. They entered through the small front garden gate and climbed stone steps along a path to the front door.

“Not a bad way to live,” Holland said, stepping up to the door. He glanced back at Clarke, who nodded. Holland lifted the door knocker and hit it against the door a couple of times.

There was the sound of footsteps coming down stairs, then he could see movement through the mottled glass of the front door. It was opened by a young man, probably in his late teens or early twenties. He still had that adolescent mix in his face, looking simultaneously like a child and an adult.

“Good afternoon,” Holland said, holding up his badge. “I’m Detective Holland—”

The kid tried to slam the door in his face, stopped only by the judicious foot that Holland had already inserted just inside the door frame. An old habit. The heavy door bounced off his shoe and hit the kid in the face, who stumbled back, swearing. Holland felt something crack on one of his toes.

Turning, the kid ran back into the house, shouting an imaginative selection of curses. “Round the back!” Holland shouted, pushing the door wide and pursuing the kid inside. He caught glimpses of the rooms, which seemed plush and expensive, the hallway lined with awards plaques and trophies. He chased the boy into the kitchen at the rear of the house, where the kid danced around the large wooden farmhouse table, picking up random items and hurling them.

A handful of eggs splattered against Holland’s shirt, followed by an exploding bag of flour. He looked at the mess disdainfully, glad that the kid hadn’t thought to throw a kitchen knife or rolling pin, then tried to get around the table to reach him, but the boy darted into a side room.

“Stop running!” he shouted, still pursuing. The kid ran through a utility room of sorts, reached the back door and threw it open, then went out into the back garden. Holland followed, just in time to see Clarke fling an arm out and clothesline the kid, who dropped onto the patio like a sack of potatoes.

Clarke bent down and hauled the kid up by his shoulders. The old man was stronger than he looked. “My partner asked you to stop running,” he said, pushing the kid down onto a wooden garden bench.

Recovering his breath, Holland stood over the kid, who he now saw must have been around eighteen. “We’ve got some questions to ask you.”

He became aware of Clarke staring, and failing to hide a smirk. Holland was acutely aware of being covered in baking ingredients, but decided not to talk about it.

A search of the house revealed boxes of pamphlets, some the same as those found in Koloch’s room, others brand new and presumably waiting to be distributed. It was the same rhetoric: anti-Earth propaganda designed to stir up anyone from Palinor who happened to read it. It highlighted maltreatment of koth and aen’fa, and even human portal migrants. Most people would see it as nonsense, or exaggerated, but it would resonate easily with anyone already feeling aggrieved or holding a grudge. A recipe for radicalisation.

The kid, meanwhile, was not of Palinese origin. He was as Mid-Earth as you could get. It made little sense to Clarke until he uncovered another stash of literature, this time aimed at a very different audience. It was the One True Earth dimensionalist rot all over again, the same that had been recovered from the group behind the bombings the previous year. Factions everywhere, it seemed. Ideas were spreading faster than they could be contained. He remembered Styles telling him about the dimensionalist creed: the notion that your own dimension was inherently superior to all others.

It made sense of the kid’s pamphleting operation. He’d made up the ‘League of Aligned Races’, and had been running his own campaign targeting disgruntled koth and aen’fa, without ever revealing who was behind the supposed LAR. It had certainly worked on Koloch.

“Pretty clever, really,” Holland said, standing in the house as officers searched every corner of it. The kid’s parents had already been taken in for questioning. “Piss off the koth, get a few of them to go fucking nuts, and that in turn gets all the Earth First wankers powered up. Nobody comes out of this looking good.”

The protesters that had marched from Ganhkran’s house into the city had been dispersed, but it was fully expected that they would return in the night, once it was dark. London was holding its breath for the next outbreak. All due to this one kid’s mischief.

Clarke frowned. No, not just the one kid. It was wider than that. There was a creeping corruption spreading through the triverse in all directions. The Joint Council, the plot to construct a rogue AI, the One True Earth fanatics, the increasing influence of the Earth First party. There was a slow unravelling going on. It had been happening slowly, but now seemed to be accelerating. Slowly, slowly, then fast and unstoppable.

He sighed. Should have taken that retirement.

---

Thanks for reading!

As this is being sent out I am currently at Disneyland Paris. The wonders of Substack post scheduling. This is one of the challenges of writing and publishing a serial: it’s fine when you’re operating a normal routine, but anything that nudges you into unusual territory can impact significantly on the writing schedule.

I’m not complaining, of course, but there was a point when I worried about getting this week’s chapter done in time.

Something I always forget to mention is that paid subscribers get a free ebook collection of all Triverse stories so far. If you’ve just discovered Triverse and want to catch up one what’s come before, that’s by far the neatest way to do it.

Oh, this weekend is the very last chance to grab some free ebooks for your summer reading in these giveaways:

• Fantasy Freebies

• Strong Women in Fantasy

Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash

Author notes

The story for ‘Random acts of violence’ has evolved considerably over time. My original idea was this very basic note:

A koth goes on a rampage and kills random people.

Plays into the hands of the Earth First group perfectly.

That was it. The way I plot is a bit like an onion: starting on the surface, and then peeling away layer after layer to find more details. I knew this storyline was coming up, so as I got closer to it in time I began to figure out some of the more interesting elements.

• Originally I was going to have the SDC response team subdue the koth by themselves. Then I thought it’d be more interesting to have another koth do the hard work.

• The riots weren’t originally part of this storyline, but it made sense to bring them forward with this as the trigger point. That tension has been building for a while anyway.

• I hadn’t quite decided on the koth’s motivation originally: at first I thought it could be entirely random, with no explanation. But having extremist literature introduced some additional elements that would be interesting.

• There was also a risk of that becomin a bit clichéd - so I then thought about twisting it around so that the extremist literature was in itself a fake.

• Ultimately, that felt more interesting, and gave the ‘investigation’ part of the story more meat.

• It also means that both the koth and the rioters are acting under false pretences. Hence ‘random acts of violence’.

• You can bet Nigel Maxwell is going to crop up before the end of this particular story.

This is part of why I don’t try to write every day. A lot of my ideas pop up in the in-between stages of writing. If I wrote faster, pumping out 1,000 words every day, I worry that I wouldn’t have enough time for ideas to properly percolate.

Quick stats update: the Tales from the Triverse manuscript currently sits at 177,000 words. That’s already a chunky book. Scrivener dutifully informs me that it would be a 506-page paperback. Whether you’ve been here from the start, have just arrived, or are in the process of catching up - thank you for your support!

If you know anyone who might like Triverse, do pass it along.