Read Online Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton - Free Book Online

for the iris ones of course, they’re a lot smaller. Obviously you have to locate them first, though. Judging by the mess they made of his eyeballs, I’d say they weren’t too concerned about precision.”
    “Each North family member has stealth smartcells,” Dr. Fransun said. “They won’t activate and link without a code. They’re embedded in case of abduction.”
    Sid gave Aldred a sharp glance. “And?”
    “No response. I tried the general code as soon as we came in. Nothing.”
    “So either he’s not a true North, or they extracted the stealth smartcells as well.”
    “Yes.”
    “But if they’re not active, how would they do that?”
    “A sophisticated scan, or they tortured the codes out of him.”
    “There’s no sign of that,” the coroner said. He indicated the corpse’s hands. “There aren’t even any defensive wounds. Whatever happened to him, it was quick.” He lifted the right hand to indicate the missing fingertip skin. “Again, the skin was sliced off postmortem.”
    “Are you sure you want to stay for this part?” Sid asked once the body was rolled onto its back again.
    “Sure,” Aldred grunted.
    The big C-shaped body sensor descended on two arms and slowly moved the length of the corpse. They all watched the 3-D image build up on a wallscreen. Sections were amplified on surrounding screens.
    “No foreign matter visible,” the coroner said.
    Dr. Fransun walked over to the wall of screens, peering at one. “That’s unusual.”
    The coroner joined him, the two of them peering at a blue-and-white image that seemed to show translucent sheets folded around one another in some complex origami. “I see what you mean,” the coroner agreed.
    “What’s up?” Sid asked.
    “There seems to be a lot of damage inside the chest cavity. That doesn’t quite correspond to the surface wound.”
    They returned to the corpse and swung a micro camera across the wound. High-resolution images of the five puncture wounds were recorded, their dimensions measured exactly. Four of them were close together, in a slight curve, while the fifth, lower, puncture was a couple of centimeters from the rest.
    “Each one is a slightly different size,” the coroner said. “I thought it was one blade used repeatedly. Interesting, the weapon has five separate blades. That would be extremely difficult to use.”
    “How so?” Aldred asked.
    “To penetrate skin and bone—which is what’s happened here—is hard enough for a single sharp blade. Human muscle can do it, obviously, but a considerable force has to be exerted. The body provides significant resistance. Here, the assailant had to exert enough force for five blades to penetrate simultaneously. Most difficult.”
    “Big man, then,” Sid said. He was staring at the wound pattern—something bothered him.
    “Or frenzied,” the coroner said. “But your first guess is probably the correct one. Let’s check the angle of penetration.” He muttered to his e-i, and five green lines materialized on one of the screens. “Oh, that’s interesting. Judging by that angle I’d say victim and assailant were almost the same height.”
    Sid walked around the examination table, then leaned forward and put his right hand on top of the wound, fingers extended. Each fingertip came to rest above a cut. His gave the coroner a quizzical glance.
    “That is strange,” the coroner said slowly. “A five-bladed knife designed to mimic the human hand.”
    Sid backed away from the table. “At least that should show up easily in the database,” he said, and began to instruct his e-i on the search.
    “We’ll open him up and sample the cellular structure,” the coroner said. “Decay measurement will provide us with an accurate time of death.”
    “Really,” Sid told Aldred. “You should think about leaving now.”
    “No. I need to see this through.”
    The coroner started with a Y-shaped cut through the skin from both shoulders down to the base of the sternum, then