by Pat Cadigan
“Get yourself a supply of socks on the way home. Mario can help you with that too.”
“I didn’t see he had any,” Gamot said.
“Not everything is readily visible,” Vector told him and made a dismissive gesture.
“You’re the boss, boss,” said Gamot. “Have a nice night.”
Vector had already stopped caring; he was focused on Hugo, still sitting on the floor. Wisely, the kid didn’t move to the seat without permission; he remembered that, at least, even if he’d forgotten how to deliver on time. Maybe the beat-down had given him partial amnesia.
“What. The. Hell. Happened to you?” Vector demanded. “You fall into the blender at the Kansas Bar?” The kid opened his mouth and Vector put up his hand. “If the next thing out of your mouth is an excuse, I will add some new colours to your face.”
“I cracked my ribs too,” the kid said in a small voice.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Vector snapped. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to get your ass kicked?”
Something flashed in the kid’s eyes, a fraction of a second of pure fury. Then he dropped his gaze. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I shoulda been more careful.”
“You’re goddam right you shoulda!” Vector barked. “This is gonna screw me up. I got Paladins who were counting on those parts and upgrades for the next game. That’s not gonna happen now. They’re gonna have to play without what they need, if they can even play at all. What do you suppose would happen if I told them it’s because you dropped the ball?”
“I might be able to get some of the parts—”
“Oh, swell. I can tell the guys we can fix some of them. Which ones? Shut up,” he added. “You really didn’t have anyone who could step up while you were getting your ribs taped? Even I got people who can cover for me in an emergency, and I run this whole goddam town!” Vector sat forward a little. “Get your shit together right now, Hugo, or you’re gonna be off my go-to list. And then I’ll make sure you’re off everybody else’s too. You won’t be able to give yourself away as a punching bag.”
Vector saw the kid take a deep breath. Oh, God, was the kid gonna cry? If he did, Vector really would have to give him some new contusions. There was no crying in the black market.
“Well,” the kid said finally, and his voice was steady. “I think I might be able to make it up to you—a little,” he added quickly, looking up at Vector. His eyes were dry. “Just a little.”
“Oh, really.” Vector looked down on him as if from a great height. “What are you gonna do, pull my delayed order out of your ass?”
“I’ve got a line on something nobody else knows about,” Hugo said.
Vector sat forward a little more. “This had better be good.”
The kid hesitated, looking unhappy. Vector moved forward again so he was looming over him. If Hugo didn’t understand that he’d better come across with something good right now, then he was a lot stupider than he looked. Or he was too ethical to sell someone out when he needed to, and Vector was pretty sure that neither characteristic applied to the kid.
Finally, Hugo took a breath and said, “Dyson Ido’s working on this chip for cyborgs he says can cancel out any conflicts between old hardware and new equipment—no more hesitation or drop-outs. And it speeds them up, makes them do everything faster.”
“Is that so.” Vector took a sip from his glass so the kid wouldn’t see how interested and impressed he was. Who knew the kid could be so useful when he was in deep shit? “When you say ‘working on’, do you mean he’s trying to do it, he’s done it, or he’s going into production tomorrow?”
Hugo hesitated again. “He did it. I don’t think he’s going into production right now, but when he does, he’ll give them away like always. Most cyborgs have really old parts that—”
“Don’t talk when I’m thinking,” Vector said quietly. “Dyson Ido made a chip that fixes compatibility issues between older equipment and new stuff, and instead of selling it to people who can pay what it’s worth, who really deserve it, he’s going to just give it away. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Hugo opened his mouth, then just nodded.
Vector gazed at him in silence for so long he saw the kid start to squirm. Let him, Vector thought. While the information did make up—a little—for Hugo’s failure, it also made Vector furious to think that, had Hugo delivered on time, he’d have never known and the chip would have been all over the place before Vector could do anything about it. And a bunch of walking junk piles who were just treading air until they died would get to function better than they had any right to.
“What really happened to you?” Vector asked Hugo. “Gimme the whole story. Nobody gets a beat-down without a reason, even if it’s a stupid reason.”
Hugo told him a fast story about stealing a bracelet that had belonged to his mother and then having it taken away from him by a southie gang who beat him up for parking near the trash pile.
“Well, I gotta tell you,” Vector said when he’d finished, “that’s the lamest, most pathetic thing I’ve heard in years.”
Again, Vector saw a flash of anger in Hugo’s eyes, which quickly gave way to a neutral, obedient look.
“Hugo, when I put you on my payroll, I didn’t put an asterisk next to your name and a note that said ‘Only if he’s not too busy with his mommy issues’. If you work for me, that’s your job. You don’t do stupid shit somewhere that’s got nothing to do with your job. And there’s nothing in south-town—nothing—that has any connection to your job. Got that?”
Hugo nodded again.
“You want a bracelet, buy one. I pay you enough. You want to stare at it and stroll down memory lane? Do it on your own time. Which is not when you’re doing your job. Is that clear?”
Another nod.
“Great. Now take your ass outta my sight and bring me the stuff I asked you for. And if you’re ever late again, all the fancy, advanced cyber-chips in the world won’t save you. Go on—go!”
The kid scrambled out of the car as though Vector had given him a little kiss with a cattle prod. Vector didn’t turn around to watch him run. Maybe he should have knocked Hugo around a little, he thought as he told the driver to head for home. But he’d only wanted to put the fear of God into the kid, not hurt him any more than he already was. And it wasn’t because he was soft. Kids like Hugo didn’t react well to corporal punishment. They didn’t fight, so they didn’t respect physical power; they were more likely to run away from it.
Besides, it was the kid’s first offence. Vector was pretty sure they’d need snow ploughs in hell before the kid screwed up again. Plus, the information Hugo had given him really was damned good. He could reward the kid for it later to remind him what a good idea it was to tell his employer whatever he found out.
Vector was still a little mad at the kid for not telling him about the chip until he’d screwed up, but he could feel himself getting over it already. He needed to devote his mental energy to figuring out a plan for this wonder of a chip. He could hold a grudge later, if it was useful.
* * *
Hugo didn’t stop running until he’d put at least six blocks between himself and the limo, going down to the lower level streets below the abandoned causeway just to be sure. It was virtually impossible to get a limo down there. Then he hid in the shadows by a set of stone steps leading back up to the upper level to catch his breath.
He had done a terrible thing, betraying the doc like that. Vector would find a way to steal the chip and use it for his own purposes—Motorball for sure and who knew what else—and shut Ido out completely. After all, Ido’s ex-wife was working on his Paladins at the track. She could probably figure the chip out, maybe even build a better one. Then the only people who would ever see the benefit from it would be those who could pay Vector’s going rate, which would be as far beyond the reach of the Factory cyborgs as Zalem.
No matter what happened, though, Hugo had to make sure the doc never found out who sc
rewed him over. He could talk to Vector about that later—much later, when Vector was feeling so rich that he no longer cared about the late delivery.
Oh, sure. And then maybe Vector would even invite him up to his fancy office for drinks. Vector would talk business with him while they were admiring the view, maybe even ask him if he knew about any hot Motorball prospects.
It would never occur to Vector to tell Ido or anyone else how he found out about the chip. Hugo’s little secret would be safe to gnaw away at him. No one would ever have to know about it, or that the art of the ass-saving betrayal was actually a family trait, not limited to blood relatives.
CHAPTER 4
Ido had worked himself ragged, then gone out to pick through the trash pile with a flashlight. After bringing home his meagre findings, he’d sorted them into usable, possible and probably not. Then he sorted the third category into questionable and hopeless. And now here he was at stupid o’clock in the morning, breathing in the aroma of a mug of camomile tea, his wide-open eyes like a couple of dried-out boiled eggs.
He’d never slept much. It had bothered Chiren when they were first together. Waking up to find she was alone in bed made her anxious. She told him as much when she came to find him. He would apologise and go back to bed with her. Sometimes he stayed and watched her sleep until the sky started to lighten and he finally dropped off himself.
But other times he would get up as soon as he was sure she was asleep again. He’d read or work on one of his enhancement projects. The beautiful people in Zalem, they loved their enhancements. They had to petition Nova for them and he didn’t always say yes. Nova said the exalted population had to be superior by their very nature in the first place to deserve further enhancement. They should not need machine parts to be more than the sad, sorry creatures dwelling at ground level.
He had been in charge during the War. All the other sky cities had fallen but Zalem was still aloft; that alone seemed reason enough to leave him in charge.
Three hundred years later, give or take a few decades, he gave the order for Ido and Chiren to remove themselves and their defective daughter from his perfect vision of Zalem and decamp to ground level with all the other abnormalities, inferior goods and broken machines. Chiren had gone to beg him to reconsider.
Looking back on it later, Ido wondered if she had been hoping Nova would relent enough to give her a choice between staying in Zalem alone, or going with Ido and their daughter to the surface. Ido knew Nova would never have done that. But he knew what Chiren would have chosen.
He’d known it back then too, although he’d have denied it. He would have told himself he was absolutely certain that the woman who came to find him when she woke up alone in the middle of the night would never have chosen to stay in Zalem alone.
Nova would have told Chiren that, as the mother of the identified imperfect child, she simply didn’t belong there any more. Except Nova refused to see her.
If it hadn’t been for their daughter, Chiren might have spent the first year on the ground in a catatonic state. But she’d still had enough mother in her to think of their child, and enough compassion to set up the clinic with him. They’d found an old house with what had been a dental practice on the ground floor. The building was old and it had stood unoccupied for a long time. But the structure was sound; with a little TLC it became a home with a clinic downstairs.
Ido and Chiren built their daughter a wheelchair, and she scooted around happily in it. Chiren home-schooled her, although as she got older, the girl talked about going to school with other kids. Chiren told her it was out of the question; the school building had accessibility problems. Ido wasn’t sure if this were true or not, but doing it Chiren’s way meant she had that much less to be miserable about.
Their little girl wasn’t miserable. What was exile for them was an adventure to her. She liked helping out in the clinic, and she liked the patients—they were so much friendlier to her than people in Zalem had been. Ido didn’t tell her it was because down here, they didn’t see her as defective.
He thought—hoped—Chiren would come to understand how much better this was for the girl in the long run, to be accepted as normal, or at least not abnormal. But Chiren was mortified by her daughter’s new, more outgoing behaviour and her willingness to mix with people who had never known anything but the ground they walked on.
Once in a while, however, Chiren got busy enough that she’d forget to be miserable. Patients were intensely grateful to have a clinic that would treat them for whatever they could afford to pay, or even if they couldn’t pay at all. They were appreciative in a way that Chiren wasn’t used to, and Ido could tell that sometimes she was touched by their gratitude. Although she was still baffled as to how people could be happy without all the material things and creature comforts she missed so much.
Then they found Motorball. Or rather, Motorball found them after one of their patients, a Paladin turned Hunter-Warrior, spread the word about the new cyber-surgeons with the extreme skills that had to be seen to be believed. Overnight, Ido and Chiren went from barely scraping by to more than comfortable. Team owners paid them well in credits, benefits and favours, giving them all the best materials and equipment to work with. Motorball financed the clinic, with enough left over for Ido’s new pet project: a new body for their daughter.
The girl was happy but not healthy, and becoming less healthy every day. Iron City’s polluted environment and poor air quality made it hard for her to breathe. The climate was heavily humid; the joke went that you had to keep moving in Iron City or the mould that grew on everything would get you too. Frequent scans and inhalation therapies were necessary to make sure the girl’s lungs weren’t hosting microorganisms.
Ido managed to sell Chiren on the idea of replacing their daughter’s body altogether. Chiren hadn’t liked the idea of making her into a Total Replacement cyborg, but she eventually agreed it was the girl’s best chance for—well—if not a normal life, then a longer one.
The two of them worked on it together, and Ido knew Chiren was putting her heart into it. One of the very few times he had seen her smile with genuine enthusiasm was when he had begun etching floral designs on the cyborg arms and legs.
Ido had actually thought that between Motorball and the clinic and constructing a new body for their daughter, Chiren was finally too busy living her life to hate it.
Chiren did seem to like Motorball as much as he did, if not more. She loved the excitement, the challenge of working under pressure to fix a player’s equipment on the fly, and seeing one of her Paladins score the winning point. But it was all in spite of herself, not because she was embracing any part of this life. She used Motorball the way someone might use alcohol or drugs: to relieve the pain of her existence. And as with alcohol or drugs, the escape was only temporary. The pain was still there, ready to resume when the games were over and the cheering crowds had gone home.
Ido thought—hoped—that finishing their daughter’s body would do his wife some good. Seeing their little girl strong and healthy rather than wheelchair-bound might be just the thing to show Chiren there was more to life on the ground than things she hated. Maybe she would even remember that this was something they’d never have been allowed to do for her in Zalem. Maybe it might break down the wall of misery she’d built up around herself and let in a tiny bit of light.
And who knew, it might have gone just like that. Their little girl continued to deteriorate in the lousy damp air and polluted environment. By the time they’d finished her new body, she was too weak for surgery; the general anaesthetic alone might have killed her. They had to build her up so she could withstand the physical shock and heal. Ido turned to the black market for more nutritious food and ingredients he could use to make vitamins and supplements.
Chiren told him it was no use, it would never work, their daughter would never be strong enough. But Ido persisted and, miracle of miracles, the girl began to improve. It went more slowly than Ido would have liked but
it was happening. Their daughter even said she felt stronger. Ido knew it wasn’t just the power of suggestion—her colour really was better and she was starting to put on weight.
And then they ran out of time.
Break-ins didn’t happen often at the clinic; when they did, it was usually someone looking for drugs. Ido kept anything worth stealing in a safe in the cellar floor, so there had been nothing for the desperate cyborg addict to steal. That hadn’t stopped him from tearing the place up, of course.
Ido had been horrified to discover he knew the man. He’d been one of the Paladins he and Chiren had worked on, young and strong, a good candidate for upgrades, who healed fast and adapted to new hardware even faster. But only for a while—his performance began to fall off. Talent and ambition hadn’t been enough to overcome the conflicts between new hardware and older equipment; neither had the performance-enhancing drugs. Eventually the day came when the team owner, a sleazy bastard named Vector who wore bespoke suits, stolen shoes and an evil smile, cut him from the roster.
By then Ido and Chiren were doing a lot of work for Vector. He paid better than anyone else and he could provide equipment and parts Ido hadn’t thought were available at ground level. Nonetheless Ido had refused to sign an exclusive contract with him. The man wasn’t simply a predator; he was greedy. Vector had a way of looking at things as if he were wondering how good they might taste, Chiren included. When both Ido and Chiren were in the pit, Vector kept his distance, but Ido knew it wasn’t out of respect for their marriage. The man didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardise his relationship with the best Motorball techs in town.
Vector was less considerate of his players. They were winners or they were out. Once they were out, they no longer got the first-class treatment Paladins were entitled to. This included the performance-enhancing drugs, the ones that were supposed to keep a cyborg body and organic brain aligned. The drugs boosted neural cells so they fired more quickly and intensely. One of the side effects of the drugs was a feeling of invincibility. Another, less salutary, side effect was addiction, both physical and psychological.
