by Jaym Gates
[Just a little,] Penni laughs.
“Actually, I think I earned a nap. I’ll enjoy her embarrassment face-to-face when I get there.” Charumati dismisses the photo and sinks further into the soft seat; trying to ignore the throbbing pain all over her body.
[You rest. I’ll line up that muse backup training course to run subliminally.]
“Oh shush, you,” Charumati looks at the sleeping baby by her left hand, and the datastick clutched in her right, then closes her eyes.
Nostrums
Jack Graham
Jake Carter’s hunt for his missing sentinel had taken him, by buggy and by mesh, in a wide arc around the Titan Quarantine Zone. Bobdog LaGrange had been missing for three days, and the trail Bobdog’d had his nose on wasn’t one that led anyplace good. Finally, Carter got a break. A traffic spime on a ditchstop spur of the M-4 had gotten a facial match on Bobdog, looking drugged in the back of a car.
He’d traced the car to a saloon at the end of the spur road and called in a favor from Sage Kim, Captain of the Elysium Rangers, to ride shotgun while he checked it out. She wasn’t Firewall, but Jake figured she wouldn’t be seeing anything too crazy on what oughta be a simple rescue mission. Kim knew him as Jae Park, terraforming worker and sometime-smuggler, and he meant to keep it that way for now.
Kim’s big gray Ranger flier circled the wide hollow at the end of the lonely highway once, then touched down near a dozen other vehicles, landing lights briefly illuminating the rusty Martian soil. The flier looked like the very mean lovechild of a large jeep and a fanjet VTOL plane. The front doors swung up, and Kim, Park, and a baboon hopped out, boots crunching on frost. Another baboon, masked against the thin atmosphere, pulled shut the doors and hopped to the front window of the flier, watching as the trio made their way across the landing lot.
“Cold enough to make dry ice tonight,” Kim said.
“CO2 doesn’t freeze in the Labyrinth anymore, lady.”
“Feels like it could tonight,” she said, “Let’s get inside.”
Even in the relative shelter of Noctis Labyrinthus, the canyon walls didn’t do much to stop the wind screaming across the Tharsis Plateau that night. They leaned in to the gusts, making a beeline from the prowler across the lot toward a lone building.
Both wore heavy boots, clothes made from drab fabric that looked like denim but acted like kevlar, well-worn sidearms, and rebreathers under dark balaklavas. Kim’s kit loosely followed the regulation uniform of the Tharsis League Rangers (which was how most rangers followed uniform regs—loosely). Both were Asian phenotypes with ruddy skin—rusters.
The baboon followed in the woman’s steps, stopping occasionally to scan the roof and windows of the building. Cape baboons weren’t the prettiest creatures to begin with, but with goggles and a full breather covering the muzzle, the big male—she called it Smoke—looked damned scary.
The building was stacked together from twenty or thirty boxy green shipping containers. The place was only dimly lit in realspace, but in augmented reality a big neon sign flickered over the buidling’s watchtower. It read, “Destino Verde.”
“Thanks for helping me come after Bobdog,” he said.
“If Bobdog didn’t feed me tips nice and regular, I’d have put his ass away long ago,” she said, “He’s an idiot.”
“Ain’t gonna argue.”
“And the less I know about what’s actually going on here, Park, the better.”
“Crystal.” He clicked off the safety on his piece, heard the whine of magnetic rails going hot as she did the same. “Get your game face on, Captain.”
“You’ve never seen it off.” An AR graphic of a badge—the Ranger star with the Chinese characters for “justice” at its center—dissolved in over the lapel of her duster as she pulled open the building’s outer door.
There was a gust of warm air. The place didn’t have a proper airlock, just a couple of counterweighted pressure doors. Cheap to maintain, and good for us, Park thought. If they needed to make a fast exit, an airlock was the worst option.
He turned on his t-ray emitter, shared what he was seeing with Kim through their tacnet, and scanned the room on the other side of the door. Front of the place looked like a typical roadhouse crowd, with someone pouring drinks and about a dozen other people either propping up the bar or scattered around the room. There was more than one way to the back; a little way down one of the passages was someone on a stool—probably a doorman.
“Got all that, Captain?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “Go time.” She pushed the inner door open and strode in, stopping next to the nearest table. The baboon hopped up next to her, pulled off its breather, grunted, and made a fist-smacking gesture that aped packing a box of cigarettes. She absently offered him a pack and a zippo while Park walked up to the bar. Style points for the lighter; self-igniting cigs were for spacers and dome dwellers.
“Hey there,” he started in Mandarin, but the pleasure pod tending bar, whose outfit consisted of little more than AR graphics, cut him off.
The pod had a fresh face but a mean sneer. “Get that monkey outta here,” she said to Kim, “This is a clean place.” She was speaking English with an Indian accent. Sounded weird coming out of a morph that looked Japanese, but Park’d heard weirder.
Kim chuckled once. “This monkey’s the Law. Get back to selling betel nuts, cupcake.”
Park looked over his shoulder to see Smoke light its cigarette and take a satisfied drag, smiling to show huge canines. Whoever said smart baboons couldn’t grok human insouciance was dead wrong, but Park also noticed the baboon had one hand on its shock baton.
The pod stood there a minute, palms planted on the bar, attempting to stare down the ranger. Kim ignored the girl completely, slowly walking around the table, sizing up the other customers along the way, until she’d done a full circle, whereon she kicked out a chair and planted herself, one boot up on the table. [Only ones who might be trouble are the pair closest to the back,] she messaged.
Park didn’t need to look their way; he was getting video from Kim in his tacs. He propped himself on his elbows and leaned on the bar like he was studying the beer taps, but his attention was on the little video window in the corner of his field of vision. Big blond guy and a stolid Japanese kid, both sipping their drinks slow and showing Yakuza nanotats. The blond guy was looking his way; his friend kept glancing at Kim.
[Some heavy citizens,] he messaged. He glanced at the bartender, [And where you figure they got the cred for a model like her in a dump like this?]
Conversation in the room started up again, and the girl finally said sideways to Park, “What do you want?”
“Sorry about my friend. She ain’t been feeling so great. Pint of Red Iron?”
The girl narrowed her eyes briefly at Kim, then looked back at him. “Your lover?” she asked. Jae felt a flutter in his chest when she locked eyes with him. Tailored pheromones?
“The captain? Nah, I just owe her a favor.” Yeah, definitely pheromones; he was fighting not to get distracted. “She’s due for some new genetic services packs; she’s got achy joints and all. She’s looking for a remedy ’til she can make the payments, wanted me along to make sure she didn’t get put over the barrel on the price.”
The girl finished pouring the beer and passed it over in a way that involved more bending and stretching than was strictly necessary. She said, “What’s a terraform-wallah know about being over a barrel?” She’d made him quick, but then his whole look screamed terraformer, even with his network profile in privacy mode.
“You ever worked as a line engineer, you’d know the answer, darlin’: plenty.” He took a long pull off the beer; it tasted like burnt rice and the girl’s perfume.
“Anyway, this is a bar … not a pharmacy.”
He slid some cred into an AR payment window, tipping generously. “Ain’t what I heard.”
/> She glanced toward the pair of yakuza. Through Kim’s video feed, he saw the young-looking one nod to her. “Why don’t you and your friend try in back?” She pointed to a hallway to her left marked, “EMPLOYEES ONLY.”
He abandoned the remaining beer. “Thanks, darlin’.” He turned to Kim and nodded toward the hallway, and the two of them headed back. Smoke stayed perched on its table, eyeing the two yakuza.
The back room opened up into four cargo containers whose innermost sides, bottoms, and tops had been cutting away, forming a big, mostly open space. At the back of it was a counter, and behind the counter was a tall stack of cases, drawers, cabinets, and hanging nets full of herbs, animal parts, and medicines in old-fashioned glass and plastic containers. The old guy behind the counter looked Japanese, but the labels on all of the containers and most of the AR graphics floating over items for sale were in Mandarin.
“What you need? Whatever it is, I got just the thing,” the old man said.
Park was suspicious as hell of anyone who chose to walk around in an old morph; meant you were either potent or desperate. “My lady friend’s GSPs’re up. She’s got some joint pain. Normal meds ain’t working. You got somethin’ to restore her chi flow or whatever all this stuff is supposed to do?”
“Chi’s serious business,” the old man scowled. “I got a reed and marrow rub for that, just the thing.”
Park said, “C’mon, oyabun. I know you got better.”
“Ah, I have just the thing … Houzi cream.” He started to take a tin from under the counter.
“Tinned? I could make that in a fabber. Quit trying to jerk me around, or we’re going somewhere else.”
The old man grunted, backed up and crossed his arms.
“You’re worried about the badge, paatno-san? C’mon, we know this is a yak place. We’re here for your merchandise, not to make a bust, or we’d have her monkey in here tearing your shit up already.”
The old man scowled. “I can make you up a Houzi cream, but it ain’t cheap.”
Park messaged her, [Ask to see the gibbon.]
Kim crossed her arms and looked around the shop like she was thinking about it. [Are you fucking serious, Park? You think—]
[Just do it!]
She looked at the shopkeeper. “I’m gonna need to see the gibbon. That ain’t a problem, right?”
The shopkeeper led them deeper into the maze of shipping containers.
[What’s going on with this operation?] Kim messaged, [I seen some weird shit, but … ]
Park messaged, [Traditional Chinese medicine. Old-timey, superstitious shit. It was mostly dead ’til the corps kicked in with the GSP racket and people couldn’t find any cure’d work on their pains and asthma. Some of the recipes call for ape parts. They lop off the pieces to make the meds, then throw ‘em in a healing vat, rinse, and repeat. People’ll try anything, and they think uplifts make stronger medicine. Surprised you never ran into this before.]
[Wait, so what are the yakuza into it for?] she messaged. She was mapping out all the twists and turns they’d followed on the tacnet.
They passed through a barrier of hanging plastic, and the reek of confined animals hit them. The hallway opened up into the harvesting room. In the gloom, he saw a neo-bonobo drugged in a cage. Park peered at him, but it wasn’t Bobdog—no dreadlocks. Unless he’d resleeved. Through another doorway, he could see a row of bear cages.
—
[Triads won’t touch it,] he messaged, [They think it’s a cultural embarrassment, if you can believe. But the demand’s there, so the yakuza got into it.]
The yakuza rolled out a cage with a gibbon in it. Jake really wanted to find Bobdog and get out of here before he was responsible for them cutting on this monkey but … well, here was some fucked up shit he hadn’t seen before.
The gibbon was hopping around in its cage freaking out, but it was also signing to him in Warlpiri.
He signed from where the old man (hopefully) wouldn’t spot him while Kim made a show of walking around the cage inspecting the ape.
The gibbon tried to hoot, its throat sack inflating, but only a sick croak came out.
Park could see where they’d shaved him and popped his stack; they’d burned out his mesh inserts, too.
[That’s a neo-gibbon. Bobdog’s sleeved in it,] he messaged Kim.
She glanced at him over the cage. [How do you know?] she messaged, [It doesn’t have a PAN.]
[Australian native sign language.]
She shot Park an incredulous look but didn’t say anything. “Okay, it looks good,” she told the yakuza.
The old man pulled out a metal pole with a wire snare on one end and started trying to catch Bobdog’s hand with it, cursing under his breath as the neo-gibbon freaked out in the cage.
“I haven’t got all day,” Kim said, then messaged, [What’s he doing?]
[If he gets a hold on Bobdog’s hand, he’s gonna slice it off with that vibroknife in his belt and use it to make your Houzi cream. Game time,] Park messaged, [How you wanna play this?]
She answered by breaking the old man’s face with the butt of her pistol.
He fell back, screaming and clutching his broken nose. “What the fuck? You think that badge means you gonna walk out of here alive?”
There was a crash and screams from somewhere outside. On his tacnet feed, Jae saw the big blond yakuza looking terrified for a split second as Smoke turned over the table onto his companion and came at him with its shock baton.
Kim kicked the old man to the floor and pointed her gun at his head. “Open the cage now, and I might not shoot you.”
The cage door swung open, and Park lifted Bobdog out and stood him on top of the cage.
The neo-gibbon shook its head, signed,
Park lifted him. “All right, arms around my neck, pal. We’re Althauser 5000.”
There was a gunshot from somewhere down the hall. The old yakuza cackled sickeningly from the floor. “Stupid fucking garlic eaters,” he said, “When my boys get done with you, I’m gonna sleeve you up like that one and use you all for fucking monkey parts.”
Kim shot him three times, the railgun almost silent except for the crack of the slugs.
Park looked over in time to see the old man slump over. “Damn,” he said.
Park lifted the neo-gibbon just as the doorman from out front came tearing into the room. Park spun and leveled his pistol at the man. Bobdog was clinging to him like a baby; kid was gonna need some serious time in psych after this. “Hold it!” he shouted.
The guy hesitated for a second but kept coming, pistol out. Then the baboon took him down. Smoke leapt at him out of the gloom of the hallway, grabbing him around the neck and swinging its weight forward so that the gangster tumbled and fell to the ground. Smoke landed in front of the guy, then swung its baton hard into the wrist of his gun arm. Bone cracked wetly.
The yakuza grunted and sat up, holding his wrist. Smoke howled in his face, showing two huge canines. Smoke had been grazed by a shot, though its flak jacket had stopped most of the damage. The baboon looked pissed.
Park motioned with his gun. “C’mon, Toshi. Get in the cage.”
The guy stumbled to his feet, the baboon circling him. “Name ain’t Toshi.”
“Toshi, Fu, Iggins, whatever; get in the damned cage.”
He got in. Park put down Bobdog, pulled out his COT, and made a neat row of nanotack welds between the bars and the lock.
“Those’re illegal, terraform-wallah,” Kim said.
He looked up for a second. “So’s shootin’ technical old yak pharmacists for calling Koreans names.”
“I like monkeys and garlic. He messed wi
th both in one breath. He needed killin’.” She looked none too penitent.
“Arright,” Park said, “This one ain’t following us. Now let’s see what all else they got hidden in here.” He picked up Bobdog again; the neo-gibbon pointed toward the bear cages.
She stayed put as he headed for the bears. “You’re kidding, right Park? We should go. Now. I’ll come back later with a tac squad and clean this place out.”
“They didn’t seem too afraid of cops. Whose jurisdiction is this, anyhow?”
“Gray area. My force doesn’t come down this way much. It’s on the line between me and the Noctis Rangers.”
“Who you know damn well got termites in the frame. Bobdog here’s down a cortical stack, mesh inserts, and a set of vocal cords over what they’re hiding in here.”
The neo-gibbon signed something in Warlpiri.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Kim asked.
“Uh, rough translation? ‘Cowgirl up.’” He shifted Bobdog to his back and headed into the bear cage room, gun first.
“Well, fuck. C’mon, Smoke.” She caught up, then took point, with the baboon bringing up the rear. [Gloria,] she messaged the other baboon, [Strap in,] and then to the AI in her prowler, [Dust off and circle high.] A few seconds later, the truck was a moving blip on their tacnet.
A few black bears looked up sadly as they crossed the room. They were stunted and weak, their wire cages barely allowing movement. A neatly attached catheter dangled from the belly of each—for milking their bile, if Park recalled rightly. Beyond that was a room with more primates—gibbons, monkeys, and another drugged out neo-hominid. The whole place smelt of sickly caged animals, and Smoke was getting edgy, sweeping the backs of his hands nervously over the floor whenever they paused. Kim gave him another cig to cool him down.
Kim came to a pressure door with a tiny window. Instead of peering through, she angled her gun so that she could look through its smartlink. Through his tacnet feed, Park could see the room beyond as she slowly panned. It was a lab set up: bunch of steel tables, equipment cabinets, industrial gear for filling up some small, heavily shielded cylinders—for gas or liquid, he wasn’t sure. There was a batch of a dozen cylinders racked up on the table.
