The Body Scout: A Novel

by Lincoln Michel

  I felt bad for Capablanca. That kind of loss stayed in your head. But I didn’t feel that bad. It was a little bit of vengeance for Zunz, plus an extension for me. I had at least another day to dig and maybe get my medical debt cleared.

  I could still feel ripples of electricity flowing through me from the shock slug. I fell asleep on the couch without undressing.

  I slept fitfully, dreaming that I was an ever-expanding mound of flesh. My cyborg parts were gone. Most of my human ones too. I didn’t have features, not even a mouth. I was a sphere of skin. My flesh absorbed everything around me, the objects osmosing through my skin. I ballooned like a gargantuan baseball until I covered the city, then the planet, and then I was alone, floating in the cold dark ether of space.

  When I woke up, I had several missed calls. Four were from the Sassafras sisters, two from Dolores, and one from Natasha. None of them, luckily, were from the super whom I paid some of my last cash to warn me if any cyborg sisters, especially pissed-off ones with matching outfits, came calling.

  The shock slug had fried all my systems, both flesh and machine. The painkillers had worn off, and I pulled my outdated form out of bed. In the bathroom mirror, I could see my torso was covered with bruises. Some fresh and dark purple, others faded to pale green or sickly yellow. My skin was a bouquet of the world’s ugliest flowers.

  I went through my morning routine. Brushed teeth, lubed bionic joints, shaved facial hair back down to the skin. Scraped under my fingernails and inside my data ports. Went through the entire list. I wondered how many hours I’d spent maintaining my self instead of living my life.

  Shaved and washed, my face in the mirror was uncanny. Not the same as the face that floated in my mind when I imagined myself. The eyes were tired and bagged. The flesh between my chin and neck sagging. The hair populated with strands of gray.

  I was getting old.

  The only thing that still looked relatively new was my bionic arm. Apart from the hole the Sassafras sisters had jammed through the palm, it was smooth and gleaming. A metal sculpture. I realized that my arm would forever look new, no matter how much my flesh decayed. The rest of me would wither, but my arm would remain. I’d waste away to a stooped skeleton of a man with white hair and blotches all over my baggy skin. Yet my frail, dying figure would still be dragging around a large shiny arm.

  When Zunz and I were freshmen, they defrosted the first cryocase. Some tech baron named Peter Coin from Silicon Valley, way back when it was a valley and not a manmade libertarian island in tax-free international waters powered by floating mini nuke plants. Coin had been an eclectic billionaire who’d used government subsidies to buy up NASA and turn it into a commercial space cruise line. It’s one giant leap for tourism went the ad.

  Coin had advertised the service in space itself, suspending reflective sails in orbit. You needed a telescope to see it, but the solar-powered pixels spelled NASA Cruises right next to the moon.

  Before his hypercancer spread, Coin had frozen himself with a plan to turn up the heat when a cure was discovered. Coin’s thawing fifteen years later when RadGen therapy was developed was a huge event. Every channel was begging him for interviews.

  “What are you going to do, Mr. Coin?”

  “I’m going to see the future.”

  “This is the future,” the reporter said, laughing. “You’re here.”

  “I was born eighty years ago, but my body is only sixty-five. With the current medical tech, I can make it look at least forty. It’s a start.”

  “Are you planning to get back to work? To develop new technologies to help our present? Your future?”

  “No,” he said, grinning. “I’m going to the next future.” His plan was to keep freezing himself, waking up every twenty-five years to get the latest youth treatments. “I’ll grow younger and younger as the future rushes past. In one hundred years, medicine will make me as young as a teenager. In three hundred, they’ll be able to shrink me to a baby so I can start life all over again. They say you only live once. Well, I like to think outside the box. I’m going to disrupt mortality.”

  Zunz and I were enamored with the idea. We watched all his interviews from the rug in front of his parents’ flat-screen.

  “When I get rich, I’m buying us cryolockers, Kobo,” Zunz had said. “We’ll wake up and play for the Mets again and again. Never aging.”

  “The time-traveling baseball brothers,” I said.

  “Exactly. Space-time sluggers.”

  “I’m in, JJ. I’m in.”

  We sliced our pinkie fingers with an exposed nail on the banister, rubbed the blood together as a pact.

  It was a childish dream. And anyway Peter Coin’s second cryotank was blown up by Mextexan rebels in the Dissolution years. The corpse was never recovered. He’s disrupting in heaven now, if you believe in that kind of thing.

  After showering, I threw on my old houndstooth robe and printed some breakfast. Before I could play my messages, there was a dull knock on the door.

  Anyone could have been after Zunz, and by the transitive properties of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong anyone could be after me. I popped the floor box, grabbed my dual-shock revolver. The gun sent out a small EMP with the bullet. Made sure you immobilized a human or robot with equal force.

  When I looked through the peep feed, I could see another eye. One a lot larger than I was used to and partially obscured by strawberry blonde hair. “Mr. Kobo, I know you’re there.”

  I tucked the gun into the pocket of the robe, cinched it shut, and opened the door. “Come on in,” I said as Natasha strolled past me.

  “You look to be in bad shape,” she said. She placed her hand on my shoulder, right above the metal. Her hand was heavy and warm, and the feeling made me shiver. She was wearing a green jumpsuit that seemed to be made from some hybrid moss fabric. “I’m going to touch you. My people like to touch when we say serious things. We believe the truth can be felt. A superstition perhaps.”

  “Okay,” I said. Slid my hand toward the pocket with the gun.

  “I wanted to apologize to you in person about the whole Arocha situation at the sushi restaurant. I hope you know that it was, as your kind like to say, just business.”

  “A nasty business. But isn’t all business nasty?”

  “Exactly. It will not, I hope, affect our current professional relationship. Solving the murder of Julio Julio Zunz is in both of our interests.”

  There was nothing sexual in her touch, but somehow that made me more uncomfortable. I stepped back. Let her hand slide off my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If I kept hard feelings about everything in this biz, I’d be weighed down so much I couldn’t walk.”

  “Good. I knew you were a sensible sapien.” Natasha walked over to my couch, dropped into the blue cushions like a bag of bricks.

  “What about your big friend? Am I supposed to be square with him too?”

  “My friend?”

  “The big guy in the black suit. The thug with the unfinished face?”

  She curled her lips down in thought. “Ah, Coppelius. He was there that night at the sushi bar, wasn’t he? That’s not nice to say about his face. Not all clones turn out as smoothly as me.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Anyway, I’ve come here for two reasons.”

  “Maybe I should get dressed before hearing the first,” I said. I was still in my ratty bathrobe.

  Natasha shrugged. The suggestion seemed irrelevant to her. I might as well have said I should go hop around the kitchen and ribbit. “Both will be quick. The first is to ask you if you saw the game.”

  “Game two? Yeah, I saw. Congrats.”

  “It’s good news for you. The series will go at least five games. More games, more time to investigate. I wish I could give you many weeks. But the Mouth will move on to other things when the World Series is over, I’m afraid. As will the public.”

  “Guess I’m rooting for
the series to stretch to seven.”

  “How’s the case going? Do you have anything to report?”

  “I normally report when I’m paid,” I said. I shrugged myself. “As we say, that’s just business.”

  Natasha seemed to like that comment. Her laugh was sharp and to the point. “Then I should have led with the second reason. I’ve scrounged up that petty cash for you, for expenses.” She handed over a bytewallet with a number that didn’t make my heart sing, but would get me through the next few days. If I didn’t run into the Sassafras sisters at least. “It’ll refresh each day while you’re on the case.”

  So I gave her a report. What I was willing to share at least, which wasn’t much. I didn’t know if the Mets had me tailed, so I told her I’d been to Governors Island to see Zunz’s secret pad. Described the old toys and posters. Didn’t say anything about the Edenist girl, much less the Janus Club mask I’d found in Zunz’s island home.

  “And what about Jung Kang?” she said, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees.

  I shrugged. “I haven’t been able to get back inside the Pyramid compound. I’m trying though.”

  Natasha nodded. “I’d try again. I was digging through Mr. Zunz’s finances, and there’s a steady and mysterious withdrawal every month. And soon after, he’d place a call to the Sphinxes compound.”

  Kang had mentioned Zunz owed him money, but I didn’t know it had been a recurring fee.

  “Any idea what for?”

  She cracked her big knuckles one by one. “Aren’t we paying you to find that out? My gut instinct, to use a strange sapien idiom, is that question holds the key to the murder. Maybe Kang has accomplices that are outside the compound. Relatives perhaps? Let me know if you find one.” Natasha stood and straightened her clothes. “I’ll be in touch after game three. Let’s hope our team’s luck continues.”

  She held out her hand to shake. Grabbed my right hand before I offered it. Pulled off the glove, inspecting the broken chrome. “Hmm.” She jabbed one of her thick fingers right into the hole. The pain shot through me with an electric volt.

  “What the hell?”

  “This is not good, Mr. Kobo.”

  “It sure doesn’t feel good.”

  “I’m going to insist that you visit one of our doctors.” She wiped off the goo from my palm on a handkerchief, then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a business chipcard. “I’ve taken the liberty of providing him with your gene profile and cybernetic specs. He’ll have the equipment ready. The expenses are on us.”

  “That’s generous,” I said.

  “We want all our Mets employees in tip-top shape.” She placed the card on the counter and then walked to the door. “The last thing we want is another Zunz on our hands.”

  I couldn’t help but smile as I showed Natasha out. “The expenses are on us.” The world’s most beautiful phrase. Maybe I could convince the doctor to sneak me a few serums on the side. Put it on Natasha’s tab while he injected the upgrades into my veins.

  I went online, started looking at the latest boosts and treatments. I already had files of ones I wanted, but it was thrilling to see what was new. The sun was dripping out of the sky and I wouldn’t have time to visit any doctor that day. So I thought it was time to check up on the one clue I had: the Janus Club.

  I pulled out the card I’d taken from Zunz’s house. An Out-of-Body Experience That’s Out of This World. It was a vague slogan, but then I supposed secret groups liked to keep things that way. The address was on the west side, in what was left of Chelsea after the storm wall went up.

  I had a hard time imagining Zunz at something as stuffy as a secret club. To me, he was still the happy-go-lucky teenager who wanted to play baseball all day and watch what he called “tough-guy movies” at night. The only club we were ever in was the Mets Teen Aces Fan Club, which we’d saved up to join by selling handmade anti-surveillance ski masks outside of school. They were balaclavas decorated with reflective sequins that probably didn’t do shit against the cameras, but they looked cool enough. All we got from the Mets club were two decoder rings and a link to a coupon for a cell phone app.

  But wealth changed people. Fame didn’t help either. The more Zunz got of both, the less I saw of him and the less I recognized when I did. More than any upgrades, money warped you all the way down to the DNA.

  I put on my spiderwool suit, grabbed the fleshy mask, sucked down an eraser, and headed out.

  18

  THE JANUS CLUB

  In the supraway to Chelsea, I squished between the bodies of other passengers. The air conditioner was broken and no amount of filtering could suck away the rank smell of dozens of people inside a hot metal car. Most of the passengers had micromesh masks on, hoping to strain out any new diseases floating in the air. I strapped one on myself when the old lady next to me started coughing.

  In the middle of the car, there were a couple break-break dancers doing old-school hip-hop moves with limbs that had been upgraded with extra joints. “Showtime,” one of them yelled, and began spinning his arms at the second elbows like windmills while another flipped a Merk Knicks hat back and forth between his prosthetic feet.

  When the song ended, I sent their account a couple bucks, then stepped out into the Highline Tube. There was so much smog that night I had to use my screen light to guide me down to the street. I held my filter in my right hand and a lit eraser in my left, pressing one or the other to my lips as I walked.

  The Janus Club door was hidden behind rows of black ivy so thick I could barely make out the brick beneath. There was only a small opening between the leaves. It was marked with a brass engraving of a double-faced man. A pale blue light shone next to the slot.

  “Hey, man, wanna buy some jizz jazzers?” someone behind me said between coughs. “Make you come rainbows, I swear.”

  “Why would I need that?”

  “Aren’t you going to the club? Make it an experience.” He dug around in his coat and then showed me a variety of colored pills. “You want more stamina? Quicker reload? I got anything you need.”

  “Got a pill that makes strangers mind their own business?”

  The man looked at the pills in his hands, then back up at me. “Yeah, well fuck you, limp dick.”

  Once the man had wandered off, still cursing me, I slid in Zunz’s card.

  The door creaked open and a small drone ushered me inside. It was amorphous and fleshy, with glowing protrusions dappling the body. The pink skin covering glistened in the dim light. It looked like some kind of erotic germ.

  “Delightful to have you back with us, Mr. Zunz,” the drone said. Luckily for me, the drone hadn’t been keeping up with the news and didn’t realize Zunz was dead. “No companions this evening?”

  “Just me,” I said.

  It bobbed there, waiting.

  “Your face, sir.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” I said.

  The drone throbbed with soft pink light. Its imitation of a laugh. “You forgot to put it on.”

  “Oh, right.”

  I pulled out the mask I’d found at Zunz’s house and stretched it over my face. I could see dimly out of it but wasn’t sure how to turn the whole thing on. The mask had been molded to Zunz’s features and fit awkwardly on my face. Still, I felt close to him with my skin rubbing where his once had rubbed.

  “Allow me,” the drone said. Despite its strange shape, it had been programmed to speak like a butler in a British whodunit.

  It floated around behind me and turned the mask on. The tube around my neck started to warm up and I heard a wet click as the mouth device at the back powered on. The tongue needle shot into my neck, tapping into the spine.

  “The usual nondisclosure agreement is still in place,” the drone said. “As is the anti-comm field. No photos, videos, holos, or recordings of any kind are allowed. Please enjoy your experience with maximum discretion.”

  The pink drone floated back into a slot in the wall and I was left alon
e in the long, dark hallway.

  The metal tongue was secreting something into me. I felt hot and strange.

  I walked.

  The hallway twisted and turned, seeming to snap back around itself at sharp angles, bringing us deeper into some unknown lair. The dark path was illuminated only by purple phosphorescent mushrooms shaped like different sex organs. They sprouted in the corners, indicating where to turn. Violins played faintly in the background. Mist creeped along the floor. If I was being led to my death, at least the killers had a flair for atmosphere.

  Instead, I emerged into a large room trapped halfway between a brothel and a hunting lodge. Great wooden walls, elegant silk couches, and the heads of extinct and newly engineered animals mounted on the walls. Polar bears, gray rhinos, green rhinos, mammoths, and even a large lioniger rimmed with a mane of black-and-orange fur. Most of them were illegal to own in the States, let alone hunt. But there were sporting cruise ships that stayed in international waters where the rich could take shots at predators between bites of brunch.

  Robots in antiquated outfits rolled around, offering drinks in ram-horn goblets. I grabbed one. The room had about a few dozen guests inside, mostly international biopharm executives and tech barons flying in from Silicon Island from the look of their attire. Everyone’s face was hidden beneath the black, fleshy masks. A few men were stooped over, heads ducking beneath the undulating chandeliers. Basketball players I assumed.

  I grabbed one of the android butler’s arms as it passed. “Hey, where does a fellow get the real action?”

  The butler scanned my equipment. “You’re a Code Gold guest. You may enter the VIP room at any time,” it said, pointing toward a curtain on the left wall.

  “You ever get any FLB players in here?”

  “The Janus Club takes all types, in its exclusive way.”

  “Are there any here tonight? A Jung Kang maybe?”

  The robot’s face was welded on, unmoving. Still, I thought I could sense a frown.