Bear Head

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  And then I’m slouching onto the corridor my nook’s on, and things have gotten a bit more complicated because there’s Sheriff Rufus and an enormously chonky white cat-model Bioform from his posse there, and Rufus is banging on my door, then shouting my name. “Jimmy! Jimmy Marten, I know you’re in there. We want a word, Jimmy.”

  Oh shit. Except I can’t say it, just let the panicky thought rattle around in my head.

  “Who are these jokers, exactly?” Honey asks, in the radio link. She’s crept back out of sight and made me very still; honestly more still than I could make myself, because she doesn’t feel how goddamn uncomfortable the position is.

  “Jimmy, are you sulking?” she asks, when I understandably don’t answer. Another pregnant pause runs to term and then she says, “Jimmy, I appreciate you’re not happy with me, but you can’t object to a little self-preservation on my account. I’m here for a purpose, whatever it is. I can’t let you just… flush me. So are these clowns some trouble brought on by your substance dependency, or…?” And she lapses into a thoughtful silence that sits there in our mutual head until she breaks it with, “You can’t access the mic, can you. Because you’re not linked to it through your headspace, you just subvocalise. Ah, I’m sorry, Jimmy. I thought you were just… sulking.”

  She thought I was just sulking.

  “All right then, I am going to give you access to a subset of biological functions including your vocal cords, whatever I can pare off and isolate. And then I want you to answer my questions as quietly as possible. If you attempt to call out to these individuals, or anyone, I’ll cut you off and manage as best I can on my own. And I really am very, very sorry. This goes against everything I have worked and fought for over the last five decades. I am deeply ashamed that I have had to resort to these measures. And… there you go.”

  Rufus is hammering on my door again so I guess he doesn’t hear my gasping breath as suddenly I get back control of everything from the neck up. And if that still doesn’t sound like an ideal situation, well, you’re absolutely right, but it’s goddamn better than a moment before.

  “You stole my body!” I hiss. I am genuinely fucking terrified that she’ll revoke my privileges any moment, so I keep it soft as I can, but still.

  “I’ve said that I regret that.”

  “I don’t give a piss what you regret. You can’t just take over someone’s body. You can’t imagine what—” And I am blinking furiously because she kept my eyes open way too long and never used my second eyelids to screen the dust.

  “Moments before I was in a very similar situation, Jimmy, and you were about to exterminate me.”

  “You are just a defective copy, bad data. I am a real person and this is my body,” I subvocalise furiously.

  “I don’t see that this is a productive line of enquiry,” Honey tells me, because apparently I’ve offended the artificial bitch.

  “What sort of fuckery do you even have access to, that you can do this to me,” I demand, although I am aware that ‘whine’ would also describe just how I’m sounding. But she’s still got the rest of my body, save for all the pains and aches, which she’s considerately left for me to take care of.

  “Well that’s an interesting question, Jimmy. Maybe you should be asking why they rigged your headware so that this was even possible. I’ve only been using established pathways built into your implant. Now, answer my original query please. Who is this thug?”

  “Last chance, Jimmy, or we’ll bust our way in!” Rufus shouts, as if on cue.

  “He’s the Sheriff,” I tell Honey through clenched teeth. “He’s bad news.”

  “After you because of your insalubrious lifestyle?”

  I don’t even know what that means, although I can guess from context. “No!” I tell her, although the answer is more like ‘probably not and/or maybe’. I mean Rufus has given me warnings before, and maybe something I’ve done that I thought I got away with has turned up. Or maybe it’s slow sheriff day and he needs a loser like me to make quota. All of which is making me anxious and dry-mouthed and like the whole of Hell City is about to fall on my head, and so I add, “Lady, you do me a favour now. If you want me to help. You give me an arm back, left arm, would you?”

  “I’m afraid I’d rather not, Jimmy.”

  “Lady, seriously, I am hurting here.” I mean, I took a tab to brace me, before Central Data Services, but what with how things have gone, the high’s kind of worn off a bit early.

  “Oh, I see. No, Jimmy, I don’t think I should be complicit in your habits.”

  You fucking sanctimonious stuck up miserable bitch! But if I say that I will shout it fit to be heard over in Admin, and so I grind my teeth and wheedle. “Please, Honey. I am going to be no use to you. I got needs, lady. I am feeling it. You left me with nothing but the fucking down. Lady, you don’t know what it’s like.”

  She sighs. “You had better not OD, Jimmy.” And then I have my arm back, just the one, the left one, and I’m ferreting in my overall pocket and popping a tab of Stringer free, just about inhaling the damn thing. It doesn’t make me feel much better, truth be told, but it stops me feeling worse.

  Rufus has run out of patience. His cat sidekick – Albedo, I think her name is – hacks my door by messing up the wiring, which seems odd because they should have overrides. Except Honey explains. “I might have taken the liberty of securing your home when we left. Force of habit. And I disabled your tracking beacon and transferred its functions to your bedside alarm.”

  “I don’t have a tracking beacon,” I scoff, but all the same Rufus seems pretty damn sure I’m home, and although my room gets pretty funky you’d think he’d smell I wasn’t, even see I wasn’t the moment Albedo gets the door open. I start to feel that odd way when I’m actually unhappy but the first fizz of the Stringer is stopping it quite landing. “I have a tracking beacon?” I ask.

  “You all do, all the Hellas Planitia workers. It’s a function of your headware. I assumed it was in case you got lost or hurt when out on the surface,” she tells me.

  I get what she’s saying and it doesn’t add up because the Loonies have beacons and our suits have beacons, so actually fitting one inside us, especially without telling us, seems a bit belt and braces. But what do I know?

  Then Rufus comes out, looking pretty damn pissed off, and just stands there, probably reporting in over his own channel. Albedo is crouched on her haunches, tail lashing back and forth.

  “Can’t quite patch into what our boy there is saying,” Honey tells me conversationally. “Is that… what’s that badge he’s got? I mean, I know he’s a sheriff but that seems ridiculous.”

  “It’s a medal. Dog religious thing. You know, that Rex shit they’re always going on about like he was some sort of fucking saint.”

  Honey is quiet, hearing that. Like her channel’s open but she’s not saying anything. Then Rufus’s head snaps up, and his lips draw back from his white, sharp teeth.

  “Jimmy?” he growls, low and dangerous, and I see him take a deep sniff through that dog nose of his. “Jimmy, you been here all along?” He takes two steps away, three steps toward me, head casting about. “Jimmy, we need to talk to you. You come on out, let’s be sensible people.” His voice is pitched that way he does, that makes you scared deep inside of you, scared like to crap yourself there and then.

  Looking back I’m kind of surprised that Honey doesn’t set up a select sub-committee to fully debate the merits of running like fuck right then, but apparently some things can get rushed through to beta testing without the paperwork, even with her. She takes hold of my legs and scrabbles away down the corridor and I do my best to keep up because I’ve still got the left arm and when it’s out of time with the rest of me it throws my entire body off balance.

  Honey’s heading down away from the surface, which is exactly what I’d do if I was the one controlling the feet. You’d think maybe going up would be the better choice, give more options, but it’s Mars up there, goddamn Mars.
And Rufus and I are both engineered for Mars. Maybe I am more than him, but it’s not like I can just take off into the wilderness and hole up in a cave, hunt Mars rabbits, drink from those cool, clear Martian springs, right? So it’s ducking through the halls, shouldering my fellow workers aside, just about falling down a ladder shaft because we can’t get my hands moving in sync. And Rufus is coming, sure enough. I can hear it mostly from the yells of the people he runs over, because he doesn’t waste breath on the chase. And I can change direction quicker than him maybe, but he’s faster on the straights, especially with someone else wearing my legs, another reason not to get out on the surface.

  After the second ladder I hear the sound of Rufus overshooting, the squeal as he digs his claws in, down on all fours for the traction, and skids around. That means he’s already made up most of the distance and here I am with a copy of a crazy lady just bumbling me about down a big old corridor when there are the big atmosphere processors on either side which front whole mazes of accessways and maintenance tunnels that are mostly Weasel Team business.

  “Left!” I tell Honey, because the gap there is easy big enough for my skinny-ass body. “Left you goddamn dumbass!” I can hear Rufus tearing up the hallway behind us and when he tackles me he’ll break bones that I’ll feel and Honey won’t.

  For a moment she’s looking, through the eyes I’ve turned there, at that gap, and she can’t quite see it. She won’t move us, and I am screaming now, with my own mouth, though the sound comes and goes because I can’t make the breath come in the right rhythm. At last, and with the goddamn sheriff’s dog-breath on the back of my neck, she throws me bodily into the gap and I practically drag myself ten feet between a couple of roaring engines with just my left arm because the tight quarters seem to have paralysed her, and with her went the rest of me. So my goddamn passenger’s maybe a claustrophobe, which is among the least useful things you can possibly be given Hell City is seven-tenths underground still.

  These machines I’m in among, they’re dug right down into the rock beneath, cracking it all up, breaking it all down, releasing gas of which at least some is oxygen and the rest is hopefully not actively poisonous. It’s like a big, expensive, noisy version of what the scurf out on Planitia’s surface is doing for free, only scurf needs the crap we’ve got for sunlight to work its free magic, so for our three-star à la carte atmosphere within the tunnels we use these pieces of junk. They’re all on the point of crapping out on us all the time, Weasel Team says. One day they’ll just get the order not to repair them, and everything will get that much worse for everyone outside the Admin block.

  But right now I’m more concerned with their engineering parameters vis keeping a mad dog-Bioform from wrenching my limbs off. Rufus is right there, one arm thrust into the gap as he tries to hook me back, and me having none of it. I can see one of his eyes staring at me, most definitely not man’s best friend in that moment.

  “Jimmy,” he says, in my receiver not in my ear, because the air’s still thin here and all of it’s busy roaring with the machines. “Look, Jimmy, this doesn’t have to be trouble for you.”

  “Sheriff.” I’m waiting for Honey to cut me off but she doesn’t. “I don’t reckon you ever worked up that kind of a sweat for something that wasn’t trouble.”

  “Listen Jimmy, we got some weird activity from your headspace, that’s all. Some report that something got sent over from Earth that shouldn’t.”

  “What’s that, then, Sheriff Rufus?” I try the wide-eyed innocent look, but I reckon he can smell the lies on me even in the shitty air.

  “Something you’re better not knowing, Jimmy. Something dangerous. You’re better off without it, believe me. Look, just you squirrel out of there, boy, and I’ll get you over to Data where they can do it.” I see that single eye roll. “I’m not going to bust you for smuggling. I don’t give a crap about that right now. But this has got some serious backs up, Jimmy. So you come out here and we can still be pals, you hear me?”

  I mean, maybe it’s just his professional patter. Maybe it’s just the way dog-forms always sound sincere and serious. I mean, they started off with dogs for a reason, right? But I want to believe him, and I know damn well what I’ve got in my head is dangerous.

  “Jimmy,” Honey tells me in a warning tone. “Do you really think they’d just let you go free, good boy, pat on the head, if they get me out of you? Because if I’m dangerous data, you already know too much.”

  “No thanks to you!” I hiss at her.

  “Well I’m sorry about that, and I appreciate this is escalating quicker than I’d expected, but I’m here for—”

  “A reason, right!” And I’m aware Rufus can probably hear my side of this conversation, because his ears are good and his headware is better, but right then I don’t care. “Except you don’t even know what that is. I still think you’re supposed to be a backup on ice while the real you gets her fingernails pulled out for whatever the fuck you know. And you just sprung open in my head like a badly-packed case and now I can’t get you closed again.”

  “That is a very negative assessment. And it’s not true. I can tell there’s something I need to accomplish here—”

  And then I’ve done it. I lunge for a pipe and haul myself towards Rufus’s outstretched paw desperately. His fingers rake towards me and, for a moment, I think I’ve done it, and this goddamn nightmare can finally end. But then Honey’s on to me and the rest of me, the other arm, both legs, are yanking me in the opposite direction. And not gently, and not bending the way that God intended either, so that she jumps me deeper between the engines in a series of joint-wrenching lurches. For a moment I’ve got hold of the pipe still, with the one hand left to me, and it’s like she’s perfectly willing to tear that arm off at the shoulder if she’s got to. But the pain’s too much and I lose my grip. Then she’s got all of me, arms, legs, mouth, eyes, and me just a prisoner again, utterly without control.

  We get out the far side of the engine bank and into the little accessways back there, and if I’m hoping the close quarters will freak her out and have her give things over to me again, it doesn’t happen. So maybe it’s not claustrophobia; maybe she’s just not used to thinking about squeezing through little gaps like I am. She must be using my link to tap into the plans, because she doesn’t pause, just takes turn after turn until she finds a ladder and then drags my bruised carcase up it, whanging my elbows and knees on the rungs like she wants me to know just how she doesn’t like me. Up top, it’s a concourse near Lock Five, close to the suits and the vehicle bays and the active construction. She’s going to head outside, no matter how dumb, or that’s my assumption. And where is everybody? I’d expect at least a dozen of my fellows around here, fixing stuff, preparing to head out, all that, and yet the place looks like they evacuated it. Nobody to see poor possessed Jimmy acting weird.

  Except, when we’re ten metres away from the access hatch, we’re not alone after all. Sheriff Rufus ain’t no dumb mutt, it turns out, and there are only so many ways you can get out of the atmosphere turbine access shafts. Now, we didn’t go the way that he’s doubtless staked out, but the thing about being the sheriff of Hell City is that you can call on backup.

  I just hear a kind of Ur-uff noise, not even that loud except that if I had control of my bladder I’d have wet myself. Honey has frozen. She knows that noise as well.

  Two of them, one coming from each way, on all fours. Bad News Bears. Headwared animals, and they were always scary as hell because bears are. You get up close, there’s something that’s smart enough to give you a problem, strong enough to cause serious structural damage if it wanted to, and then they fit it with a Collar and some software and make it their goddamn guard dog. And the bears turned out to be super-good on Mars. Big body-mass, omnivores, able to go torpid and resource-cheap at need, and able to do all the grunt work you like. But mostly able to make sure that nobody storms Admin with torches and pitchforks, not that the torches would’ve stayed lit. And of course
Rufus could put in a call for the Bad News Bears to back him up, and here they are.

  My heart is racing, and I know it’s my reaction because Honey is trying to tell me to calm down; apparently bears don’t scare her, because she’s some privileged bookworm from Earth who never had to look down the throat of one. I want to tell her there’s candy in my pocket, but right now I think a little glucose bribery isn’t going to cut it.

  The Bad News Bears shamble forwards, that lazy way they have that can turn into a full run the moment you give them an excuse. I saw them tackle one of Sugar’s peers who’d pushed his little empire too far, once. The man ended up running right out in a bar full of a hundred off-duty workers including Yours Truly. They fucking murdered him, that’s all I’ll say, and nobody knew if that was their orders or if, once they were off the leash, they got real over-enthusiastic about their work.

  “Well this is going to get complicated,” Honey tells me, and then, with my voice, “You’re not true Bioforms, are you? At least not from the bounce-back I’m getting off your headware, but please let me know if I’m mistaken.”

  One of the Bad News Bears stands up, top of its head brushing the ceiling, and uffs again, maybe surprised that little Jimmy Marten hasn’t pissed his smalls yet. Maybe surprised that the clueless bitch using my mouth doesn’t sound suitably terrified. Bears are smart, and these halfway augmented bears are smarter. Smarter than Honey, right now, because they know I should be very, very scared. I should be on the ground cowering to show my unconditional surrender, because otherwise Admin will probably be reclaiming the contents of my headspace after they go shit in the woods.