“It wasn’t shaping up for much anyway.”
She took a couple more steps away, then stopped. Under the vague caterwauling from the bar and the noise of the hosing station, I thought I could hear something massive powering up, tiny insistent whine behind the fabric of the night, sense of shifting potential, like carnival monsters getting into place behind a stage curtain. Light and shadow through the stanchions overhead made a splintered white mask of her face. One eye gleamed silver.
“You got a place to crash, Micky-san? You said a couple of hours. What do you plan to do until then?”
I spread my hands. Became aware of the knife, and stowed it.
“No plans.”
“No plans, huh?” There was no breeze coming in off the sea, but I thought her hair stirred a little. She nodded. “No place either, right?”
I shrugged again, fighting the rolling unreality of the H-grenade comedown, maybe something else besides. “That’s about the size of it.”
“So. Your plans are play tag with the TPD and the Beards for the rest of the night, try to see the sun come out in one piece. That it?”
“Hey, you should be writing experia. You put it like that, it sounds almost attractive.”
“Yeah. Fucking romantics. Listen, you want a place to crash until your high-grade friends are ready for you, that I can do. You want to play Micky Nozawa in the streets of Tekitomura, well.” She tilted her head again. ”I’ll ‘trode the flic when they make it.”
I grinned.
“Is it far?”
Her eyes shuttled left. “This way.”
From the bar, the cries of the deranged, a single voice shouting murder and holy retribution.
We slipped away among the cranes and shadows.
THREE
Kompcho was all light, ramp after sloping evercrete ramp aswarm with Angier lamp activity around the slumped and tethered forms of the hoverloaders. The vessels sprawled in their collapsed skirts at the end of the autograpples, like hooked elephant rays dragged ashore. Loading hatches gleamed open on their flaring flanks and illuminum painted vehicles manoeuvred back and forth on the ramps, offering up forklift arms laden with hardware. There was a constant backdrop of machine noise and shouting that drowned out individual voices. It was as if someone had taken the tiny glowing cluster of the hosing station four kilometres east and cultured it for massive, viral growth. Kompcho ate up the night in all directions with glare and sound.
We threaded our way through the tangle of machines and people, across the quay space behind the loader ramps. Discount hardware retailers piled high with aisles of merchandise shone neon pale at the base of the reclaimed wharf frontages, interspersed with the more visceral gleaming of bars, whorehouses and implant clinics. Every door was open, providing step-up access in most cases as wide as the frontage itself. Knots of customers spilled in and out. A machine ahead of me cut a tight circle, backing up with a load of Pilsudski ground profile smart bombs, alert blaring Watch it, Watch it, Watch it. Someone stepped sideways past me, grinning out of a face half metal.
She took me in through one of the implant parlours, past eight work chairs where lean-muscled men and women sat with gritted teeth, seeing themselves get augmented in the long mirror opposite and the banks of close-up monitors above. Probably not pain as such, but it can’t be much fun watching the flesh you wear sliced and peeled and shoved aside to make room for whatever new internal toy your sponsors have told you all the deCom crews are wearing this season.
She stopped by one chair and looked in the mirror at the shaven-headed giant it barely held. They were doing something to the bones in the right shoulder—a peeled-back flap of neck and collar hung down on a blood soaked towel in front. Carbon black neck tendons flexed restlessly in the gore within.
“Hey, Orr.”
“Hey! Sylvie!” The giant’s teeth appeared to be ungritted, eyes a little vacant with endorphins. He raised a languid hand on the side that was still intact and knocked fists with the woman. “You doing?”
“Out for a prowl. You sure this is going to heal by the morning?”
Orr jerked a thumb. “Or I do the same to this scalpelhead before we leave. Without chemicals.”
The implant operative smiled a tight little smile and went on with what he was doing. He’d heard it all before. The giant’s eyes switched to me in the mirror. If he noticed the blood on me, it didn’t seem to bother him.
Then again, he was hardly spotless himself.
“Who’s the synth?”
“Friend,” said Sylvie. “Talk to you upstairs.”
“Be up in ten.” He glanced at the operative. “Right?”
“Half an hour,” said the operative, still working. “The tissue bond needs setting time.”
“Shit.” The giant fired a glance at the ceiling. “Whatever happened to Urushiflash. That stuff bonds in seconds.”
Still working. A tubular needle made tiny sucking sounds. “You asked for the standard tariff, sam. Military-issue biochem isn’t available at that rate.”
“Well, for fuck’s sake what’s it going to cost me to upgrade to deluxe then?”
“About fifty per cent more.”
Sylvie laughed. “Forget it, Orr. You’re almost done. You won’t even get to enjoy the ‘dorphs.”
“Fuck that, Sylvie. I’m bored rigid here.” The giant spittled his thumb and held it out. “Swipe me up, you.”
The implant operative looked up, shrugged minutely and set down his tools on the operating palette.
“Ana,” he called. “Get the Urushiflash.”
While the attendant busied herself in a footlocker with the new biochemicals, the operative took a DNA reader from amidst the clutter on the mirror shelf and rubbed the upsoak end across Orr’s thumb. The machine’s hooded display lit and shifted. The operative looked back at Orr.
“This transaction will put you in the red,” he said quietly.
Orr glared. “Never fucking mind. I’m shipping out tomorrow, I’m good for it and you know it.”
The operative hesitated. “It is because you are shipping out tomorrow,” he began, “that—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Read the sponsor screen, will you. Fujiwara Havel. Making New Hok safe for a New Century. We’re not some goddamn bootstrap leverage outfit. I don’t come back, the enka payment covers it. You know that.”
“It isn’t—”
The exposed tendons in Orr’s neck tensed and lifted. “Thefack are you, my accountant?” He levered himself up in the chair and stared into the operative’s face. “Just put it through, will you. And get me some of those milissue endorphins while you’re about it. I’ll take them later.”
We stayed long enough to see the implant operative cave in, then Sylvie nudged me away towards the back.
“We’ll be upstairs,” she said.
“Yeah.” The giant was grinning. “See you in ten.”
Upstairs was a spartan set of rooms wrapped around a kitchen/lounge combination with windows out onto the wharf. The soundproofing was good. Sylvie shrugged off her jacket and slung it over the back of a lounger. She looked back at me as she moved to the kitchen space.
“Make yourself at home. Bathroom in the back over there if you need to clean up.”
I took the hint, rinsed the worst of the gore off my hands and face in a tiny mirrored basin niche and came back out to the main room. She was over at the kitchen worksurface, searching cabinets.
“Are you really with Fujiwara Havel?”
“No.” She found a bottle and cracked it open, pinched up two glasses in her other hand. “We’re a goddamn bootstrap leverage outfit. And then some. Orr just has a datarat tunnel into FH’s clearance codes. Drink?”
“What is it?”
She looked at the bottle. “Don’t know. Whisky.”
I held out my hand for one of the glasses. “Tunnel like that’s got to cost in the first place.”
She shook her head. “Fringe benefits of deCom. We’re all wired b
etter for crime than a fucking Envoy. Got electronic intrusion gear up the ass.”
She handed me the glass and poured for both of us. The neck of the bottle made a single tiny clink in the quiet of the room each time it touched down. “Orr’s been out on the town for the last thirty-six hours, whoring and shooting chemicals on nothing but credit and enka payment promises. Same thing every time we ship out. Views it as an art form, I reckon. Cheers.”
“Cheers.” It was a very rough whisky. “Uhh. You been crewing with him long?”
She gave me an odd look. “Long enough. Why?”
“Sorry, force of habit. I used to get paid to soak up local information.” I raised the glass again. “Here’s to a safe return, then.”
“That’s considered bad luck.” She didn’t lift her own glass. “You really have been away, haven’t you.”
“For a while.”
“Mind talking about it?”
“Not if we sit down.”
The furniture was cheap, not even automould. I lowered myself carefully into a lounger. The wound in my side seemed to be healing, to the extent that synth flesh ever did.
“So.” She seated herself opposite me and pushed her hair away from her face. A couple of the thicker strands flexed and crackled faintly at the intrusion. “How long you been gone?”
“About thirty years, give or take.”
“Pre-beard, huh?”
Sudden bitterness. “Before this heavy stuff, yeah. But I’ve seen the same thing in a lot of other places. Sharya. Latimer. Parts of Adoracion.”
“Oh. Catch those names.”
I shrugged. “It’s where I’ve been.”
Behind Sylvie, an interior door unfolded crankily and a slight, cocky looking woman wandered yawning into the room, wrapped in a lightweight black polalloy skinsuit half unseamed. She put her head on one side as she spotted me and came to lean on the back of Sylvie’s lounger, scrutinising me with unapologetic curiosity. There were kanji characters shaved into her stubble length hair.
“Got company?”
“Glad to see you got those viewfinder upgrades at last.”
“Shut up.” She flicked idly at the other woman’s hair with hard-lacquered fingernails, grinning when the tresses crackled and shifted away from the touch.
“Who is this? Bit late for shore-leave romances, isn’t it?”
“This is Micky. Micky, meet Jadwiga.” The slight woman winced at the full name, mouthed the single syllable Jad. “And Jad. We are not fucking. He’s just crashing here.”
Jadwiga nodded and turned away, instantly disinterested. From the back, the kanji on her skull readjust don’t fucking miss. “We got any shiver left?”
“Think you and Las dropped it all last night.”
“All of it?”
“Jesus, Jad. It wasn’t my party. Try the box on the window.”
Jadwiga walked spring-heeled dancer’s steps across to the window and upended the box in question. A tiny vial fell out into her hand. She held it up to the light and shook it so the pale red liquid at the bottom quivered back and forth.
“Well,” she said meditatively. “Enough for a couple of blinks. Ordinarily I’d offer it round, but—”
“But instead you’re going to hog the whole lot yourself,” predicted Sylvie. “That old Newpest hospitality thing. Just gets me right there every time.”
“Oh look who’s talking, bitch,” said Jadwiga without heat. “How often, outside of mission time, you ever agree to hook us up to that mane of yours?”
“It isn’t the sa—”
“No, it’s better. You know for a Renouncer kid, you’re pretty fucking stingy with your capacity. Kiyoka says—”
“Kiyoka doesn’t—”
“Guys, guys.” I gestured for attention, broke the tightening cable of confrontation that was cranking Jadwiga back across the room towards Sylvie a couple of flexed steps at a time. “It’s okay. I’m not up for any recreational chemicals right now.”
Jad brightened. “See,” she told Sylvie.
“Although if I could beg some of Orr’s endorphins when he gets up here, I’d be grateful.”
Sylvie nodded, not looking away from her standing companion. She was clearly still miffed, either over the breach of host etiquette or the mention of her Renouncer background. I couldn’t work out which.
“Orr’s got endorphins?” Jadwiga wanted to know loudly.
“Yes,” said Sylvie. “He’s downstairs. Getting cut.”
Jad sneered. “Fucking fashion victim. He’s never going to learn.” She slipped a hand inside her unseamed suit and produced an eye-hypo.
Fingers programmed by obvious habit screwed the mechanism onto the end of the vial, then she tipped her head back and with the same automatic deftness spread the eyelids of one eye and fired the hypo into it. Her tight-cabled stance slackened, and the drug’s signature shudder dropped through her from the shoulders.
Shiver is pretty innocuous stuff—it’s about six-tenths betathanatine analogue, cut with a couple of take extracts that make everyday household objects dreamily fascinating and perfectly innocent conversational gambits sniggeringly hilarious. Fun if everyone in the room is dropping it, irritating for anyone left out. Mostly, it just slows you down, which I imagine was what Jad, in common with most deComs, was after.
“You’re from Newpest,” I asked her.
“Mm-mm.”
“What’s it like these days?”
“Oh. Beautiful.” A badly controlled smirk. “Best-looking swamp town in the southern hemisphere. Well worth a visit.”
Sylvie sat forward. “You from there, Micky?”
“Yeah. Long time ago.”
The apartment door chimed and then unfolded to reveal Orr, still stripped to the waist, right shoulder and neck liberally smeared with orange tissue weld. He grinned as he saw Jadwiga.
“So you’re up, are you?” Advancing into the room, dumping a fistful of clothing into the lounger beside Sylvie, who wrinkled her nose.
Jad shook her head and waved the empty vial at the giant. “Down. Definitely down. Chilled to flatline.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a drug problem, Jad?”
The slight woman dribbled sniggering, as poorly suppressed as the earlier smirk. Orr’s grin broadened. He mimed junkie trembling, a twitching, idiot face. Jadwiga erupted into laughter. It was infectious. I saw the smile on Sylvie’s face and caught myself chuckling.
“So where’s Kiyoka?” asked Orr.
Jad nodded back at the room she’d come out of. “Sleep.”
“And Lazlo’s still chasing that weapons chick with the cleavage, right?”
Sylvie looked up. “What’s that?”
Orr blinked. “You know. Tamsin, Tamita, whatever her name was. The one from that bar on Muko.” He pouted and squeezed his pectorals hard towards each other with the palms of both hands, then winced and stopped as the pressure touched his recent surgery. “Just before you pissed off on your own. Christ, you were there, Sylvie. I wouldn’t have thought anyone could forget that rack.”
“She’s not equipped to register that kind of armament,” grinned Jadwiga.
“No consumer interest. Now I—”
“Any of you guys hear about the citadel?” I asked casually.
Orr grunted. “Yeah, caught the newscast downstairs. Some psycho offed half the head Beards in Tekitomura by the sound of it. They say there are stacks missing. Guy just carved them out of the spines like he’d been doing it all his life, apparently.”
I saw Sylvie’s gaze track down and across to the pocket of my coat, then up to meet my eyes.
“Pretty savage stuff,” said Jad.
“Yeah, but pretty pointless.” Orr acquired the bottle from where it stood on the kitchen bar worksurface. “Those guys can’t re-sleeve anyway. It’s an article of faith for them.”
“Fucking freaks.” Jadwiga shrugged and lost interest. “Sylvie says you scored some ‘dorphs downstairs.”
“Yes, I
did.” The giant poured himself a glass of whisky with exaggerated care. “Thanks.”
“Ahhh, Orr. Come on.”
Later, with the lights powered down and the atmosphere in the apartment mellowed almost to comatose proportions, Sylvie shoved Jadwiga’s slumped form out of the way on the lounger and leaned across to where I sat enjoying the lack of pain in my side. Orr had long ago slipped away to another room.
“You did that?” she asked quietly. “That stuff up at the citadel?”
I nodded.
“Any particular reason?”
“Yeah.”
A small silence.
“So.” she said finally. “It wasn’t quite the Micky Nozawa rescue it looked like, huh? You were already cranked up.”
I smiled, slightly stoned on the endorphin. “Call it serendipity.”
“Alright. Micky Serendipity, that’s got a ring to it.” She frowned owlishly into the depths of her glass, which, like the bottle, had been empty for a while. “Got to say, Micky, I like you. Can’t put my finger on it. But I do. I like you.”
“I like you too.”
She wagged a finger, maybe the one she couldn’t quite put on my likeable qualities. “This is not. Sex. You know?”
“I know. Have you seen the size of the hole in my ribs?” I shook my head muzzily. “Of course you have. Spectrochem vision chip, right?”
She nodded complacently.
“You really from a Renouncer family?”
A sour grimace. “Yeah. From being the operative word.”
“They’re not proud of you?” I gestured at her hair. “I’d have thought that qualifies as a pretty solid step on the road to Upload. Logically—”
“Yeah, logically. This is a religion you’re talking about. Renouncers make no more fucking sense than the Beards when it comes down to it.”
“So they’re not in favour?”
“Opinion,” she said with mock delicacy, “is divided on the matter. The aspirant hardliners don’t like it, they don’t like anything that roots construct systems firmly to physical being. The preparant wing of the faith just want to play nice with everyone. They say any virtuality interface is, as you say, a step on the road. They don’t expect Upload to come in their lifetime anyway, we’re all just handmaidens to the process.”
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