Dreaming Metal

by Melissa Scott

  Desembaa is one of two people—Bixenta Terez is the other, and that’s only because she requires a human backup for Aeris—whom I trust with the secrets of the illusions. “That’s what I figured,” I said, and tipped the workboard to an angle so that we could both see and sketch. I explained what I’d had in mind, my first choice and the second-best option, and he nodded thoughtfully.

  “I can certainly do the second—”

  “I figured,” I said again.

  “—but the first …” He let his voice trail off, studying the images, my sketches and his file plan of the Tin Hau stage and stagehouse, head tipped even farther to the side. “It can be done, but it’s going to take a little more time than you’d probably like. Up to a minute, even, to prepare. Can you cover that?”

  A minute is an infinity on stage. I made a face. “You said up to a minute. How short can you make it?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Desembaa’s eyes narrowed. “Forty seconds?”

  That was too long, too—or maybe not. I closed my eyes, picturing the flow of the illusion, factoring in applause and its potential absence, trying to make time stand still on stage while the construct and karakuri—and I—were actually moving fast. “Yeh. Probably.”

  “I think I can do that—I’ll try to get it to less, of course, but I’m pretty sure I can give you forty seconds. I’ll run the plans and send them over to you.”

  “Not on the connections, please,” I said, and he smiled.

  “Not on the connections. Do you want to keep the same faceplate, or do you want me to cast a new one? It’s been, what, three years since I did the silver.”

  It was, I supposed, a polite way of telling me my looks were changing. “No, I think it’ll work—might even be better, not looking quite so much like me as like a sister.”

  Desembaa nodded. “Haya, then, prices. For the humaniform, I’ll work it out, but it shouldn’t be more than, say, 8 percent over the last one.”

  “The color is crucial,” I said. “I’d rather pay more than get it wrong.”

  “You shouldn’t have to, but I’ll let you see samples before I cast anything.” He paused. “What about the transformer? Color, finish?”

  I hesitated. I hadn’t really thought about it, or not consciously, but when it came to making the decision, I discovered I had a fairly strong image in my mind. “Plain iron, like the machines on the surface lines.”

  Desembaa nodded again. “I can do that. I’ll have to work at it to get the design just right, but then I can give you an idea of the price. It’ll probably be about half again as much as the humaniform karakuri, though.”

  “Haya,” I said. “Send me the plans and the estimates when you have them.”

  “Of course.” He frowned down at the screen, still watching the animation. “One thing does worry me, Fortune. If you’re going to get the transfer down to forty seconds, you’re going to need a very fast Spelvin handling the karakuri.”

  “How fast?”

  “What are you running now?”

  “Aeris is a Hot Blue Jag-series—an Alpha-Nine,” I answered. The Jags had been discontinued about a year ago, and I wasn’t surprised when he shook his head.

  “I don’t know if that will do it, Fortune. Not the way you’ll want it.”

  I sighed. I didn’t really want the expense of a new Spelvin construct on top of two new karakuri, but Desembaa was never less than honest with me. “What would you recommend, then?”

  He shrugged, momentarily bringing his shoulders into alignment. “I’m not a wireware specialist, Fortune, you know that. Ask a constructor.”

  “All right, I’ll do that, but what parameters are you giving me?”

  He tilted the workboard to bring the screen into better focus. “Something like this, juggling five karakuri—and the kinds of moves you use—plus the basic stage effects… You’ll need a Spelvin capable of FTL management, or the equivalent.”

  “Shit.” I already knew that was going to be expensive: Spelvin constructs of that quality were worth nearly two of my karakuri.

  “On the plus side, it wouldn’t have to be new, just Level Four complexity. It’s not just speed you’re after, it’s the ability to juggle decisions in realtime,” Desembaa said. “Or you could split the act, let one of the constructs you have now handle the effects while Aeris does the karakuri, something like that.”

  I’d tried something similar years ago, and it didn’t work, at least not well enough for my act. “No good. The construct wouldn’t have to be new?”

  Desembaa shook his head. “I don’t think so. As long as it’s Level Four, it ought to be able to handle the load.” He grinned. “I mean, don’t get some vintage piece that’s been around since Settlement, but other than that, anything at Level Four should be all right.”

  “Right,” I said. It wasn’t as bad as I’d first thought, but it wasn’t going to be cheap, either.

  “I’ll get you the preliminary plans by the half-week,” Desembaa went on, “and we can settle on price then. I’ll have full specs for the construct then, too.”

  I nodded. “What about line space?”

  “Let me check,” Desembaa answered. He waved a hand, and my sketches shrank to a corner of the screen, were replaced by a table of glyphs. They were all tradetalk signs, nothing I could read, but Desembaa squinted thoughtfully at them. “Nobody’s full up right now,” he said, “but they’re full enough that one of the Cartel affiliates placing a big order before we get there could cause a delay. But if that doesn’t happen, it looks like you could have your karakuri within seven days of finalizing your order.”

  That was a little less than a week—probably a week and a half, once you factored in the design time: not enough to get the new illusion into rehearsal before the Empires reopened, at least not unless things were worse than I thought they were, but not unmanageable. The rest of the act was well in hand; I could afford to concentrate on the new illusion. “Haya,” I said. “Keep the sketches, and get back to me.”

  “You’ll hear from me within the half-week,” Desembaa answered, and I turned to the door.

  I could trust Desembaa with the karakuri, but to buy a construct—particularly a high-level one, particularly a used high-level Spelvin—I would need more help than he could give. I called Fanning, but Niantai Li, who answered the unit, told me he was at Motosha, working. That was actually better than trying to arrange something over Persephonet; I thanked her, and headed for the Copper Market.

  The Copper was one of the oldest of the night markets, old enough that it wasn’t just a night market anymore, but served the ordinary needs of Madelen-Fet and the upper end of Angelitos. Like most of my neighbors, I bought most of my fresh food at the wet markets in Lower Charretse, where the long-haul convoys off-loaded the produce from the farms in Pleasant Valley, but when I was in a hurry, or just too lazy to make the long trek to the far end of Broad-hi, there were plenty of smaller shops in the Copper that were glad to sell me what I needed, and sometimes even as cheaply as I could get it in Charretse. The open center of the Copper is always crowded with pushcarts, clustered eight or ten deep around each of the power points, and at least half of them are run by cavern farmers from the Daymare Basin and sand-combers in from the deep desert with carts full of fuzz-clams and prickle-cane and chutt. They have to sell out their load to make any sort of profit—and most of them don’t have access to long-term storage, the downside of not buying into the farmers’ cooperatives—so the prices tend to be competitive. The carts that don’t sell food sell almost everything else, clothes, videomanga, bodypaint, and perfume, anything small that could command a decent price, so you never knew for sure precisely what you’d find. Even midworlders would come up to the Copper sometimes, looking for bargains.

  This time, as I left the lift station at the end of the market, I could see that someone had gotten a cartload of brightly colored sand-silk scarves—the big ones, the ones the high-teen girls were using for skirts—and was displaying them c
lipped in bunches to a kind of flagpole. The sun was just rising with the end of the day shift, and the new light spilled down through the just-open sun-traps, brightening the rainbow colors. A grey-haired man steadied the pole and the high-teens snatched and jostled, while a younger woman deftly worked the cash-reader, joking with the buyers as she worked. The tonal rise and fall of their voices was loud even over the music that blared from the arcade stores.

  Both arcades were busy, too, so that I felt I was walking on soft sand shouldering through the crowd. The Copper’s management had repainted the wall above the arches, covering over the most recent layers of advertising and graffiti, but already the stenciled glyphs were creeping back, and the clipshop in the center of the arcade had replaced the painted vines that crawled up the edges of its archway, each flower blossoming into the face of a local singer. Micki Tantai and the rest of Hati were conspicuously absent, though, and I wondered who had chosen to omit them. In the southwestern corner, where the electrobus stopped on its way down Shires Road, a six-screen infovendor was showing its wares, quick-cutting between what looked like a game, a couple of stone operas, and a political debate. I felt its query pulse through my suit, and avoided its transceivers, managed to duck into Motosha without triggering its full display.

  The shop was big, converted, I think, from a light assembly line, and light diffused from the ceiling and upper walls, so that the space was filled with a shadowless radiance, ideal for displaying the machines that filled every available space. I looked for Fanning, scanning the back wall where the service counter was, but my eye was caught instead by the kineticon that stood in the middle of the center aisle. A three-wheeled cart a little bigger than my joined fists, not counting its topping of flags and pinwheels, chugged madly along a track that circled a central pyramid. As it passed, arms extended from the pyramid, reaching for it—one even seemed to be holding chopsticks—but the cart eluded its grasp each time. It was a nice piece of work, and I moved closer, examining the delicate mechanism as best I could without getting close enough to worry anyone.

  “Can I help you?”

  The voice was polite but unfamiliar, and I straightened to face the speaker. “Yeh—”

  “Oh, bi’ Fortune.” He was almost too perfectly the stereotype of a hard-hacker, a yanqui about average height, but unhealthily thin, skin barely touched by the sun. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. What can I do for you?”

  “Just a social visit,” I said. Motosha didn’t pay on commissions, but there were reputations and egos to consider, especially among the serious hard-hackers. “I was looking for Fanning Jones.”

  “Oh.” He hid his disappointment better than I’d expected, and pointed to the counter. “He should be there.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and threaded my way through the pallets of equipment. Most of it was secondhand, salvaged from the surface lines either here in the Daymare Basin or in Whitesands, and showed sand-scars and spots of brighter metal where repairs had been made. A few new or nearly new pieces were mixed in with the rest—a very nice sealed-case multipurpose generator, still with the shipping labels and the transport bars across the battery terminals; the controlhead for a fabric welder, also still in the shipping wrap; a set of brass gearings in a padded case—but nothing I really needed. Most of what I bought was kept in the back anyway, or hung haphazard on the walls or in the side shelves with the miscellaneous parts.

  I felt the house system register my presence as I came up to the counter, and waved my hand through the nearest signal space. I felt the chirp of contact—recognition of my suit, rejection of it as foreign, not aligned to this system—and then the stronger pulse as the store acknowledged my presence. A moment later, Fanning appeared in the nearer of the two doorways, the frown imperfectly smoothed from his face, display glasses perched on his nose. He peered over the top of their frame at me.

  “Fortune. What are you doing here?”

  “Thanks,” I said, sourly, and he shrugged.

  “Sorry. But usually you call.”

  I lowered my voice. “I wanted your advice on something, but I told the guy back there it was personal. Can you take a break?”

  “I was on break.” Fanning’s grin robbed the words of any anger. “Sure, let me just log out again.” He waved his hand through the nearest control beam, and squinted through the glasses at the result. I couldn’t see anything, or feel more than the fizzing of the active system, but Fanning reached for an active space I couldn’t see, fingers working in what looked like house sign. I felt the ghost of a confirmation, and he slipped the glasses into his pocket. “Haya, all set.”

  I nodded, but we didn’t say anything more until we were back out in the heat and noise of the Copper. About half of the peddler’s scarves were gone; the old man was spinning the pole so that the remainder stood out like flags in a high wind. We stopped to buy bags of courduroy-pear juice, then found a place to sit on the edge of the ventilator covers, out of the worst of the crowd.

  “So what’s up?” Fanning asked, and drove the thin straw expertly into the bag.

  I copied him, less deftly, and wiped the spillage on my trousers. “I’m working on a new act, and it looks like I’m going to need a new overseer construct to manage it for me. You used to have contacts that could help me—are any of them still around?”

  Fanning made a face. “A lot of people are still around—more than I thought there were.” He took a breath. “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “Something at least Level Four.”

  “That’s FTL quality,” Fanning said.

  “Yeh. And I need it cheap.”

  Fanning sighed, but didn’t pretend to misunderstand me. If I wanted to buy a construct of that complexity at anything less than three-quarters of the market price, I would have to go to the grey market, maybe even the black. Fanning had spent most of his lycee years on the edges of that world, and at least two of his former boyfriends had done time for hardware offenses. “I don’t know if I still know people—if any of them still know me. I can ask, Fortune, but it’s going to take time.”

  “I can take time,” I said. “If I have to.”

  He made another face, as though he’d wanted an excuse to refuse. “I can ask,” he said again, and stressed the last word. “Like I said, I don’t know if people still talk to me. At least one of them doesn’t seem to.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” I said. “I’ll owe you, Fan.”

  He waved that away, fingertips stained green where the juice had leaked out around the straw, and we sat in silence, the noise of the Copper filling our ears.

  “How are you managing?” I asked, after a moment. “And how’s Timin doing?”

  Fanning grinned. “He’s doing much better, thanks. Only has to wear the cast a couple hours a day now, and the whole thing’s supposed to be finished by the half-week.”

  “That’s good.”

  He nodded, busy with the last of the juice, the pouch contracting around the straw.

  “How are you doing for bookings?” I asked.

  He sighed then, pitched the empty container into the gutter where the sweeper-karakuri would retrieve it. “All right, at least for now. But if the Empires don’t open soon—we were counting on that to keep us going until we could save enough to do another clip.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t quite know what to say to that, and before I could think of anything, Fanning clapped his free hand to his pocket.

  “Shit,” he said, and fished out his display glasses. “Sorry, Fortune, I’m needed.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I said, but he was already on his feet, angling back toward Motosha.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he called, and I waved in answer. There wasn’t much left of my own juice, but I finished it anyway, watching the people bustling past me through the Copper. This was one of the times when it might have been easier to have a human assistant rather than just a construct—to have a human being offstage, managing effects or the karakuri—but I’
d found out early on that assistants simply didn’t have enough of an investment in the act. Besides, by now the act was built on the karakuri, on the fact that the audience knew that there was only me and a construct to run it all; they came expecting to see machines pushed to their limits as well as me. Changing that would be a bigger change than adding any complex illusion. A two-toned chime sounded from the infokiosk on the electrobus platform, and then a deeper tone began sounding the hour; at the same moment, a hatch slid back, disgorging a sweeper-karakuri, its brushes dropping into the channel made by the gutters that ringed the plaza. It slid forward, the solid dome hiding its sensors, brushes hissing in the gutter, and I tossed my empty juice container in front of it. It swallowed it in passing, leaving a faint smell of disinfectant in its wake, and I stood, stretching a little. Now that I’d committed my money, and Fanning’s time, at least, to the new illusion, it was more than time to tell Terez exactly what I was planning.

  The Empire looked empty, the tube lights out, no previews dancing in the arch above the main doors, but that was deceptive. I walked past the main doors, each one with a poster, yellow on black, announcing CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE in both glyphs and smaller realprint, and turned down the tunnel alley that led to the stage door. I felt the house system pulse, registering first my presence, then acknowledging my suit codes, and the stage door opened automatically as I approached. The alcove where staff and performers signed in was crowded, stage techs and people who rented practice space in Tin Hau’s apparently infinite lower levels, and I touched the disk in my wrist, bringing the system up to sight levels.

  “Input, command: inform Bixenta Terez that I’d like to see her.”

  The confirmation throbbed through me, diffuse pleasure, and I started down the stairs into the stagehouse. As I reached the door of my dressing room, I felt the kiss of the system contact, and turned to find the nearest pinlight. Letters popped into view, realprint scrolling across my sight, nearly as private as encryption here in Tin Hau, where most people only knew glyphs: I’LL BE IN MY OFFICE IN FIVE MINUTES, MEET YOU THERE. I made a face, not sure myself whether I was annoyed at having to climb back up to the administrative levels, or at having to talk to Terez, but I turned around and headed for the nearest stairs.