“Come on,” Fanning said, and started toward the tents, slipping a little in the sand until he found pavement again. I shifted my fingers to bring Celeste into motion, and the karakuri swayed dangerously, the system slow in compensating for the wind. For a second, I wondered if I’d made a mistake—it was hardly be good advertising to see her fall sprawling in the sand, not to mention the damage it could do to the components—but I shifted my fingers again, turning her sideways against the wind, and this time the system steadied her perfectly, so that we could walk side by side into the encampment.
As we got closer, I could see through the sand-scarred plastic that fronted most of the tents and campers, protecting the goods on sale while displaying them. Most of it was sand-diver’s equipment, day-stills and trench drills stacked side by side with navigation computers and black boxes guaranteed to tap the Cartel Companies’ encrypted systems, but here and there pieces of more complex equipment were visible, even the headbox for a Spelvin construct. I could see people watching me, and my metal twin, despite the hard-hacker ethos that says nothing should surprise you. It would be worth rubbing the sand scratches out of Celeste’s skin just to enjoy those stares.
As we came up on the hat-rack system, I could see a woman squatting at its base, studying the generator’s open control panel, and the air stank of jellied fuel. She looked up at our approach, eyes flickering from Fanning to me and Celeste and back again, and Fanning said, “We’re looking for Newcat Garay.”
“There.”
She pointed to the tent immediately to her right, a big bubble tent that had once been painted in vivid designs. The sand had worn them all away, except for a bright purple crescent-moon shape below one of the windows. The door was outlined in purple light tubing, the color bleached by the moonlight and the camp lights overhead, and I saw Fanning lift his hand uncertainly. In the same instant, I felt the pulse of an inquiry coursing along the wires of my skinsuit, and lifted my hand into what was suddenly the response space, saying, “Input, command. Send ident package two.”
Confirmation flashed through me, deliberately too strong, pleasure shooting down through my crotch, and Fanning said, “Enter?”
His voice was a little breathless—he’d caught the same pulse I had—and a voice answered from inside. “Enter.”
We ducked one by one through the arch of purple light, Celeste copying my careful movements, and found ourselves in the tent’s outer room. It was empty except for a central table and a handful of folding chairs; the table was piled with multicolored headboxes, and a man stood behind it, peering over the frames of a pair of battered dataglasses. That had to be affectation—anyone who ran a system like the one that had just queried us had to have a full suit—and I let Fanning make the first move.
“Red said you might have a Level Four construct for sale,” he said, simply, and the man—Garay—nodded.
“I might be selling. I have several in stock.” He looked at me then, eyes sweeping across me and Celeste, and I touched the controls to move her head so that her eyes met his. He ignored it, went on without pausing. “What is it you’re looking for?”
“My name’s Fortune,” I said. “I’m a conjurer, I work with karakuri. I’m looking for a construct that will manage this karakuri and four others, three identical, one very different, in my act.”
Garay paused for a second. He was a heavyset, greying man, yanqui by his eyes, with a comfortable belly showing beneath his open sand jacket: not at all the stereotypical hard-hacker. “I have three Level Fours,” he said, and moved along the table to touch each headbox as he named it. “A Hot Blue SHYmate 294, a Kagami Starran Ltd. 5, and a Botaban/Anchor 214-5.”
The boxes all looked identical, of course, except for the different colors, heavy cubes about half a meter square, with an interface plate on the side and a mounting ring on the top. I said, “I don’t think the Botan will work. But I’m interested in the other two. And provenance is an issue.”
Garay nodded, showing neither surprise nor indignation. “They’re at worst grey—they didn’t fall off a carrier, but the original builders might be surprised to find them on the market.”
“As long as the functionality is good,” I said, “and as long as nobody’s going to be putting heat on me, that will work.”
“No heat.” Garay shook his head. “One’s a return, the others are an overstock situation.”
I saw Fanning relax then, and nodded. “All right. I’d like to run the specs, then.”
“Help yourself.”
Garay stepped back from the table, and I moved in. The SHYmate was closer, so I flicked it on first, the codes blooming in front of my eyes as the pinlight projector lit. I ran through them quickly—standard for its kind, though the secondarly routines had been optimized for hyperdrive management; the interface was a SARA, the same kind I’d always used, and ideal for handling karakuri, but it lacked the Charrna wheel that simplified content parsing. That wasn’t an addition I was prepared to make myself, and I moved on to the Starran. It, too, was pretty much standard; it had the Charrna wheel and a projection matrix that would simplify the performance programming, but the base interface was the Megat-4, which was known as the maggot for good reason. I checked the Botan then, but it was simply outclassed: those constructs are designed for simple in-systems work, probably shouldn’t even be rated Level Four in the first place.
I looked back at Garay. “This is it?”
“Level Four isn’t easy to come by,” he answered, placidly. “I don’t know anyone else who has this many.”
I hid a sigh. That was almost certainly true: hard-hacking exists, and is of questionable legality, precisely because the Cartel Companies keep close track of major parts and constructs, require licenses and tech certificates and official stamps before you can buy most pieces of hardware. The more useful, the more versatile the equipment, the harder it was to find, and Level Four constructs were all those things. I looked away, running down my mental list of constructors I knew that I could rely on to install a Charrna wheel, and came up blank. All the people I knew who were good enough to do the job would want either a piece of the action—like an explanation of the illusion, something I will not give—or more money than I could afford. I liked the SHYmate, though—even in the brief contact, I’d caught a hint of a decent pseudopersonality—so maybe there was a way to work without the wheel. “What are you asking for the SHYmate?”
“Twenty-two hundred wu.”
“And the Starran?”
“Nineteen hundred.”
That was better than I’d expected, despite what Fanning had told me, and it was only a first asking price. I pretended to consider, a new idea forming in my mind. If I sold off some hardware, I could afford both of them, and then run them in tandem, using a bridger to make the connection and to bypass the maggot interface, running input through the projection matrix and the Starran’s wheel to the SHYmate’s SARA—I might even be able to loop it, use the SARA for both input and output. Best of all, that was a hardware problem, not a construction issue. “I’m interested,” I said, “but neither one of them’s perfect. Mind if I see how they work with Celeste?”
“Make free,” Garay answered.
I brought the karakuri over with one hand, reached into my pocket under the cloth for the cables and plugged them in. Celeste came to a jerky stop at my side—the onboard system still didn’t have fine control, though it was getting better all the time—and I resisted the temptation to put my arm around her waist. Garay laid a filter/mediator on the table beside the headbox.
“But run through this.”
I nodded—it was a reasonable precaution—and fitted the cords into the filter. Garay squinted at them, then rummaged under the table to produce a matching set. I plugged them in as well and leaned back to focus on the tiny pinlight at the base of Celeste’s neck. It lit, and the air between us filled with scrolling glyphs. I let them scurry past, one part of my brain watching for known compatibility problems, another c
onsidering the problems that were bound to arise if I tried to put two constructs together. The pseudopersonalities were the biggest one, though the Starran series had been criticized for being bland; however, from the look of the codes, only the SHYmate had been activated, so its personality should easily dominate the Starran.
The first set of glyphs ended, and I put Celeste through a series of simple movements before moving on to the second headbox. The results were pretty much the same there, and I looked away from the pinlight to break the connection. “Like I said, neither one of them is quite what I’m looking for,” I said, and began unplugging the cables, rolling them into neat packages. “What kind of a price would you make for both of them?”
Garay blinked once, the only sign of his surprise. “Forty-one hundred.”
I waited.
“Less 10 percent for volume.”
“I’ll give you thirty-five hundred.” It wasn’t the 20 percent I would have liked, but better than ten.
Garay nodded slowly. “Cash chips only, and up front.”
That would take almost everything I’d brought with me—Fanning might end up buying the fuel at Marihaut—but I could just afford it. “Agreed.”
I saw Fanning stir again, but ignored him, reaching into my pocket for the tube of money chips. I counted them out, seven bright red five-hundred-wu units, all CarteBanque, and set them on the table in front of him. Garay nodded again, and scooped the chips into his free hand.
“They’re all yours, then.” He paused. “I’ll look forward to see a new illusion.”
That, more than anything else startled me—I hadn’t thought he’d recognized my name, hadn’t thought he knew who I was—and I did my best to hide it. “Thanks,” I said, and twitched Celeste into motion. I saw Garay’s eyes on her as we turned away, Fanning carrying the heavier of the headboxes without being asked, and then we’d stepped back through the purple arch into the windy cold.
We were halfway back to the half-track before Fanning said anything. “Two constructs?”
“Yeh.” I concentrated on keeping Celeste moving smoothly, not sure how I wanted to answer him. I dislike spending money, particularly on something I don’t fully know how to evaluate; I was already beginning to wonder if I’d done the right thing. Then common sense reasserted itself: first, I did know enough about constructs, or at least about the karakuri/construct interface, to know how to choose a construct, and, second and maybe most important, Garay would be a fool to try to cheat me on this deal. “Neither one—none of the three—was quite what I was looking for. I want to try running them in tandem, see if that won’t do what I want.”
Fanning nodded. “Sequencing—the signal chain’s going to be a bitch.”
“Probably. But as a bonus it should be able to run the whole act.”
He nodded again, but didn’t say anything more. I could see my breath in the air ahead of me, a little cloud caught for a moment in the lights from the nearest camper, before the wind shredded it away. As we reached the half-track, I glanced over my shoulder, to see the moon setting over the remains of the relay station. I could see the dark stain of the Lurai main complex on its blue-white surface, and knew the orbital stations should be visible somewhere, too, but the lights drowned the stars. People were still watching us—still watching Celeste—but I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I had before. Dhao opened the cargo door again, letting the ramp down cautiously onto the sand, but I waved him away when he reached for Celeste.
“Let me see if I can walk her in.”
He stepped back, and I worked the controls, bringing one leg up and then the other. I missed on the first attempt, Celeste’s foot scraping the edge of the ramp, but on the next try the onboard system compensated perfectly, and Celeste walked stiffly to her seat in the cargo section. I would have left her like that, but Fanning pulled the sleeve over her before he fastened the safety webbing. I helped Dhao seal the cargo door again, and then stowed the headboxes between the floor cleats while he restarted the main motor. It wound up to speed without difficulty, retracing our path back toward the Whitesands Haul.
We refueled at Marihaut as planned, and made the run back to Landage in decent time, arriving about midnight by the clock. Dhao brought the half-track through the cargo alleys to my workshop, and we unloaded the gear, and I gave him the credit numbers for the balance I owed his father. It had been well worth it, and I told him so, was mildly gratified to see him blush and grin. Then they were gone, and I was left alone with Celeste and the two constructs.
I walked Celeste to the nearest chair, and went to the kitchen alcove to check my supplies. There was enough in the cells, refrigerated and not, to last me nearly a half-week if I wasn’t fussy, and I tossed a packaged meal into the cooker. I checked the media screen next, and, when there were no messages, dispatched a note by daemon to Muthana asking if the Empires would still reopen tomorrow. I half hoped they’d been delayed again, then felt guilty. Still, it was too late for an answer tonight, and probably too late to do anything except eat and sleep, but I was too tense—too excited—to sleep just yet.
“Peri, open standards archive.”
“Current standards or obsolete?” The construct’s voice floated from no place in particular, sweet and clear as the diffuse light that seeped from the ceiling. It wasn’t the voice I wanted for Celeste, I knew that already—maybe I would sell Peri, instead of the hardware, and with luck that would give me enough money to reprogram the vocoders as well.
“Current.”
“One moment, please.” The media wall lit, displaying the first page of the archive. The extra light sparked highlights from Celeste’s skin, and pointed up the scratches left by the sand.
“Seek and display: standard set for brand Hot Blue model SHYmate 294 and brand Kagami model Starran Ltd. 5,” I said, and reached under the worktable for a polishing cloth. I was really too tired to do good work right now, but at least I could start thinking about the signal chain while I did the necessary maintenance.
The light changed, and I looked up to see the first set of schematics sprawled across all six screens. “Switch to internal display.”
“Confirmed,” Peri said, and the image vanished, to reappear hovering in my sight, a white cloud with multiple lines crossing it. Normally, the virtual displays don’t interfere with seeing to any great extent, but the standards hadn’t been designed for virtual viewing—not like the Aisawa Manuals, say, which were meant to be viewed simultaneously with the object being repaired.
“Switch back to the wall.”
“Confirmed,” Peri said again—George, at the Empire, would have put an edge to it, or maybe that was my imagination—and the schematic returned to the wallscreens. I pulled a second chair next to Celeste, and began rubbing the scratching from the glistening copper. There weren’t many: Desembaa had promised me a durable finish, and he seemed to have kept his word. They were mostly on her right arm and hip, where the wind had been strongest going into the bazaar. I worked my way down from her shoulder, over the gentle curve of the false triceps, then stood her up so that I could reach the marks on her hip and thigh. By the time I’d finished, the workshop was filled, not unpleasantly, with the wet-rock smell of the polishing compound, and I had an idea of how I could go about connecting the two constructs. That was enough: I left Celeste standing, not wanting to get the compound on my furniture, fetched my dinner, and went to bed.
As luck would have it, the Empire opening was delayed another three days, and I spent most of them just working out the kinks in the signal chain. By the time I’d finished, though, the first shadows of a personality were taking place. I’d set the parameters, of course—female, to match the karakuri and the new voice I was also building; age neutral, neither especially young or especially old; a straightforward interface, none of the false subservience or bullying that some users like—but all of that was filtered through the constructs’ essential matrices, and whatever imprint the SHYmate’s previous owner had left behind. Once th
e linked unit was up and running, I slaved it to Aeris and let it download the programming that governed the various illusions, so that the needs of the act would be factored in as well. After that, it was mostly waiting and testing, with time off first for rehearsals and then for performance once the Empire reopened. It was hard to concentrate on the show, particularly since the houses were still bad, people staying home in the aftermath of the funeral riots. Besides, I wanted to be back in my workshop, watching the new construct—which I still hadn’t named—fumble with the Celeste-karakuri, or move virtual objects through yet another test routine. Muthana knew my mind wasn’t on business, but couldn’t say anything: mine was still one of the most popular acts in the entire show.
Fanning and Fire/Work weren’t that lucky, however. The people who did come to the Empires were wary of a band that sounded even a little like Hati, and Muthana cut back their appearances to four nights only. At least they had a contract, or he would have let them go altogether; as it was, I knew they were scrambling to make up in club gigs what they were losing from Tin Hau. I didn’t see much of them, though: they had been demoted to the middle of the first half, while my act closed the show, and I was too busy trying to get the construct up and running to see anyone outside of the Empire.
Desembaa delivered the transformer as promised, a beautifully inhuman shape built from what appeared to be the blackened iron the assembly lines use on the surface to stand the heat and the constant sand. It wasn’t actually iron, of course—even Tin Hau’s stage couldn’t stand that—but the carbon fiber could be tapped and sounded without revealing its true nature, and the apparently solid spars hid cavities large enough to conceal all of the karakuri. I sold Peri and some old ironware to pay for it, and kept working.
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