Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “I assume the top priority is Jovani Pang and the others?”

  “Yes, but my instincts tell me it’s Pang himself. I’m not sure how, but I think he’s the key.”

  13

  I barely slept that night. The old sensation in my prosthetics was back, but different. Less of a sudden burn and more like a smoldering flame. Not so much pain as a kind of static. Dull, ever present in the background, and particularly noticeable with nothing else to distract me. I raised my hand in front of my face and tried to hold it still. Nanoscale servos and synthetic muscle should have made it easy, but my fingers twitched like leaves in the wind.

  Had I missed too many meds? Did I push too hard in the last few months?

  The sky through the window was blue-black. In the silence and darkness I stared at the hand that wasn’t mine, willing it to obey. Nothing changed. I curled my fingers into a fist and subvocalized a message to Andrea.

  I need to see Samara.

  She responded less than a minute later. Make it fast. I don’t want Edward alone for long.

  Is there anything you want me to tell her?

  This time there was a much longer pause before she replied.

  No.

  I flew to Brussels in the morning and took a car to Samara’s private practice. There was a small sign out front that read Samara Markov, but nothing that indicated what she did. Considering that she made a living installing illegal augmentations, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Samara was nothing if not careful—just like when she was performing surgery, connecting nerves and limbs to people who paid a premium to be whole again.

  Augmentation of the body was heavily regulated across the system, and it was rare for anyone to have extensive prosthetics. Even then, there were limits to what a person could or couldn’t do under the law. Samara had built a career on breaking those limits.

  She was a gifted surgeon of profound kindness and unflappable calm, who’d spent decades building ruthless killers for the solar system’s criminal underworld. I had no idea what circumstances had brought her into this life, but I’d also never ask.

  I tapped the call button and it buzzed a few seconds later, the noise harsh in the stillness. When a click sounded, telling me the door was unlocked, I pulled it open and entered what looked more like a small home than a gray-market medical office. A waifish android sitting almost demurely in a chaise lounge by the door took my name, then indicated with a languid wave that I should have a seat.

  I did and took a look around. Reproductions of 24th century sculptures and copies of Chinese landscapes filled every open space. I wouldn’t have called it classy, but it made the room feel complete. Finished. There was a sense of tasteful consideration.

  The door to my right opened and Samara smiled as she greeted me. “Welcome, Tycho,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  I stood and bowed my head. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice,” I replied.

  “It’s nothing, dear boy,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. “You’re like family to me.”

  She led me back to a room filled with devices and machines I didn’t recognize. Few had fascia or casing of any kind, and many were linked together with an ersatz selection of cables.

  “Sit down on the table and take off your shirt, please,” she said. “You’re having pain and shaking hands? No, don’t answer yet. Let me look you over. Simple examination, then a few questions. Tell me if I hurt you.”

  She examined both arms carefully, with particular attention to the prosthetic interface where they connected to my actual flesh. Watching her was like seeing an artist cast one final look over their canvas, nothing missed and nothing ignored.

  “You’ll be happy to know that I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” she said. There’s a tender area where the right arm connects to your shoulder, yes?”

  “Yeah, now that I think about it, I do get some soreness in that spot.”

  “It’s probably because you ask it to carry heavier loads more often. If it becomes a problem, just take it easy on the limb for a few days. You’re a man, not an android.”

  I wondered about that sometimes but nodded anyway.

  As she leaned over to show me something on my left arm, I caught a glimpse of the scarring in the nape of her neck from Katerina’s gunshot and felt a pang of guilt. I should have been faster. I should have done more.

  “Tycho, are you listening?”

  “Oh, yeah. You were telling me what I needed to do to become, ah…become more natural. Autonomic?”

  She laughed a little. “You know, my patients all say the same things. You claim you don’t have any time to take care of your prosthetics properly. And then you end up back in my office because you’ve had complications. But I shouldn’t complain. It keeps the lights on.”

  “I try,” I said. “I really do. It’s not that I don’t want to, but my life is...”

  I searched for a word that could describe it.

  “My life is irregular,” I continued. “There’s no pattern, no rhythm. I can be on two different continents in twelve hours, or two different planets in twenty four.”

  She nodded and touched my face the way an affectionate mother might. “I understand, dear. I do. It’s all just—” She waved vaguely, her eyes on me. “I’ve never really known what drew Andrea to that sort of life. She has such a sharp mind, such a beautiful soul. Just like you, Tycho. I don’t understand why you burden yourselves the way you do.”

  I hadn’t expected her to talk about her daughter. “Andrea once told me she does it because it adds up. She compared it to readout, where one side is chaos and the other side is peace, and said that everything she did to move the needle toward peace was worth the effort. She’s sure that one day, if we keep doing it, it’ll pin out.”

  “I’ve heard something like that from a few people in the past, but I’ve never understood it. Nothing we do can change the universe, one way or the other. Humans are ephemeral things. Our lives are so short.”

  She stared off into the distance, as if imagining a different life for her daughter. Or maybe a different life for the both of them. Then she shook her head and focused on me again.

  “Well, at any rate, your prosthetic limbs are in good condition, though it would be better if you took more consistent care of them. Deeper issues are not so visible on the surface, though. So why don’t you tell me about these side effects you’ve been experiencing?”

  “I’m not even sure you’d call it a side effect. It’s always there.”

  “Describe it,” she prompted me.

  “It’s like a dulling of feeling. Everything is less vivid, everything seems to matter a little less. It reminds me of a simulation. Things look real all around me but they don’t feel real. They’re echoes. Copies of copies.”

  Saying it out loud made it real. Life was distant, like it was happening to someone else, and I was watching through borrowed eyes.

  “Let me guess what you’re thinking,” Samara ventured.

  I shrugged a little. “No harm in trying.”

  “You’re describing this as a side effect of the prosthetics, but I think what you’re really worried about is that you’re depressed. You enjoy solving problems, and the idea of depression is upsetting for you because it’s not something that can be solved.”

  I laughed. “So, what’s your professional opinion? Do I have depression?”

  “Clinically? No, I don’t think that’s the cause of this. In fact, it would be strange for you to not be at least a little depressed after such extensive prosthetics.”

  “Well, sure. The new limbs work a hell of a lot better though.”

  She shook her head and laughed quietly. “I don’t know what to say to that. There’s every possibility you do have some kind of lingering trauma, though that’s not the likely cause of your current symptoms.”

  “Message received,” I replied. “There’s a physical cause. Is that normal following augmentation?”

  “
A four-limb replacement is not a minor augmentation. No one would describe you as an Augman, but you’re not exactly a normal human either.”

  “I suppose not. I’m faster than the average person, and stronger.”

  “Right. So when you’ve undergone such drastic change, you have to expect your body to react. It has to adapt.”

  “I suppose it does. So you’re saying this feeling, this numbness I’m experiencing, is really an adaptation?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes. It’s not uncommon in patients with augmentations as extensive as yours. In layman’s terms, the afferent nociceptor fibers in your body are interpreting signals from the augments as damage. This usually causes a phantom sensation of pain.”

  I blinked. “That’s layman’s terms?”

  “Your body and your prosthetics are speaking different languages, so your body assumes the signals are a type of pain.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. It’s something different. Like noise. I can’t feel any pain in my limbs.”

  “Not on a conscious level, no. Your body deadens the phantom pain to make sure you’re not consciously aware of it. To put it simply, your body is panicking and is in denial. It’s trying to pretend you’re not experiencing what you’re experiencing, because it doesn’t know how to deal with it any other way.”

  “Lovely,” I said dejectedly, already imagining what years of the same feeling would be like. Was this how Andrea felt all of the time?

  Dr. Markov reached out and put a hand on my arm. “It’s not so bad, Tycho. Your body will learn to speak to your limbs with time, and these symptoms will fade away. Most likely you won’t even notice when they’re finally gone, because the process will have been so gradual.”

  “Okay.” I raised my eyes again. “How long are we talking?”

  She shrugged. “That’s hard to say. But don’t worry, we can correct the worst of it the same way we correct most side effects.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “With medication, of course.”

  She crossed the room and opened a small metal cabinet. She rifled through it and pulled out a yellow rectangular box, then handed it to me.

  “This is diazetren,” she explained. “You’ll take one of these every day. It will interfere with the pentamine you’re already taking, so I’ll adjust the dosage of that to compensate. You should notice some improvement within a few days.”

  I felt better when she said that. The last thing I needed was for my body to fail me in a life or death situation. Again.

  14

  I returned to London that afternoon and went directly to the safehouse in Chelsea. When I walked in, there was no one in sight.

  “Edward? Anyone here?” I lifted my voice to carry through the rooms.

  “One minute, Jean-Paul,” Edward called from his bedroom. I sat down on a chair in the living room and checked my messages. I gestured in the air and tabbed through, noticing a confirmation that Samara had already updated my prescriptions.

  Edward came out of his room a moment later, swiping through something himself. His eyes were unfocused, and his attention distracted, yet he walked through the living room as though he’d lived here for months.

  I watched him pace along the couch. I’d never seen this absentminded side of his personality before, but I assumed he was reviewing something he intended to show me. When he finally stopped, he looked down at me and said, “I’m sending you what I have.”

  The file transferred to my dataspike in seconds, and I opened it to find an archive with dozens of entries.

  “What am I looking at here?” I asked him, seeing only that it had something to do with Jovani Pang.

  “I think I found a connection, although I’m not sure what it means. It might explain why Pang seems to think he’s so important. Take a look at his past addresses.”

  I scrolled through and brought it up. There were gaps in Pang’s history, but the addresses showed that he had mostly lived in the Xi’an area, with stints in St. Petersburg and even Siberia.

  “Now take a look at the collection titled Location Subject Two.”

  I brought that up as well and saw considerable overlap between the two lists. They weren’t an exact match by any means, but Subject Two had spent time in the same cities, at roughly the same times, and in the same order. The pattern suggested that one of the two was actively trying to follow the other one. And based on the timing, it looked like Pang was following Subject Two.

  “Okay, more than a little interesting,” I admitted.

  “Now have a look at the bank transfers between Pang and the Solomon Company.”

  I reviewed the transfers and saw that the Solomon Company had made a number of payments to Pang over the years, in varying but fairly large amounts.

  “Okay.” I nodded. “So what does the Solomon Company do?”

  “They don’t seem to do anything. In theory, they’re an investment company, but I couldn’t find any evidence that anyone but Jovani Pang had ever invested in anything.”

  “Company ownership?”

  “I gave it a try, but the Solomon Company is owned by another completely notional corporation, which is owned by yet another, which is owned by still another. It’s a shell corporation to obscure the real ownership. Take a look at the collection marked Transfers to SC.”

  I saw that the Solomon Company had received a large transfer from the Benison Fund. “That name sounds familiar.”

  “The Benison Fund?” he replied. “A private charity, mostly known for its disaster relief donations. Founded by Ivan Solovyov.”

  A chill ran down my neck at the name. The last time I had seen Solovyov, he’d taken on the body of a Cavadoran girl and disappeared into the solar system.

  “Who is Subject Two?” I asked.

  “That’s the interesting part.” He took a seat on the couch and leaned forward. “Ivan Solovyov and Jovani Pang have lived in the same city several times. The Subject Two listing is all of Ivan Solovyov’s known addresses.”

  “This has to be more than coincidence,” I thought out loud. “But what’s the link between them?”

  “With Pang following Solovyov around, I have my theories. I asked Terry to help look into it, and I’m expecting him to come out soon and tell us what he’s found.”

  “Oh, is Terry here?”

  I didn’t recall mentioning Thomas Young’s alias to Edward.

  “Yes, he showed up this morning a few hours after you left. He seemed pretty knowledgeable with archival systems.”

  The man really didn’t know Thomas all that well. “And how has that worked out?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “He isn’t exactly a social butterfly, is he? He asked me what I wanted him to check, made some sarcastic comments about how much he’s being asked to do, then disappeared into one of the other bedrooms. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Well, I’m here to relieve him. That should give us an excuse to go knock on the door. Which room is he in?”

  He walked me back to the room, and I knocked on the door with my knuckles. There was no reply, so I knocked again after about a minute. I heard rapid footsteps, then the door cracked open. Thomas peered out at me with bloodshot eyes and said one word. “No.”

  Then he closed the door again, leaving me to stew in my questions. I turned around and shrugged at Edward, then wandered back to the living room.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “You’ve seen it yourself. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s close to a breakthrough and isn’t ready to show it to us yet. I’ll just sit out here for a bit and read through this file, and with any luck he’ll be ready by the time I’m done.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. He could be in there for another sixteen hours.”

  I opened the file up again and went through everything Edward had put together. It was all circumstantial, but it did seem to show a repeated series of connections between
Jovani Pang and Subject Two, who I now knew to be Ivan Solovyov. The pattern suggested that Pang was dependent on Solovyov, and not just financially. Solovyov would move, and a few months or a few years later Pang would move to the same place.

  Of course, Solovyov never really lived in a single location. He might own a house in Moscow while living on one of the moons of Jupiter and taking frequent cruises to the outer worlds, so Pang wasn’t succeeding in staying all that close to him. It looked more like stalker behavior.

  Why would the proud and arrogant Jovani Pang be stalking one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the solar system?

  There were also hints of the relationship between them in a few dataspike exchanges Edward had managed to capture. These exchanges were never directly between the two men. They were always with a lackey at some front company with an unclear relationship to Solovyov, but the lackey would sometimes pass a message along. Cutouts were good like that, and Pang seemed to have their purpose down pat.

  “Getting the picture?” Edward asked me.

  “Yeah, I think I am. And I think I can guess what theory you’ve come up with. But let’s see what Terry has to say.”

  As I said those words, the bedroom door opened, and Thomas wandered out. He looked like he hadn’t slept since our last meeting, but he also had an air of ragged triumph about him.

  “I’ve done it,” he announced. “Much more difficult than I expected.” He looked down at his rumpled shirt, then lifted a brow at us, inviting questions.

  “I’m not really sure what I anticipated,” Edward responded.

  “Allow me. You might have thought it would be a simple matter of comparing the DNA profile of Jovani Pang with the DNA profile of Ivan Solovyov. But no, it wasn’t.”

  “We did have Jovani’s DNA profile, though, didn’t we?” I asked. The whole triumphant air was getting old, and my patience was thin.

  “Of course. We drew his blood at the safehouse and entered a complete analysis of his DNA into my files. That was the easy part.”