Digital Chimera

by J N Chaney

  “We get away from here. We just drew first blood, and if I know anything about Geneicide, they won’t leave it at that.”

  “Agreed.” Veraldi took point again. It seemed like he preferred to lead from the front.

  This part of the neighborhood was completely different from the Hive’s back alley territory. Despite the attempt on our lives, there was no sense that hostile eyes were watching our every move. As we walked past banks and office buildings and little restaurants, I had the sense that Geneicide was probably a higher status gang than the Hive, but that the Hive probably had more street soldiers to call on.

  That would explain the stalemate between the two syndicates that shared control of this section of Hellas. The Hive didn’t have the sophistication to manage the kind of rackets Geneicide probably ran, but Geneicide didn’t have the numbers to get control of the back alleys. Of all the social systems I’d run into in every corner of the solar system, gangster feudalism was probably the least efficient way to run a society.

  Jones fell back past Ivanovich until he was walking beside me. His attitude had been less than friendly since the train bombing the night before, but he suddenly seemed to be feeling a bit more convivial.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this place before?” he asked me in a quiet voice.

  “On a smaller scale, yeah. A little city called Sif, above the Arctic Circle.”

  “On Earth? You’ve seen a shithole like this on Earth?” He seemed incredulous.

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s run by a bunch of clan families. They’re basically gangsters but they control the city government. It’s a lot smaller than this, though. It’s hard to believe the Sol Federation tolerates it.”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that exactly. Ares Terrestrial is floundering. They can’t possibly keep this up for much longer. When they lose their grip, you can bet the Sol Federation will come swooping in. A little clean-up, and then this place can walk into the loving arms of the Federation.”

  “So we’ll be coming back here.”

  “I guess we probably will. Look, Tycho, I know I’ve been a bit rough on you since last night, but what happened to Andrea and the others...I just—”

  “I know. Me too. I keep wishing I had stayed in that train car just a little bit longer; I might have been able to find them.”

  He grinned, a little bit impishly. “I’ve read your file. You’re psychologically predisposed to survivor guilt. That shit is meaningless, my friend.”

  I thought about my wife, who had died in a car I’d designed myself. About Gabriel, who died so that I could complete our mission. About his widow Sophie, murdered because we were close. “It isn’t meaningless to me.”

  “Well, it isn’t the mission. To a Section 9 agent, the only thing that matters is the mission.”

  “Yeah. It’s just like being an Arbiter that way.”

  He clapped me on the back. “It’s nothing at all like being an Arbiter. The stakes in Section 9 are higher. We're kingmakers and saboteurs. Every mission changes the entire system. I’ve been telling you that since the day we met.”

  “Cut the chatter, you two,” Veraldi interjected.

  Ivanovich agreed with him. “Like two old ladies. No, worse than that. Old ladies just gossip; these two are talking about their feelings.”

  Veraldi glanced back at him. “I want these two to stop the chatter. I want you to shut up.”

  Sasha pouted for a while after that, but at least he did it silently.

  9

  We slipped off the main drag a few minutes later, trying to fade into the narrow side streets. These weren’t nondescript back alleys like the Hive’s territory, but they were much less active than where the Geneicide hit team had found us. It was lined with warehouses, long buildings with few windows and low rooftops. With some luck, there was at least a chance the neighborhood spy system would lose track of us.

  Veraldi stopped for a moment. “Catch your breath. We need to make some decisions.”

  Jones looked around, checking for anyone who might be watching us. “We’re not going to the train station?”

  “Not yet. They could have people waiting for us, and after what happened back there, they’ll up the ante. I think we’ve been burned.”

  “Yeah. That does seem like a possibility. But how?”

  “We can figure that out later, when we have time to review the dataspikes. Right now, we need to arm up. Do we have any sleepers we could activate?”

  “I’ll check.”

  Jones closed his eyes, a sign that he was focused on his dataspike. The images on a dataspike are projected into your field of view so you can look at them with your eyes open, but it’s sometimes easier just to close them and cut out the visual noise.

  Jones frowned and opened his eyes. “No. The nearest sleeper is back in Fast Bend. Tycho, did you have any dealings with the sleeper there?”

  “Not in person, but we used the dead drop.”

  “Even if we went back, they won’t want to stick their heads up again anytime soon.”

  Veraldi didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean? What they want is not the issue.”

  “This isn’t the military, Vincenzo. You burn a sleeper agent, they have a thousand ways to make sure you can never count on them again. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’re in Pretorius. That’s a long way from Great Wall and a longer way from Fast Bend. Waking up a sleeper isn’t a solution.”

  “Alright.” Vincenzo thought about it, while Jones kept an eye on the nearby buildings.

  Sasha, who was rubbing one of his shins with an open palm, decided this would be a good time to start complaining again. “What the fuck is wrong with this district? Why is it so big? We’ve been walking for hours.”

  Veraldi snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that. Pretorius is so big that it has two syndicates; not every district does. Is there anyone else?”

  “Anyone else?” asked Andrew. “Another syndicate?”

  “No. I know there are just the two. But are there any independent operators? Black market arms dealers, that sort of thing?”

  “Ah. I’ll have a look at the files again.”

  I almost felt a little sympathy for the crime lords of Pretorius. Like the Sol Federation, they probably wanted to establish a single authority that would be recognized throughout the entire territory. And like the Federation, they weren’t yet in a position to do so. The parallels between nation states and criminal organizations might not be obvious, but it was hard to deny they had points in common.

  The warehouse across from us was a dull green, chipped and pitted and altogether worn down. Even without weather to age it, the building had fallen into disrepair over its centuries of life. It looked like a dead body, mummified in the dry, cold metal sarcophagus of Hellas. Dull light shined through the sparse windows, and I caught a flash of movement. A figure was staring down at us.

  “I think we’ve been spotted.”

  Veraldi glanced up. “We’d better get moving. Jones, what do you have?”

  “No black-market arms dealers, but I might have something. It’s probably our best bet anyway. Follow me. I’ll tell you about it on the way there.”

  He started walking, taking us off into another side street. If the person who had spotted us was a spy for Geneicide, it wouldn’t be long before the hit teams tracked us. People didn’t need to be on a syndicate payroll to work for them. There was value in doing the gang a favor. Later on, if they happened to need something, the gang would remember them. Add a few dedicated agents who are actually on the payroll, and you have a surveillance network as pervasive as anything any government could dream of.

  “Okay,” said Jones, still watching the windows for spies or shooters. “The person I’m thinking of goes by the name Madam Shih.”

  Veraldi knew the name, or at least the type. “She runs a memory den?”

  “Yes. She’s not a weapons dealer, but she has to be heavily armed to operate independent of the local syndicates. Wi
th a little luck and a lot of money, we might just convince her to sell us some firepower.”

  When I heard the phrase “memory den,” my skin crawled a little. I could see the appeal in a way—any experience you want, from the trip you never had to the sexual escapade you’ve always dreamed of. Still, memory den addicts were a disturbing bunch, many of them no longer able to distinguish reality from fantasy or the present from the past. It’s not just that it’s addictive. The mixture of hormones, nanites, and sensory feeds does something to your body, and by the time you start to regret what it’s doing to you it’s too late to stop.

  “I don’t know,” Veraldi mused. “Even if she’s independent she still has to pay them protection money. She may not take orders from the bosses, but they have a business relationship. Is she really going to burn that?”

  “It’s your call, Vincenzo, but I say we do this. Do you have a better option?” asked Andrew.

  Veraldi didn’t say anything. He never agreed to it, but he never did anything to stop it either. Jones just kept walking, snaking through the manufacturing area. We picked up a tail—three guys trailing us at a discreet distance. If the neighborhood intelligence network had ever lost us, it had already found us again. We entered a section of the district that seemed almost abandoned, a poverty-stricken area of shuttered buildings and burnt-out storefronts, with graffiti scrawled all over every available flat surface.

  Up ahead, there was an abandoned storefront, with bricked-up windows facing the street. Like most of the buildings in East Hellas, it was a large structure. There were probably apartments above the store before the building was abandoned, but the windows were blocked off all the way up. “There it is,” said Andrew. “I know it looks like no one’s home, but that’s where Madam Shih is.”

  The name of the store had been Happy Memories, and my guess was that it was once an antiques dealer. Of all the colony worlds, Mars was the only old enough to have antiques of its own. In a Venusian living tower, a store like would most likely sell items from Earth, but on Mars, it would more likely be items from the pioneer days of the colony.

  Jones led us up to the unmarked door, while the men tailing us kept a cautious distance. It was still early in the day, and I wondered if Madam Shih’s place would even be open. As we stood there waiting, a voice suddenly spoke over an intercom above our heads. “Go away. We’re closed.”

  It was a woman, though I guessed it was probably not the Madam herself.

  Veraldi and Jones exchanged uncertain glances. It wasn’t like we could just shoot our way inside. Sasha Ivanovich then suddenly stepped up. “I want the Purple Flower. I can pay whatever you ask.”

  “I should have known,” muttered Jones.

  The voice was silent, and we waited. It seemed to take forever, but it was probably no longer than several seconds. Then the intercom buzzed.

  “You’ll have to check your weapons.”

  Jones looked at Veraldi, trying to get a sense of what he wanted to do. It was a strange reversal, not only of the chain of command but of their previous stances. Jones had been horrified to find out that Section 9 had contacts in the Black Kuei. Now Veraldi was uncomfortable with paying a visit to a memory den. Perhaps they were each uncomfortable with both situations, and they didn’t know quite where to draw the line. Intelligence work is often like that.

  “It’s a gamble,” Jones pointed out. “They could kill us all.”

  Our tail had grown, as more gunmen drifted in to close off the side streets. Geneicide was putting the squeeze on us, and before long we would no longer be able to breathe at all. Getting out without better weapons was probably already out of the question.

  Veraldi stepped up to the door. “We have a proposal if you offer us sanctuary.”

  The silence this time was even longer, and the tension greater, but they replied eventually. “Madame Shih will grant you sanctuary long enough to hear your proposal. If your proposal is rejected, you will leave immediately. Are the terms acceptable?”

  Now that it was obvious there was no other way forward, Vincenzo seemed to have recovered his sense of confidence. He looked up in the direction of the voice. “The terms are acceptable.”

  We heard the door unlock, then Vincenzo grabbed the handle and pulled it open. We shuffled into a small receiving room, with a bare table and a plastic tub. The voice over the intercom spoke again, this time from the ceiling. “Place your weapons in the container.”

  I hated the feeling of it—deliberately disarming myself, then sticking my head in the mouth of a lion. Veraldi in particular seemed almost pained when he had to relinquish his knives. When we were done, the door on the other end of the room buzzed, and we stepped through into Madam Shih’s.

  The room was lit, but only dimly. There was incense burning somewhere, and hangings on every wall. In the center of the room, the Madam herself sat watching us impassively.

  She was an ancient woman, but you could still see more than a hint of the great beauty she must once have been. She carried herself with regal authority, relaxed in an antique chair in the center of the room—essentially a throne, although it must have come from the original Happy Memories. She had one hand on her chin and regarded us with a mixture of disdain and tolerance.

  All around the room, men armed with submachine guns stood waiting for her orders. Their faces were covered behind the long scarves so many Martians wore.

  Madam Shih took a breath. “I believe one of you is interested in the Purple Flower?”

  Sasha Ivanovich stepped forward, but Jones tried to put a hand on his arm. One of the guards aimed his weapon, and Jones stepped back from the scientist. Madam Shih scowled. “Young man, you wouldn’t be standing here except for him. Let the man take his pleasure as he sees fit. We can talk in the meantime.”

  So, Madam Shih had noticed that he wasn’t one of us. I was impressed.

  From a door in the back, two young women in silken dresses came to escort Sasha away into the dark recesses of the building. I would say that the situation was rapidly spinning out of our control, but it would be more accurate to say that all our control had vanished. We didn’t have our weapons, and we’d just lost the man we were supposed to be escorting.

  With Sasha gone, Madam Shih raised one eyebrow questioningly. “You mentioned something about a proposal?”

  Veraldi nodded at Jones. We weren’t holding a flush, so we simply had to play the hand we had. Jones returned the nod then stepped forward to address our host.

  “We wish to purchase weapons, if you’d have us.”

  She looked nonplussed. “I am not an arms dealer, boy. I provide entertainment.” That was a bit of euphemism. The addiction is worse than any drug, which is why memory dens are illegal across the system.

  “Yes,” said Jones. “But you do so independently of the syndicate. You could never do that unless you had the means to defend your sovereignty.”

  She wasn’t ready to admit this yet.

  “Is that so? You don’t think the money I pay would be enough? That the syndicate doesn't want my services?”

  “Even so, Madam Shih. If they could control this place directly, if you were an employee rather than an independent, they’d make far more money. And yet they don’t. The reason is that you can defend what is yours.”

  She smiled at that, but there was a hint of laughter in her steely eyes. “Indeed, I can. Assuming I have these weapons, why would I sell them? Why wouldn’t I need everything I have?”

  “You’d keep more than you’d need, just to be sure. That’s a sensible policy, but it would be worth it for you to sell them for the price I’m offering. Direct transfer, from an untraceable account.”

  “If I had anything to sell, you’d be paying a premium.”

  “Of course.” Andrew’s tone was unruffled, like he did this sort of thing every day. Madam Shih drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, making a sound in her throat like hmmm. Then her tone became sharp. “Who will compensate me for the trouble this
will bring me? If Geneicide wants you, they will not be satisfied until they have you. If I keep them from taking you, the syndicate will be angry indeed. How will your money help me then?”

  “I’m sure you know your own business better than I do.” Andrew’s voice was smooth. “If you foresee any problems, feel free to increase your premium. I will pay what is needed.”

  “You will pay what is needed? Who are you, you strange man?”

  He didn’t answer her question; he just stood there expectantly. She turned to one of her guards. “Liu, bring something that might interest our guest.” The guard bowed to her silently and left.

  “Perhaps I could interest you in an experience?” she continued. “Free of charge, once we complete this transaction.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Jones replied. “I have enough addictions as it is.”

  “No? Perhaps you’re a traditionalist. Upstairs you can have any number of experiences in the flesh.”

  “That’s very tempting, but really I’m only interested in getting enough firepower to shoot my way out of the trouble I’m currently in.”

  “That’s more than you think, young man. Those men outside are not just posturing. The Geneicide syndicate has put out a contract on you and all your friends.”

  “I thought they might have.” Andrew shrugged. “So you understand my position. I’m a little too distracted for any… new experiences.”

  “I’d wager you won’t live through the day. Surely you ought to drain the cup to its dregs? No one will chase you in here. You can go upstairs, have whatever kind of sex interests you, or sample one of the experiences from our extensive library. Then go outside and face your karma. Still no? Well, let’s get down to business then.”

  Liu was back. He carried a large metal case, which he unlatched and held open in front of us. As soon as I saw it, I pointed to one of the guns inside. “That one right there. With the depleted uranium rounds.”

  Madam Shih seemed amused. “Curious, that.”

  “You don’t need that, Barrett,” said Veraldi quietly. “We aren’t fighting any cyborgs here.”