“You’re my what?” Louise asked. Her expression was half puzzlement, half smile.
Her accent did strange things along Andy’s spine, making him shiver. The ultimate in class, and foreign-exotic, too. He scanned his enhanced retinas across her face, desperate to capture her image. Even if she walked out of his life now, she would never be entirely lost. Andy had certain male-orientated software packages that could superimpose her into sensenviron recordings. He felt shabby even as he recorded her.
“Sellrat. That’s what the public calls Customer Interactivity Officers round these parts.”
“Oh,” the smaller girl sighed dismissively. “He’s just a shopboy, Louise.”
Andy’s neural nanonics had to reinforce his smile. Why do they always come in pairs? And why always one obnoxious one? He clicked his fingers and pointed both index fingers at the smaller girl. “That’s me. Try not to be too disappointed, I really am here to help.”
“I’d like to buy some neural nanonics,” Louise said. “Is it very difficult?”
The request startled Andy. Her clothes alone must have cost more than twice his weekly pay, why didn’t she have a set already? Beautiful and enigmatic. He smiled up at her. “Not at all. What were you looking for?”
She sucked her lower lip. “I’m really not very sure. The best I can afford, I suppose.”
“We don’t have them on Norfolk,” Genevieve said. “That’s where we’re from.”
Louise tried not to frown. “Gen, we don’t have to give our history to everyone we meet.”
Rich foreigners. Andy’s conscience struggled against temptation. Conscience won out, backed up by infatuation. I can’t sell her a pirate set. Not her. “Okay, your lucky day. We’ve got some top-of-the-range sets in stock. I can fix a reasonable deal for them, too, so there’s no need to get sweaty about the money. This way.”
He led them over to his section of the counter, managing to get her name on the way. His neural nanonics faithfully recorded the way she walked, her body movements, even her speech pattern. Like most nineteen-year-olds who’d grown up in London’s manky Islington district with its history of low-income employment, Andy Behoo fancied himself as a prospective net don. It combined the goal of fringe-legal work (also his heritage), with very little actual effort. He’d taken didactic memory courses on electronics, nanonics, and software every month since he’d passed his fourteenth birthday. His two-room flat was stocked to the ceiling with ancient processor blocks and every redundant peripheral he’d managed to scrounge or steal. Everyone in his tenement knew Andy was the guy to visit when you had a technical problem.
As to why such an embryonic datasmart prince of darkness was working as a sellrat in Jude’s Eworld, he had to get the money to finance his revolutionary schemes from somewhere—or maybe even go to college. And the shop always employed technerd teenagers as their outfront salesforce, they were the only ones who kept up to date on upgrades and new marques that would work on minimum-wage weeks.
The wall behind the counter was made up entirely from boxes of consumer electronics. All of them had colourful logos and names. Louise read a few of the contents labels, not understanding a word. Genevieve was already bored; looking round at other parts of the slightly shabby shop—one of seemingly hundreds of near-identical outlets along Tottenham Court Road. The inside was a maze formed by counters and walls of boxes, with old company posters and holomorph stickers stuck up on every available surface. Holographic screens flashed out enticing pictures of products in action. The section opposite Andy Behoo had a big GAMES sign above it. And Louise had promised.
Andy began pulling boxes down and lining them up on the counter. They were rectangular, the size of his hand, wrapped in translucent foil, with the manufacturer’s guarantee seal on the front. “Okay,” Andy said with familiar confidence. “What we have here, the Presson050, is a basic neural nanonics set. Everything you need to survive daily arcology life: datavises, mid-rez neuroiconic display, enhanced memory retrieval, axon block. It’s preformatted to NAS2600 standard, which means it can handle just about every software package on the market. There’s a company-supplied didactic operations imprint that comes with it, but we do sell alternative operations courses.”
“That sounds very . . . comprehensive,” Louise said. “How much?”
“How are you paying?”
“Fuseodollars.” She showed him her Jovian Bank disk.
“Okay. Good move. I can give you a favourable rate on that. So, we’re looking at about three and a half thousand, for which we’ll throw in five free Quantumsoft supplement packages from their BCD30 range. Your choice of functions. I can arrange finance for you if you want, better percentage than any Sol-system bank.”
“I see.”
“Then we’ve got—” His hand moved on to the next box.
“Andy. What’s the top of the range, please?”
“Okay, good question.” He disappeared behind the counter for a moment, returning with a fresh box and a suitably awed tone. “Kulu Corporation ANI5000. The King himself uses this model. We’ve only got three left because of the starflight quarantine. These are most wanted items all over town right now. But I can still give you level retail.”
“And that’s better than the first one?”
“Yes indeedie. Runs NAS2600, of course, with parallel upgrade potential for when the 2615 comes out.”
“Um. What’s this NAS number you keep saying?”
“Neural Augmentation Software. It’s the operating system for the whole filament network, and the number is the version. 2600 was introduced turn of the century, and boy was it a bugfeist when it came out. But it’s a smooth proved system now. And the supplement packages are just about unlimited, every software house in the Confederation publishes compatible products. If you’re going serious professional you can add physiological monitors, encyclopaedia galactica, employment waldoing, SII suit control, weapons integration, linguistic translation, news informant, starship astrogration, net search—the full monty. Then there’s games applications as well, I can’t even list them you have so many.” He patted the box with reverence. “No fooling, Louise, this set gives you the full interface range: nerve overrides to control your body, sense amplification, sight-equivalent neuroiconic generation, complete reality sensenviron, implant command, total indexed memory recall.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Got to warn you: not cheap. Seventeen thousand fuseodollars.” He held up his hands in placation. “Sorry.”
Daddy will kill me, Louise thought, but it has to be done. I promised Fletcher, and that horrid Brent Roi never really believed me. “All right.”
Andy smiled in admiration. “Talk about power choosing. That’s impressive, Louise. But, hey, I can lighten the burden. For a 5000 set, we’ll throw in twenty-five software supplements, and give you twenty per cent discount on the next twenty-five you buy from us.”
“That sounds like a jolly good deal,” she said inanely, swept along by his enthusiasm. “How long does it take to get a set?”
“For one this complex, ninety minutes. I can give you the operating didactic at the same time.”
“What’s one of those?”
Andy’s breezy ebullience faltered in the face of such an astonishing question. He started to access his encyclopaedia’s file on Norfolk, and put a news search in primary mode for good measure. “You don’t have them on your planet?”
“No. Our constitution is pastoral, we don’t have much technology. Or weapons.” Defending Norfolk, yet again.
“No weapons; hey, good policy. Didactic imprints are sort of like the instruction manual, but it gets written directly inside your brain, and you never forget it.”
“Well if I’m going to spend this much money, I certainly need to know how to work it, don’t I?”
Andy laughed heartily, then stopped quickly when he caught sight of Genevieve’s expression. How come nobody ever produced a suavity program he could load? Talking to and impres
sing girls would be so much easier. The floor supervisor was datavising questions about his oddball customer and the door sensor alert, which he answered briefly. Then the Norfolk information started to emerge.
“We have a preparation room,” Andy gestured to the back of the shop.
“Louise, I want to look round,” Genevieve said winningly. “There might be something for me.”
“All right. But if you see something just ask, don’t touch anything. That’s all right, isn’t it?” she asked Andy.
“Sure thing.” Andy winked at Genevieve and gave her a thumbs up. Her sneer could have withered an oak tree.
Louise followed Andy into the small preparation room, a cube-space whose walls were fashioned from dark panelling, with various electronic units poking out. It was furnished with just a glass cubicle, like a shower but without any visible nozzle; and a low padded bench similar to a doctor’s examination table.
The attention Andy showed her was somewhat amusing. She thought possibly it wasn’t entirely due to her high-spending customer status. Most of the young gentlemen (and others—slightly older) on Norfolk had shown a similar, if less blatant, interest over the last couple of years. Now, of course, she was wearing what amounted to little more than an exhibitionist’s costume. Though by Earth’s standards it was tame. But the top and skirt had made her look so damn good in the department store’s mirror. She could hold her own against London girls in this. For the first time in her life she was sassy. And free to enjoy it. And loving it.
The glass door slid shut with a definitive click behind her. She shot Andy a suspicious glance.
* * *
“Bugger,” Western Europe muttered as his linkages with Louise were cut. He switched to Genevieve, which was about as useless; the little girl was investigating a Gothic fantasy, standing in a castle courtyard as a column of priestess warriors rode off to battle on their unicorns.
Western Europe had wanted Louise to discover the bugs at some stage. He just hadn’t planned on it being quite so early in the operation. But then, buying neural nanonics wasn’t what he expected of a girl from Norfolk, either. She was quite a remarkable little thing, really.
* * *
Andy Behoo scratched at his arm awkwardly. “You do know you’ve been stung, don’t you?” he asked.
“Stung?” Louise took a guess. “You’re not talking about insects, are you?”
“No. The door sensors spotted it as soon as you and your sister came in. There are nanonic bugs in your skin; like miniature radios I guess you’d call them. They transmit all sorts of information about where you are, and what’s going on around you. There are four on you, Genevieve has three. That we can detect, anyway.”
She drew in a shocked breath. How stupid! Of course Brent Roi wouldn’t let her walk round freely. Not someone who’d tried to sneak a possessed down to Earth. He was bound to want to see what she did next. “Oh sweet Jesus.”
“I reckon Govcentral must be nervous about foreigners right now, especially as you come from Norfolk,” Andy said. “What with the possessed, and all. Don’t worry, this room is screened, they can’t hear us now.”
His sellrat swagger had diminished as he tried to reassure her. In fact, he’d become almost sheepish, which made him actually quite pleasant, she thought. “Thank you for telling me, Andy. Do you scan all your customers?”
“Oh yes. Mainly for dodgy implants. There’s quite a few gangs try to siphon our software fleks. Then we do sell bugs ourselves, see, so sometimes we get cops coming in and trying to find who those customers are. Jude’s Eworld has a strong neutrality policy, which we enforce. We have to, or we’d never sell anything.”
“Can you get them off me?”
“All part of our customer service. I can give you a more detailed scan, too, see if there are any others.”
She followed his instructions, standing in the cubicle, which gave her a comprehensive bodyscan down to a subcellular level. So now someone else knows I’m pregnant, she acknowledged in resignation. No wonder Earth’s population value their privacy so, they don’t get very much of it. The bodyscan located another two bugs. Andy applied a small rectangular patch similar to a medical package (same technology, he said) to her arms and leg; then she pulled up her T-shirt up so he could press it against her back.
“Is there any way of knowing if the police sting me again?” she asked.
“An electronic warfare block should tell you. We had a shipment of front-line equipment in from Valisk a couple of months back. I think there’s still some left. Good stuff.”
“I think you’d better put one of those removal patches on the list as well.” Louise called Genevieve into the room, and explained what’d happened. Thankfully her sister was more curious than outraged. She peered at her skin after Andy took the nanonic package away, fascinated by the removal process. “It doesn’t look any different,” she complained.
“They’re too small to see,” Andy said. “Which makes them too small to feel. They shouldn’t call it getting stung, really. More like being feathered.”
When Genevieve scooted back into the shop to continue her appraisal of consumer goodies, Andy handed over the box of Kulu Corporation neural nanonics to Louise. “You need to check the seal,” he said. “Make sure it hasn’t been broken, and see that the wrapping hasn’t been tampered with as well. You can tell that by the colour. If someone tries to cut or tear it, the stress turns it red.”
She turned it over obediently. “Why do I have to do this?”
“Neural nanonics connect directly into your brain, Louise. If someone changes the filaments or subverts the NAS codes they could get into your memories or manipulate your body like a puppet. This guarantees the set hasn’t been tampered with since it left the factory; and you have the Kulu Corporation’s assurance that their design wouldn’t sequestrate you.”
Louise gave the box a closer examination. The foil seemed intact and clear.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said quickly. “It’s a standard speech; we implant fifty of these a day. I mean, think what would happen to the shop or the manufacturer if anything like that did ever happen. We’d be lynched. It’s in our interest to make sure everything’s kosher for you. Another reason we have sensors at the door.”
“Okay, I suppose.” She handed the box back. Andy broke the seal in front of her, and took out a small black capsule a couple of centimetres long. He slotted that into the back of a specialist medical implant package. The only other item in the box was a flek.
“This is the operating didactic, which is standard, but it also contains the first time access code specific to this set,” he told her. “Basically, it allows you to activate the neural nanonics. After that, you change the code by just thinking of a new one. So even if someone got hold of your flek afterwards it wouldn’t do them any good. Don’t worry, it’s all explained in the didactic.”
She lay face down on the cushioned bench, with a pair of collar wings holding her neck steady. Andy pushed her hair to one side, ready to apply the medical package to the nape of her neck. There was already a tiny nearly-healed scar on her skin. He knew exactly what it was, he’d seen it a thousand times before, every time the implant package was taken off.
“Is everything all right?” Louise asked.
“Yes. No problem. It just takes a minute to line this up right.” He datavised the bodyscan cubicle’s processor. Its memory file of her scan confirmed there was absolutely no foreign matter in her brain.
Andy took the coward’s way out and said nothing. Mainly because he didn’t want to alarm her. But something here was desperately wrong. Either she was lying to him, which he couldn’t believe. Or . . . he couldn’t quite decide what the other options were. He was trespassing deep in Govcentral territory. All that did was enhance her mystery up to the level of pure enchantment. A babe in distress right out of the sensevise dramas. In his shop!
“Here we go,” he said lightly, and put the package over her existing sc
ar. Now there would never be any proof.
Louise tensed slightly. “It’s gone numb.”
“That’s okay. It’s supposed to.”
All the medical package did was open a passage through to the base of the skull, and ease the capsule containing the densely pleated neural nanonics into place. Then the filaments began to unwind from each other and porrect forward, their probing tips slowly winding their way round cells as they sought out synapses. There were millions of them, active molecular strings obeying their AI formatted protocol; instructions determined by their own structure of spiralling atoms. They formed a wondrously intricate filigree around the medulla oblongata, branching to connect with the nerve strands inside while the main filaments seeped further into the brain to complete their interface.
With the implant package in place, Andy fetched the didactic imprinter. Louise thought it looked like a pair of burnished stainless steel ski glasses. He put the flek in a small slot at the side, and placed it carefully on her face. “This works in pulses,” he said. “You’ll get a warning flash of green, then you’ll see a violet light for about fifteen seconds. Try not to blink. It should happen eight times.”
“That’s it?” The edges of the imprinter had stuck to her skin, leaving her in total blackness.
“Yep, not so bad, is it?”
“And this is the way everyone on Earth learns things?”
“Yes. The information is encoded within the light, and your optic nerve passes it straight into your brain. Simple explanation, but that’s the principle.”
Louise saw a flicker of green, and held her breath. The violet light came on, an otherwise uniform sheen broken by that unique monotone sparkle which a laser leaves on the retina. She managed not to blink until it went off. “Your children don’t go to school?” she asked.
“No. Kids go to day clubs, keeps them busy and you make friends there. That’s all.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 286
