by Pat Cadigan
And the way he’d reacted to Hugo—What the hell are you supposed to be?—like it never occurred to him he would get jacked, like he didn’t even know what a jacker was. As he and Tanji worked on severing the first set of connections between his core and the cyborg body, Hugo couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
Hugo insisted they leave the core near the market district where the Prefects would find him quickly. Tanji didn’t argue; Hugo could tell he also felt funny about the way things had gone down, although Tanji would never have admitted it to anyone, especially Hugo. But Tanji made a point of keeping Koyomi out of the chop process this time, telling her to stand watch instead. Anything that could spook Tanji had to be bad.
* * *
The delivery address Vector gave them was an old annex to the Factory building. When they pulled the truck up next to it, Hugo was afraid for a moment that Vector had set them up to be eliminated as loose ends. But as it turned out, Vector had made the annex into a fancy laboratory for his new favourite Tuner, Doc Ido’s ex-wife.
Hugo had never seen anything so elaborate and lavish. It was at least four times the size of Doc Ido’s clinic, with a lot more equipment. Some of the machines were upgrades of things he’d seen the doc use, but others he couldn’t identify at all. Chiren’s instruments were in display cases, like they were supposed to be admired when she wasn’t using them. She even had a small staff, although they looked a lot more like bodyguards than nurses. The doctor herself looked more like she was going to one of Vector’s fancy parties; Hugo had never seen a Tuner in stilettos.
Normally Hugo would simply have dropped the requested parts off, collected his payment, and gone home. But this time he felt compelled to tell Vector how clueless the cyborg had seemed and how easily he’d gone down.
Vector’s Tuner Chiren had shown a great deal of interest, asking him to tell her exactly what happened, making him go back over certain details about how the cyborg had behaved. Her face was intensely serious, her ice-blue eyes looking hard into his as if she could stare information out of him. Hugo had only seen her at a distance when she’d still been with the doc—before their daughter died—but even then she’d looked like she never found much to smile about.
She interrogated him for something like half an hour. Then Vector paid them and added a small bonus for “useful information”. The sky was getting light when Hugo finally made it back to his single-room apartment. Maybe it had been the job or having to answer so many questions about the TR cyborg for Chiren or simply the fact that he’d been awake for over twenty-four hours but he was suddenly overwhelmed by a mix of pity and anger—pity for people who got victimised and anger at those who benefitted by it.
Normally Hugo didn’t think about this sort of thing if he could possibly avoid it. There was no point in agonising over anything—he couldn’t do anything about it. He was doing well just keeping himself together. But now he was too tired to resist.
Then he remembered the bag of credits in his jacket pocket. He dug a dented metal box out from behind the loose board on the floor of his one and only closet. It was a little over half-full now. Not enough yet for what he needed—but he was getting there. He added most of the night’s take to it, keeping only the bare minimum he needed for the next day, and felt a little better as he put the box back in its hiding place.
As soon as he lay down he fell into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER 10
The woman in the plush chair on the other side of Vector’s enormous desk was beautiful when she wanted to be. Vector was very pleased Soledad had made the choice to be beautiful this afternoon. He preferred his women beautiful, especially when he met with them in his luxurious office. Not everyone got to meet beautiful Soledad. In her line of work, being forgettable paid better.
They didn’t make them like Soledad any more. Having a mutable facial structure was now a criminal offence. But the Factory allowed her to retain the ability to alter her appearance as long as she was useful and didn’t engage in unauthorised deception.
The fact that she’d managed to swing such a deal made her beautiful and smart, something Vector greatly respected. You could get away with a lot if you were beautiful, but if you were beautiful and smart, you could get away with anything.
Soledad was one of Vector’s most closely held secrets. Virtually everyone else on his staff thought she was a “janitor”—i.e., someone’s mentally impaired relative Vector employed as a favour, doing manual labour for minimal pay. It wasn’t so unlikely, as Vector actually did employ a few mentally or physically disabled people as a favour to their loved ones. It made him look good, like he actually had a heart; better yet, however, it kept said loved ones continuously in his debt, making it impossible for them to refuse whatever he asked of them. Soledad moved among all of them unnoticed, observing and listening and reporting anything of interest.
She was also highly accomplished at breaking and entering. If there were any places Soledad couldn’t gain entry to, they weren’t in Iron City. Once inside, she could search the whole place thoroughly and leave no trace. She stole only on request and took only what she had been asked to take.
Which made her beautiful, smart and strong-willed, a combination that was so rare in Iron City as to be non-existent. It was rarer even than ex-residents of Zalem, neither of whom Vector thought of as strong-willed. He was very glad Soledad worked for him, although he didn’t kid himself. She worked for him because the Factory wanted her to. But as long as she took orders from him, it didn’t really matter.
Vector got up and went around to lean on the front of his desk, leaving his glass of Scotch where it was. He wasn’t sure looming over this woman would have any effect on her but it was always good to remind employees he was above them.
“You understand it’s crucial that we get this chip and that Ido not know we’ve taken it for as long as possible,” Vector said. “I’m sorry we don’t have an exact image of what you’ll be looking for—”
“The sketch Dr Chiren made is detailed enough,” Soledad said.
“I’m glad Chiren could be helpful. She’s quite the intellect,” Vector said with the stiff formality of a superior praising hired help he more often had to reprimand. “Looking after my Paladins is an enormous responsibility, one that has forced her to narrow her focus. If there were more hours in the day and more days in the week, I’m sure she would already have developed this chip herself. As it is, I’m sure Dyson Ido used a great deal of her work. So really, what I’m asking you to do is to retrieve property that is rightfully Chiren’s.”
Why did I just tell her that? Vector thought as Soledad nodded. “I’m sure, given world enough and time, Dr Chiren could master any skill, even breaking and entering,” Soledad said. “Although I doubt she’d want to.”
And why did she just say that to me? Vector wondered. Pushing the thought away, he said, “You have the latest reports on Ido’s daily movements?”
Soledad tapped her phone. “The gentleman is a creature of routine. But I have contingency plans in the event he takes a walk on the wild side. Breaks his pattern,” she added in response to Vector’s slightly perplexed expression.
“Very good,” he said. “And you’re sure you won’t have a drink with me before you go?”
“Another time, thank you.” Soledad stood up and Vector immediately followed suit. She was several inches shorter than he was but sometimes she seemed taller.
“Then don’t let me keep you, my dear,” Vector said, dismissing her before she could leave the room without his permission.
“Oh, I wasn’t,” Soledad told him. “I stopped by in case you needed to say anything else to me. I’ll call you when the job’s done.”
“Don’t bother,” he said as she started to turn towards the door. “Just bring me the chip.”
She nodded. “As you wish.”
Vector stared after her as she strode out of his office. He wasn’t used to feeling relieved when a beautiful woman left h
is office, and he didn’t like it.
* * *
The open-air taqueria across the street from the clinic was getting busy, Ido saw as he locked up. For a moment he stood and listened to the sound of cheerful voices calling to each other over the sound of the highlights of the latest Motorball game, whenever that was.
One of the waitresses hollered something to the bartender and he hollered back. Ido couldn’t make out what either of them had said over the noise but it made everyone sitting nearby laugh uproariously. Ido smiled. People were people were people—no matter where they were or what was going on, they’d find some way to have a good time, at least for a little while. The idea made him feel hopeful. Maybe when he was done picking through Zalem’s refuse, he’d have a couple of tacos before going out to his second job.
* * *
So that was Chiren’s ex-husband, Soledad thought, staring after him as he headed for the scrapyard. It was the first time she’d seen him in person. Unless she was mistaken, he almost had a spring in his step. Maybe something almost good had happened to him today. That would be a nice change; tormented soul seemed to be his default setting. Either way, he’d be gone for at least an hour.
She could have hired a lookout to text her when Ido headed for home but that meant involving someone else in the job, even if she didn’t give them any details. The fewer people who were connected to you by way of a job, the less likely it was to come back and bite you on the ass. You never knew who might add two and two and get you.
* * *
No one had seen Soledad leave the taqueria. Since departing from Vector’s office she had shifted her cyborg bone structure so that her eyes turned down at the outer corners, as did her mouth, which now had pronounced marionette lines and incipient jowls to go with her double chin. It was the face of any older woman who had spent most of her life trying to be useful, knowing she would be singled out only for admonition, never for applause. This face was a composite of many different women: familiar enough to pass unquestioned, unfamiliar enough to be ignored.
Even after so many years, Soledad was still amazed at how easy it was to be invisible. Sometimes she stood right in front of someone without being noticed.
As for her clothing, everything she wore was reversible. Turning her clothes inside out was effective, simple and far less uncomfortable than shifting the bones in her face.
* * *
Ido lived above his clinic, so there were two separate entrances. Soledad decided the entrance to his home would be safer. There would be less chance of bumping into a patient looking for out-of-hours treatment.
Traffic was heavy in this part of town. There seemed to be virtually no time when the streets were completely clear. Very useful; no one paid any attention to her on Ido’s porch. Ido used a standard lock and key setup, which Soledad thought matched his image as charmingly retro and eccentric. He was too smart to use an electronic lock, which could easily be disabled just by cutting the power.
In her extreme youth, Soledad had learned to pick just about any kind of mechanical lock with patient manipulation. Having a superior set of lock-picking equipment was a definite advantage, especially when there was a clock on the job. And when it came to burglary, there usually was.
* * *
Once inside, Soledad stood in the dark for a few moments, listening to the way things sounded in the house, the muffled traffic noise, her breathing, the air contained in the place, the lonely darkness. She committed all of it to memory, then put on her night-vision goggles.
To her left was the living room, to her right, the kitchen and, beyond that, the clinic. She went soundlessly through the kitchen to a hallway and was surprised by a spiral staircase. Chiren hadn’t mentioned it was a spiral staircase. Soledad leaned on it slightly; there was no movement or rattling. Pretty solid for such an old house. The place looked like it could be pre-War. There were a surprising number of pre-War buildings in Iron City. Vector claimed parts of the Factory predated the War but Soledad took everything he said with a grain of salt.
She memorised the layout of the clinic, at first seeing it all at once, as a whole, and then in smaller sections, until the room was as much in her as she was in it. Not a very large room at all, crowded and, though not tidy, not disorganised. As she moved into the space, she passed a tray table on wheels with an arrangement of surgical instruments laid out on it, still in their sterile wrap; Ido liked the convenience of having anything he was actively working on within easy reach when he returned to it. Like those two arms on the table.
They were definitely for two different people. One of them was a strange creation she’d never seen before, with a forearm that divided in two at the elbow, opening like alligator jaws. The double forearm connected to an even weirder extended double hand, both sections with five finger-like appendages. She couldn’t imagine what it was for—some kind of special sex aid, maybe? Ido wasn’t known for that kind of thing, but maybe with his wife gone he was branching out.
Soledad bent over the table and set her vision for extreme close-up. She found a chip right in the spot Chiren had said was the controller position but it was plain old tech, not the super-chip Chiren had described. No super-chip in the other arm either, which was a standard labourer’s device with attachments for tools.
If it’s not in the clinic, try the cellar safe. It’s set into the floor, Chiren had said, giving her the combination. Ido might have changed it but she didn’t think so.
He hadn’t.
The safe was full of drugs, in bags, in bottles, in bundles of flat patches, in pre-measured ampules. Everything the average Motorball wash-out needed to keep the party going. Soledad was afraid she was going to have to remove at least half of it to find what she was looking for. Then she spotted what looked like a small paper envelope stuck to one side of the safe.
There it was, and so thin she was afraid she’d snap it in two by accident. But it was oddly strong, like a small steel plate. She saw lines on both sides but they were indecipherable to her eye.
God, how the hell did something like this work?
Soledad put it in the small, plastic container Chiren had given her, started to put it in one of her pockets, then tucked it into her bra next to her right breast. If anybody reached for that, they’d come away shy one hand, regular or cyborg.
She made her way back upstairs quickly but without haste, careful to be as soundless as before. Stowing her goggles, she put her hand on the front door, then stopped. Something was off. She ran through her mental checklist but no flags went up—the house sounded right, felt right. She’d left both the cellar and the safe just as she’d found them. Ido wouldn’t know it was gone till he went looking for it, and even then he wouldn’t know when it had been stolen, or how, or by whom.
Soledad actually sorry for him. Life was hard all over—
That was it, she realised, running her hands over her face. She had let her face revert. Damn, she had to watch that.
It was just that changing her facial contours was uncomfortable at best, sometimes even painful, not just at the time but sometimes for a day or two after. It came with getting older. She’d been warned morphing wouldn’t get easier with age, and the time was coming when she’d have to give it up and live with whatever she had.
But not tonight. She felt the bones and muscles move under her skin and knew when it was right again without checking her appearance in a mirror. Every face had its own unpleasantness, some more than others. But it could have been worse—this drab mask could have been her actual face. While the one the world called beautiful could have been too painful to maintain.
She slipped out of the house and went back to the taqueria. Ido returned an hour later with what looked like a bag full of servos and a preoccupied expression. As she watched, he stopped at the bottom of the steps to his front door and looked directly at her.
Soledad caught her breath, waiting for something to happen, for him to come over to her and say something. But he kept on staring a
nd she realised he was staring at the taqueria, not her. Maybe he was hungry.
Ido wasn’t all that bad-looking, Soledad thought. Too pale—too pale by half, even his hair was pale. But the lines on his face suggested he had smiled a lot in the past. Now he had an intense look, but that could have been the eyeglasses. He moved more gracefully than the average Iron City male. Vector had said he wasn’t from around here, but that was obvious. She wasn’t sure she believed Vector’s claim that Ido and Chiren were from Zalem, even with that gem in the middle of Chiren’s forehead. If they were from Zalem, why would they leave? And why would they stay in Iron City, of all places? It made no sense.
Vector said Chiren had left Ido and that did make sense. Ido certainly hadn’t thrown her out; Soledad knew men who threw women out and Ido wasn’t one of them. Although he must have been pretty sick and tired of her bullshit to let her go. That woman was high maintenance; only Vector was rich enough to afford her.
Chiren, on the other hand, didn’t have the look of someone who had traded up. More like someone who was convinced she had nothing because her life wasn’t perfect.
Soledad chuckled silently. Maybe she was from Zalem after all.
CHAPTER 11
“If I’m lyin’—C major—” Sitting on the treatment table with his legs dangling over the side, the dark-skinned older man played a single chord using only the guitar’s upper neck with easy skill. “I’m dyin’—C minor.” He played another chord using only the lower neck. “And I don’t play those lightly, Doc.”
“I wouldn’t either,” said Ido, watching the movement of the adapted metal fingers on the frets. “How do you feel? Any conflict with your strumming hand?”
“Nope. You did a beautiful job. I’m playing better than I have in years.” Hector’s snow-white moustache spread with his smile. “But with one of those super-chips, I could play flamenco duets with myself.”