by Pat Cadigan
If he could remember that much, Ido thought, he hadn’t suffered a traumatic brain injury. A mild concussion, certainly, but that came with the territory.
“Pardon me a second,” Gerhad said to the patient and helped Ido to the other chair, adjusting it so he was sitting straight up with extra lumbar support. “Am I gonna have to strap you in here, or are you gonna be a good boy and sit quietly while I finish with Corky?” she asked Ido.
“Hi, Corky,” Ido said, trying to sound hale and hearty. “How’s it going?”
“Better for me than you, Doc. You got two black eyes. Two!”
“That’s what happens when you break your nose,” Ido told him matter-of-factly.
“No kiddin’,” Corky said. “Man, whoever mugged you was a real pendejo.”
Good cover story, Ido thought; very mundane, totally believable. He was about to say something else when he felt a sting in his arm.
The next time he opened his eyes, late-afternoon sunlight was slanting through the windows, and Gerhad was seeing a different patient to the door.
Ido tried to get out of the chair and discovered he was belted in. Maybe if he turned the chair upside down, he could slide out like Hugo had, only he couldn’t find the control pad.
Gerhad swivelled the chair around. “Doctors always make the worst patients,” she said, shining a bright light into each eye then pinching his nose shut so he would open his mouth. “But you’re in a class by yourself.”
“It’s bad to just lie in bed,” Ido said, trying to sound reasonable rather than defensive. “Blood clots.”
“It’s worse to get up and wander around before all your pressure dressings are applied,” Gerhad scolded.
“Pressure dressings?” Ido blinked at her in bewildered surprise. He was less woozy, but her face was still shifting position. So was the rest of the world. “Aren’t they already on?”
“Tissue swelling has to go down first, Dr Genius, remember?” Gerhad chuckled. “You’re almost there. Or you should have been. Getting up and running around may have undone all the anti-inflammatories’ good work.”
“I wasn’t running around,” Ido said. “And I don’t feel swollen.”
“Who’s the nurse, you or me?” Gerhad said. “I outrank you on this case. Wait here. I’m gonna bring you something you’ll like.”
Wait here? What a joker. He heard someone moving around in the kitchen. Then Gerhad was back, sitting him up straighter.
“Open up,” she said. A spoon with something cold and tasty slipped between his lips.
“Gazpacho!” Ido was delighted. “How did you know?”
Gerhad laughed. “There’s always at least a quart in the refrigerator and you keep copies of the recipe with your prescription pads.”
“Oh, right,” he said, feeling a bit silly. “You don’t have to feed me.”
“Yeah, I do,” Gerhad told him firmly. “Until I get the pressure glove on you, anyway.”
“How many bones did I break?” Ido asked, startled. Suddenly he felt much more alert, almost wide awake.
“Not as many as I thought,” Gerhad replied, “and they’re all hairline fractures. Pressure dressings will take care of them.”
As Gerhad continued feeding him, Ido tried to remember what had happened. His last clear memory was of standing on a bar in a badly ventilated sub-sub-sub-basement, watching a cyborg in blue-and-orange armour tear another cyborg’s arm off. Everything after that was patchy.
“You’ve got excellent bones, Doc,” Gerhad said. “Well above average for Iron City. I don’t know where you grew up, but it wasn’t here.”
Ido said nothing.
Gerhad went on feeding him in silence for a minute or two. “Scanner showed you’ve sustained a whole lot of previous injuries,” she said finally. “More than a lot of people I saw in the emergency room. I know you’re not playing in an amateur Motorball league on the weekends. These aren’t consistent with Motorball anyway. They’re more like martial arts injuries, but not from sparring. These are what you’d get if someone had tried to kill you.” Pause. “Or vice versa.”
Ido remained silent for a few moments. “The gazpacho recipe is actually from the taqueria across the way,” he said. “I like having chunks of vegetables. Tastier than just liquefying everything.”
“I’m not trying to pry into your private business,” Gerhad said, putting the bowl down on the tray-table beside her. “You don’t want to tell me you’re one of those fight club weirdos that needs to get your butt kicked once or twice a month in south-town, that’s fine. I’d just like to point out that you built up a practice here. People depend on you—”
“That’s not it,” Ido said.
“Thank God for that,” Gerhad said, picking the bowl up again. “Some people say you should try not to judge, but they don’t work in an emergency room.”
“I’m a Hunter-Warrior,” Ido said.
Gerhad put the bowl down again and folded her arms. “Which is the other stupid thing you could be.”
“I have my reasons,” Ido said.
“Everybody’s got their reasons for everything.” Gerhad sighed. “So that’s what you were doing that I had to scrape you up off a south-town alley?”
“No,” Ido said. “But I should’ve been. I won’t make the same mistake again.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” Gerhad said glumly. “Did you miss my saying you have patients counting on you?”
“That’s why we should get those pressure dressings on right away,” Ido said.
Gerhad blew out an exasperated breath. “I oughta dope you up and strap you to this chair.”
“If you do, worse things will happen,” Ido told her. “And not just in south-town.”
“I didn’t say I would,” Gerhad replied.
CHAPTER 17
The sun was setting when Tanji found Hugo sitting on a cement barrier at the edge of the broken causeway, a couple of blocks from where the main road curved away from the dead remnants of a highway system no one understood any more. Farther out, more broken pieces of road sat atop tall supports of weathered concrete. Here and there chunks had been blown out of the supports, showing a metal framework inside; Hugo thought of them as Iron City’s secret skeletons.
“What are you doing out here?” Tanji asked him, parking his gyro behind Hugo’s before sitting down beside him. “Koyomi’s probably got a candle in the front window at CAFÉ café by now.”
“I needed thinking space,” Hugo said.
“Did you think up anything good? Like how we’re going to deliver on time to the big man?”
“Vector,” Hugo said, suppressing a strong urge to say he wasn’t the big man.
Tanji looked down at the bracelet on Hugo’s wrist. “Is that giving you inspiration?”
“It’s a good luck charm,” Hugo said. “Or it was. But you found me anyway.”
Tanji clutched his chest. “Ow, ya got me. But I think I’ll live,” he added, looking down at himself. “Seriously, what’s your damage? Are we gonna take this guy tonight or what?”
“Unless you have a better plan,” Hugo replied, a bit testily.
“Not me.” Tanji looked over his shoulder, down at the weedy area that marked the edge of the lower-level streets. “You didn’t come here to scout real estate down there, did you?”
Hugo followed his gaze. The street on the lower level dead-ended at the same point where the upper street curved. You had to go much farther out, into the wild grass and weeds before you found any more fragments of road; no one ever did. There were weird, ugly biting insects in grass that had edges sharp enough to slice skin. The only people down there were no-hopers, those who had fallen so far that the upper level of Iron City had become their Zalem. They sheltered directly under the causeway and survived by raiding dumpsters for food.
The Factory had a number of operations on the lower level; no one seemed to know what they were, as the buildings had no windows. A panhandler had told Hugo that they were where t
he Factory manufactured defective robots, which they slipped in among the population. It was a paranoid fairy tale, the sort of thing that sounded reasonable to anyone off their meds. At the same time, however, Hugo didn’t think it sounded any crazier than the idea of living in a city that had two basic purposes: A) to support Zalem, and B) to be Zalem’s trashcan. Sometimes Hugo wondered what it would have been like to live in a world that made sense.
Tanji gave him a hard nudge. “What is with you? You act like you don’t care whether we get this guy or not.”
“I care,” Hugo said. “And we’ll get him. I got a message from Dif earlier. He and Louie know right where he is.”
Tanji blinked at him. “And you didn’t feel like that information was important enough to share with me and Koyomi?”
Hugo made a face. “He’s in the Velvet Orchid.”
Now Tanji let out a hearty laugh. “They cater to everybody, I guess. Although I never understood why a TR would go to a place like that.”
“Well, number one, TRs have senses like anybody else. Their bodies have feeling in them; they aren’t just numb from the neck down. And, number two, he’s not a customer.”
“If he’s not a customer, what—oh.” Tanji looked revolted. “Maybe we’d better bring a couple of gallons of disinfectant to dunk him in before we disconnect his cyber-core.” He gave a small shudder. “Dammit, now I don’t even want to touch him with gloves on.”
“I had no idea you were such a prude,” Hugo said, amused in spite of everything.
“I’m not,” Tanji said defensively. “I’m just—” He gave a small shudder.
Hugo waited for Tanji to go on, then said, “Okay, you’re not a prude. You’re just kind of a prude. What’re you gonna be when you grow up, the guardian of public morals?” He paused, thinking of Koyomi in Widow Shins. “The Velvet Orchid is probably pretty tame compared to some places.”
“What places?” Tanji asked. “Gimme a for instance.”
“How should I know? I don’t go to any of them.” Hugo shrugged. “Use your imagination.”
Tanji gave a brief shudder. “No, thanks—I don’t want crap like that in my head. So how’re we supposed to get him? Go in, get naked, give him a few jolts, then toss him out a window?”
Hugo shook his head. “Dif and Louie said most nights he comes out about three A.M. and goes to an all-night one-stop for candy bars.”
“‘Most nights’?” Tanji’s frown was sceptical. “What if tonight isn’t ‘most nights’?”
“I don’t know,” Hugo replied, annoyed. “Phone and ask him to make a house call. Pull a fire alarm. Stop fretting. You’re like a little old lady. We’ll get him.”
“We better,” Tanji said. “If we mess this one up, Vector’ll drop us. Then we’re screwed.”
“I know. I know,” Hugo snapped. He shifted position on the barrier and his tailbone gave an intense twinge, making him stand up.
Tanji followed suit. “I’m going back to CAFÉ café. You coming, or do you want to stick around and listen to them whispering down there?”
“You hear whispering?” Hugo asked him. “How long has that been going on?”
“Shut up,” Tanji said, starting his gyro.
* * *
Koyomi was waiting for them at their usual spot by the window. “I was starting to think you guys were no-shows,” she complained.
“Not you too.” Hugo sighed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, frowning.
“Tanji’s pissing and moaning about how tonight’s our last chance,” Hugo said.
“Well, it is, isn’t it?” Koyomi replied. “If we’re late again, we lose our whole gig with Vector.”
“Hey, it took a few days for Dif and Louie to find him.” Hugo told her where the cyborg was and how they were going to take him down.
“That’s… really weird,” she said when Hugo finished.
“‘Weird’ is one way to put it,” said Tanji. “I’ll be double-gloving tonight. And bringing spares, just in case.”
“I don’t understand,” Koyomi said.
“You don’t understand why I’d wear two pairs of gloves?” Tanji asked, baffled.
“No, I get that,” Koyomi said. “Everybody knows what a prude you are. I don’t understand why someone with all those enhancements would just be a fancy man-whore. It doesn’t make sense.”
Because the world doesn’t make sense, Hugo replied silently while Tanji and Koyomi argued over whether Tanji was a prude.
* * *
“You’re not from around here,” said the woman sitting across from Ido at the small table in the west-side marketplace. She had sent him a text telling him she had a line on a certain rather speedy cyborg, and if he came here at one A.M. she’d share it with him. It was now one-fifteen and she had yet to share anything substantial; meanwhile his analgesics were fading. Ido had plenty in his coat pockets and more in the Rocket Hammer case standing like a sentinel beside him, but he didn’t want to take them in front of this woman for no good reason he could think of. If he didn’t top up soon, however, he was going to have a hard time getting up from the chair, and he didn’t want her seeing that either.
The problems of the modern Hunter-Warrior: going out to bag a mark before you were completely healed up from your last beating. It was an occupational hazard. That, and the occasional anonymous tip that sent you down a blind alley to a fortune teller. If Gerhad knew what he was doing, she’d kill him.
“I’ve been here for years,” Ido said. “Most of the cyborgs in Iron City have come through my clinic at one time or another. I just might see them all before I’m done.”
“Yes, but you didn’t spring up out of the rain and the rust and dust of Iron City like they did,” she said.
“Who knows where anyone sprang up?” Ido had a strong urge to tell her she didn’t look much like an Iron City native either. There was something about her face that was—well, not exactly wrong, but not quite right either. She wasn’t unattractive—quite the opposite. But Ido couldn’t shake the idea this wasn’t her natural face, that she had undergone extensive reconstruction, and while the surgeon had been very skilled at putting everything back together, it was all ever so slightly out of true somehow.
But it was really her eyes that made her look so uncanny. The fortune teller was the first and only case of complete heterochromia Ido had ever seen in Iron City: her right eye was a dark golden-brown and her left was green. If those were contact lenses, they were far too good for Iron City, more like something slipped out of a shipment headed for Zalem. Only Vector could get away with skimming—
But if she were that well-connected, why was she telling fortunes in an all-night marketplace? It couldn’t have been to gather information and report whatever she saw or heard to Vector; there were easier ways to spy on people. And Vector certainly didn’t need to hire anyone to spy on Ido; Chiren would tell him anything he wanted to know, right down to the combination to the safe in the cellar.
The thought came unbidden: maybe she was working for someone higher than Vector.
Ido glanced up at Zalem, a circle of starless black in the night sky. Zalem took anything and everything worth having from Iron City and didn’t communicate with anyone except Vector. There was no way for them to make contact with anyone else at ground level—
Unless the whispered stories about the Factory putting chips in people’s heads so that those on high could ride them really were true. Ido hadn’t believed it. It sounded like classic folklore from the land of the clinically paranoid. None of the alleged joyride chips scanned as anything more than standard internal ID registration. Why would anyone from Zalem want to ride someone at ground level? There was nothing down here that any of them would want to see.
Only now that he was thinking of it, he knew one person who would have enjoyed being a misery tourist. Ido reflexively touched the back of his neck, where the cyborg ID chips were located. Not being a cyborg, he didn’t have one himself. Chiren
hadn’t either. He looked up at Zalem again, then suddenly realised the woman had spoken to him.
“Uh, excuse me?” he said, feeling his face grow warm.
She leaned her elbows on the table as she studied him. “I said, you look like you think someone’s gonna hit you.”
Ido shrugged; the sharp pain in his ribs made him regret it immediately.
“Probably because someone already did,” she added. “Your glasses hide the black eyes pretty well. Don’t worry; most people won’t notice.”
“I’m not worried,” Ido said.
“Not about that. You’re worried that maybe it’s a little soon to go looking for trouble.” She picked up the deck of cards sitting to her left on the table and shuffled them. They were a bit over-sized but she handled them easily. “Let’s see what the cards say.”
Ido gave up and took a couple of analgesics from a box in his pocket, washing them down with some bottled water. “Shouldn’t I shuffle?” he asked. “I thought that was how it worked.”
“The cards know you’re here.” She laid out three cards face down, starting on his left. “Whenever you’re ready, you can turn the first one over. Use your left hand,” she added as he started to reach for it with his right.
The image on the card was a skull and crossbones. Ido stared; it was all bullshit, but his heart thumped anyway.
“Don’t see a whole lot of people pull Death first,” the woman said cheerfully.
Ido gave a short, humourless laugh. “I suppose that means I’m going to die tonight.”
“No, it means you’re already dead.” She smiled at him even more cheerfully. “You’ve had a moment of definitive conclusion in your recent past. Something came to an end permanently.”
“That’s probably true of most people,” Ido said, trying not to think of his daughter or Chiren.