Alita

by Pat Cadigan

  Hugo hadn’t quite reached the desk when the man produced a plastic bag and shoved it across the desk at him, without changing position or even opening his eyes. Hugo thanked him and put his hoodie into it. Tanji had been right—the smell lessened right away.

  It was another hour before Koyomi finally emerged, sporting a hot-pink cast on her right forearm. She was dressed in disposable blue hospital scrubs and carrying a small plastic bag with the few things she’d had in her pockets, but nothing else. Her braids were undone and her loose hair was damp.

  “They made me take a shower,” she said. “I didn’t think I was as bad as you guys, but I guess I was bad enough. They told me they burned my clothes and gave me this to wear home. Do I look like Dr Koyomi?”

  “You look like an operator,” Tanji said. “But that’s how you always look.” She laughed as Hugo put her share of Vector’s payment in the bag she was carrying, then paused to look at it dubiously.

  “I’m not so sure I should take this,” she said after a few moments.

  “Why not?” Hugo and Tanji said in surprised unison.

  “All I did was get my arm broken.” She looked pained. “I couldn’t even climb up the ladder.”

  “Hey, you earned that,” Hugo said, nodding at the bag.

  “Besides, if you hadn’t got your arm broken, someone else woulda,” Tanji added. “Maybe me—and that would’ve been really bad because I’m a lot more important than you are.”

  Koyomi sighed. “I’d test that out but I’m too tired and too whacked out on pain drugs.”

  As she started for the exit, Hugo caught her good arm. “Wait, I want to give you something.” He slipped the copper band onto her wrist next to the cast.

  “Hugo, you can’t!” Koyomi said, shocked. “Not your mother’s bracelet—not after all you went through—”

  “You need it more than I do,” he said. “Copper’s got healing properties. It’s good for your bones.”

  “How does that work?” asked Koyomi, looking from him to the band on her wrist and back again.

  “I dunno,” Hugo said. “I’m not a scientist or a doctor. It just does.”

  “Did Doc Ido tell you that?” Tanji asked him.

  “Yeah,” Hugo lied. “He gave me this long lecture about it but I didn’t understand a word.”

  “Well, if the Doc says it works, I won’t argue,” Koyomi said. “But—” She looked pained. “Are you sure?”

  “Surer than anything,” Hugo said. “Besides, it doesn’t go with my outfit.”

  “It doesn’t exactly go with mine either,” Koyomi said.

  “Yeah, but you’re a girl,” Tanji said, looking at Hugo with genuine respect. “You can get away with it. Nobody looks at you anyway.”

  “I hate you,” Koyomi told him and looped her good arm around Hugo’s as they headed for the exit.

  “I thought you hated me too,” Hugo said.

  “Right now, not so much,” Koyomi replied. “Maybe later.”

  * * *

  Hugo dropped her off in front of her apartment building on the way to the loading dock where he and Tanji had left their gyros. Tanji helped him with the tarp, then took off. Hugo considered just curling up in the cab, then decided he didn’t want to prolong the truck’s exposure to his jeans. Which reminded him that he was going to have to air out the back and fumigate it. And while he was at it, maybe he should burn his clothes too, or at least throw them away before he went into his apartment.

  As he was about to start the gyro, his gaze fell on the cathedral, a jagged black silhouette against the dawn sky. He looked from the platform around the single intact spire to Zalem and wished he weren’t too tired to climb up there. Zalem was beautiful at sunrise.

  Someday his gazing up at Zalem from down here would be the past that he could look back on while living in the contented present up there. No more jacking cyborgs, no more sewers or access tunnels, no more friends breaking bones for a few lousy credits. Someday he’d actually be above it all. That was his future; it had been promised to him and nothing would keep him from it.

  CHAPTER 19

  It seemed to Chiren that she rebuilt Claymore’s joints once a month.

  This time it was his shoulders and knees. Next time it would be his wrists and hips, and then his elbows and ankles. After that she might have to rebuild them all completely.

  When she wasn’t working on him, she had to keep Juggernaut up and running; Juggernaut and his three wheels and four arms. Sometimes there was so much work to do on Juggernaut that she had to delegate Claymore’s maintenance (although she always inspected everything personally). If she didn’t stay on top of Juggernaut’s condition every second, that big old front wheel might come right the hell off. She did everything she could to make sure the wheel had the full range of motion on the track.

  Try as she might, though, she couldn’t improve the shocks. She just had to make sure she replaced them when they lost their firmness. And of course, any time the shocks changed, everything adjacent to them had to be adjusted and the rear wheels had to be re-stabilised and re-aligned.

  Then she’d have to shift to Juggernaut’s other end and repair his shoulders. Two arms per shoulder added up to sixteen times the work, she was sure of it. It wasn’t just the joints and the range of movement—the arms had to be properly weighted too. Everything had to balance. Without balance, Juggernaut became Doorstop. Fortunately, balance was something she had a genuine instinct for; all she had to do was look at Paladins to know if they were properly balanced.

  Vector had seen her demonstrate that instinct many times but, as he wasn’t a scientist or even a technician, he didn’t understand how remarkable it was. He must have heard the pit crews talking about how they’d never worked with a better Tuner. And she knew for sure that they hadn’t. And neither had the Paladins.

  In fact she had been working on a redesign on Juggernaut, making sketches, doing calculations. If he let her rebuild his lower body, she could make him into a genuine contender. There hadn’t been a non-biped First Champion for years. If Juggernaut let her go ahead with the rebuild, he’d leave the rest of them in the dust, even Jashugan.

  Jashugan was emerging as everyone’s favourite for First Champion, even though he wasn’t heavily equipped with weapons. The rotating grinders on his forearms were all he had to fight with, and he didn’t spend a whole lot of time fighting. Most times he managed to avoid the on-track pile-ups that sent the fans into screaming ecstasy. Despite that, he was becoming a fan favourite.

  Personally Chiren thought Claymore or a redesigned Juggernaut looked like better bets for Final Champion. But when all the Paladins were together on the track, either as a team or in a game of Cut-Throat, which was every man for himself, Jashugan in his black-and-gold armour drew everyone’s eye. It was something about the way he carried himself, the way he could play as hard and as relentlessly as anyone else and never lose control.

  For Jashugan, Motorball was as much mental as it was physical. Juggernaut’s approach was to throw himself into the game and what would be, would be. Ajakutty kept telling himself he was going to win; sometimes he did. Claymore went onto the track prepared for everything, hoping for the best. Crimson Wind was the only female Paladin in Vector’s stable at the moment; she tried out a new weapon for every game, but she hadn’t found anything she wanted to stick with, so her game was mostly defensive. Her main strategy was simply to be faster than everyone else—too fast to catch, too fast to fight, too fast to beat. She had won two games since joining the team last year and both times she had looked just as surprised as everyone else on the track.

  As time passed Chiren understood that Crimson Wind was actually modelling herself on Jashugan. It wasn’t a bad idea. When Jashugan was on the track, he owned it. Off the track, he owned himself. He was the only Paladin in charge of his own repairs and maintenance now that Ido was gone.

  Ido had been Jashugan’s pet. Chiren had often found the two of them with their heads together, tw
o serious-minded men who might have been discussing the fate of the world. Even then, Jashugan had been telling Ido what needed attention and Ido had been happy to take instruction from him. No doubt this had added to Jashugan’s utter self-possession. Jashugan could have been in pieces strewn all over the pit and he’d still have an air of dignity.

  But Chiren was certain he had weak moments. Everybody did. There had to be times when Jashugan wasn’t composed, when he was a heap of wreckage. No one was always so composed and able, not in Motorball or anything else. Well, no one except Ido.

  Chiren had met Ido when they were both in medical training and she had mistaken him for one of the instructors. The mistake made her angry because it wasn’t fair that someone who was supposed to be a student—a supplicant, essentially—should have the dignified equanimity of an expert.

  But this was no time to reminisce. She was a seasoned professional now, the authority to whom everyone else had to defer, not Ido. Ido had quit, walked off and abandoned the Paladins—she hadn’t. Some of them, like Ajakutty, still talked about how they missed Ido, and that galled her, even if she didn’t like to admit that to herself. But Motorball players were like children; when you made a living by playing a game, childishness was a given.

  She had tried to show Ajakutty that he had no reason to miss Ido. Not by talking to him—what could she possibly have to talk about with someone who had knife blades running up and down his arms? Instead, she had provided superior maintenance, repairing things for him before they had a chance to break.

  Not that he appreciated this as much as he should have, but she didn’t hold that against him, not really. Ajakutty simply didn’t know better; he was just about smart enough to breathe without someone reminding him to inhale.

  Chiren had tweaked the blade arrangement on his arms to make them more like protruding shark teeth. It was an idea she’d had the first time she’d seen him on the track. Ajakutty hadn’t even known what a shark was. (God, what did they teach in Iron City schools—unassisted breathing?) She had considered showing him a photo, then decided the scary pictures might give him nightmares. Motorball Paladins—children, all of them.

  Jashugan too, no matter how self-possessed he always seemed to be. Sooner or later she was going to catch him in a weak moment. It was just a matter of probability—he was going to fall apart and she would have a front row seat. Then she could pick up the pieces and reassemble them in an improved arrangement. After that, he might look as composed as he ever had but he’d lean on her. And she would always be there to prop him up, the way she had for Ido.

  It hadn’t been easy, getting through Dyson Ido’s defences. She’d had to lay siege to him. A lesser person would have given up—she supposed lesser persons had, which was why he was so alone and untouched. But she’d defeated all the barriers he’d erected between himself and the world; she’d got all the way through to the real Dyson Ido and put her mark on him, showed him how being strong meant sometimes letting yourself be vulnerable, even weak. Quite an accomplishment, if she did say so herself.

  And here she was, still thinking about Ido even though he was irrelevant and a screw-up. Ido and his famous strength—when Nova had told them they had to leave Zalem, he buckled without a fight. They were probably lucky Ido had had enough nerve to ask for the pod so they could survive the fall.

  Thank heaven Vector was so much stronger. But then it took a strong man to run Iron City. She would never be madly in love with him, or vice versa, and that suited her just fine. They both knew what they were getting: he got the best Tuner in the world and a beautiful woman to look great beside him, and she was getting a ticket home. No misunderstandings there.

  Dyson Ido, with all his genius and wisdom and perception and sensitivity, hadn’t even been able to keep them in their rightful home. While this poorly educated but canny, intelligent and resourceful man born at ground level—in the dirt—had the power to send her home. So who needed love?

  Only a fool. She’d been a fool once, but she wasn’t any more.

  * * *

  “You’re here early. The players haven’t even started coming in yet,” said a woman’s voice behind Chiren.

  The voice was almost familiar; Chiren had heard it before, but not in the pit. “Paladins,” she replied, still leaning over the drawer of parts she had been inventorying. For once there were enough servos and gaskets to last all night, unless everybody burst into flames. “The pros are Paladins, not players.” Chiren finished re-counting the medium-sized gaskets before turning around.

  The woman perched on the edge of one of the Paladin maintenance thrones wasn’t someone she recognised but she didn’t seem to be a total stranger either. Like most women, she was shorter than Chiren, dressed in a faded blue work-shirt over a black sleeveless t-shirt, jeans and black boots with a lot of mileage. On the floor by her feet was an overnight bag with a dark-brown hat on top of it.

  “Do I know you?” Chiren asked.

  “I know you,” the woman replied, smiling. The smile made her seem even more familiar but Chiren still couldn’t place her. “I worked around the Factory for a while.”

  “‘Around the Factory’?” Chiren frowned. “How do you do that? People work in the Factory or out at the Farms. In the distribution centres or for dispatch stations. But I’ve never heard anyone say they worked around anything.”

  “I did odd jobs around the main building,” said the woman. “For Vector.”

  “I see.” Chiren straightened up to her full height, plus the four inches her heels gave her. This was one of the few times she was glad Vector insisted she wear stilettos in the pit. “You mean you’re one of our, ah, less formal employees, hired to—” But whatever else she meant to say evaporated. Something was happening to the woman’s face.

  As Chiren watched, the woman’s cheekbones rose slightly up and out from each other; her chin became more pointed and the upper part of the bridge of her nose sank into her face. Her eyes were no longer as deep-set and their shape had changed, although Chiren wasn’t exactly sure how. But this face she recognised.

  “You’re the janitor,” Chiren blurted, unable to hide her amazement. “Facial morphing’s illegal. Why aren’t you in custody?”

  “I’m useful,” the woman said with a small laugh.

  “To Vector?”

  “To the Factory.”

  “As far as Iron City is concerned, Vector and the Factory are one and the same,” Chiren said, bristling a little.

  “I got assignments from Vector,” the woman told her. “But I work for the Factory. The distinction was made clear to me when I took the job.”

  “What’s your name?” Chiren asked.

  “Soledad.” Pause. “Most of the time.”

  “And I guess you know who I am, all the time,” Chiren said. “So are you here on assignment?”

  “No.” The woman’s smile faded slightly. “I came to say goodbye.”

  Chiren tilted her head. “You never said hello.”

  The woman shrugged. “My life is odd that way.”

  “Where are you going?” Chiren tensed. “Is Vector sending you—” She hesitated. “Somewhere?”

  “He doesn’t even know I’m leaving. Relax. I’m not stealing your ride to—” She looked up briefly.

  “How do you know about that?” Chiren took a step towards her.

  The woman was unfazed. “Working around the Factory, I pick up all kinds of things. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. If it got out that Vector had that kind of voltage, the whole of Iron City would be banging down his door, wanting to go too. He’d turn the Centurians on them, and I don’t want that on my conscience.” The woman seemed about to continue, then shook her head.

  She stood up and Chiren saw she was even shorter than she’d thought. “No, I’m just leaving,” she said as she put on the hat. It was large and floppy; she tucked her dark hair up into it, leaving a few strands on either side of her face. “I’m getting as far away from here as I possibly can. So
far away I can’t see Zalem even with binoculars.”

  “Not afraid of contamination?” Chiren asked. “Even three hundred years after the War, soil samples from the so-called Badlands still test positive for weaponised microorganisms and heavy metals.”

  “It’s a big world,” the woman said. “Not every part of the planet was within sight of a flying city, even when all twelve were aloft. Places where people see birds every day but never saw a floating city except in pictures, instead of the other way round, like it is here.”

  Chiren shrugged. “That’s a long way to go just to see birds.”

  “People used to travel a long way just to see things all the time before the War,” said the woman, still chuckling a little. “In flying machines, with no defences shooting them down. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “There are lots of fables about the past,” Chiren said. “Stories about a race of giant lizards wiped out by a falling star, fish that grew legs and walked out of the water onto the land and turned into people. A worldwide flood that made some of them change their minds and go back to live in the oceans. The human imagination knows no bounds.”

  “While human reality knows nothing but bounds.” The woman picked up the bag and slung the strap crosswise. Chiren found she was intensely curious as to what was in it; whatever it was didn’t seem to be very heavy. She thought the woman was about to leave but she lingered, gazing at Chiren thoughtfully.

  “Is there something else?” Chiren asked her. “Or is the idea of actually leaving giving you second thoughts? Third thoughts?”

  “You’re the one who should have second thoughts,” the woman said.

  Chiren bristled again. Damn it, she had almost started to like this woman. “About what?”

  “I think you know,” the woman replied.

  “Tell me anyway…” What was her name? Chiren had to think for a second: Soledad.

  “Everything,” the woman was saying. “Your whole life, present and future.”

  Chiren gave a single bitter laugh. “I could say the same thing to you. You’re going off into God knows what for no special reason except to be far away from Zalem. Whereas my present is to do meaningful work I’m extremely good at for the sake of something better—my future.”