by Caldon Mull
“I’ll get busy on it.” she dropped out of the call.
“What do I do?” Esteban finished the water and tossed the bottle into the recycle bin.
“Nothing different, your best cover is that you are doing what you are doing. You know this place well, especially the off-grid places. Where can a clock go to be invisible?”
“When it’s just a doll.” Esteban mused, “I might know some places… how bad is this?”
“Not too bad. Whatever we’ve done has triggered something, but it doesn’t look like this is a serious alert. I’m going to have to consider a good cover story. I’ll leave the hotel now, you go somewhere in about twenty minutes and I’ll just follow you there.”
“Sure thing.” Esteban tugged on his other boot as the adjoining door clicked locked and the dial spun to when they had first arrived. As far as the Hotel-mind was concerned the room had not been used as an ‘adjoining room’ while they had been here.
“It’s done. I’ve just rolled out the screens on the unused bed and plugged it in.” The Doctor waited in the corridor outside as Esteban left his room.
“Have you ever been to the workshops?” Esteban grinned down at the Doctor. “Considering your trade, have you ever wondered where the cyberware is made… also, I feel like some ice-cream.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to show me.” She smiled back. “Lead on.”
Esteban sauntered through the levels with the Doctor beside him. It was early enough that there wasn’t a throng to push past, and late enough that food vendors had the first of their wares ready. Esteban chunked his way past them, hash browns and strips of rabbit and goat meat, synth-proteins and pseudo-corn burritos, roasted ground nuts, a sugared drink and finally, ice cream. “Don’t you eat anything?” Esteban licked his fingers as he scooped the last of the milky liquid from the small cup.
“I eat a lot.” The Doctor shrugged as the loitered near the small plaza where the stall was. “Just not so much when I’m on contract. Is that real ice-cream?”
“Yes, it is. I don’t know where they get the dairy... or what type of dairy it is.” Esteban shrugged, “It’s the only place on Mars that I’ve ever found that does proper ice cream.”
“Pele is still shadowing us.” The Doctor looked up at Esteban and said quietly, “Where will you take him?”
“How can you tell? I haven’t seen him at all.” Esteban blinked in surprise.
“I have my means. Trust me, he’s here.” she smiled.
“I’m going to the foundries, es mi tochapelotas.” Esteban frowned in annoyance. Fine then, let her keep her secrets. “They’re below Cartagena itself and set into the bedrock. It’s where the furnaces vent all the gasses from the industry to thicken the atmosphere and heat this section of Mars.
We have boutique rock-carved warehouses and assemblies, smelters and factories down there. It’s a pretty rough place, it’s where a lot of the MF3-Mumbai rescues were housed after it fell and they run gangs down there. It’s pretty rough if you’re not a local but Ramon has a lot of street-cred, so that should extend to us.”
“You think the gangs would provide running cover for us?” The Doctor frowned, “That’s pretty smart of you.”
“I thought so. I’m not just a stud, you know.” Esteban grinned. “Come on, let’s get a pod. It’s still quite a way.”
Esteban wasn’t exaggerating. The pod sped down the spindle and below the mountings and then some distance horizontally until finally stopping at a chamber where they disembarked.
The tunnel itself was several meters in diameter, and Esteban had more than enough space to move around. “We’re going to meet Jose, he’s the one who fitted my Pondsmith, way back when. He’s a big-time mech, one of Cartagena’s finest.
“He exports off world and keeps a warehouse of dolls to ship to the other Martian Fleet cities. So there are dolls moving in and out all the time. He also uploads soft-personas into them when the demand for clocks pick up, so he is one of the few places where you can get all sorts together. The best place I can think of to hide Pele.”
“As I said, smart.” she nodded. “Hide in plain sight.”
Esteban wove down several branches of the tunnel, dodging wheeled automatons going about there business and work-groups of mechanics and drivers. Almost all of them were slighter and darker than the up-city people the Doctor had seen so far, and almost entirely male.
“Jose is just down here.” Esteban waited for an ore-cart to roll past, “He’s not the most social of anyone I’ve ever met, but you can trust him.” Esteban blinked away a few thoughts, “Well... if he warms up to you, and there’s profit in it... then maybe you can trust him.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” she grinned, “As it happens I am in the market for a discrete type of mech, both personally and professionally.”
“Then you’ll be just fine.” Esteban fidgeted, “You should be.”
The tunnel forked, and at the wedge of the crossroads was a mirrored glass-fronted office that Esteban stopped at. He buzzed at a doorbell, and followed the Doctor inside as it slid open. A coarse-featured bear of a man waited behind the counter, attachments from his arms zipping over a circuitry component. “Just a minute, please.”
“No hurry.” Esteban watched patiently as the slender tools retracted back into the forearm pods and the large hands clicked back into the wrist sockets once the housings closed. The optics mask lifted from his face and he blinked in recognition.
“Esteban Perez, the aquanaut.” Jose’s hoarse voice grunted, “What’s up?”
“Hola, ese.” Esteban grinned his best smile. “I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing and bring a friend with to show her.”
“You’re not here about any warranty, or something?” Jose squinted at the pair. “The Mark 3’s are good for fifty years, guaranteed.”
“Still so suspicious, you want to look me over for old time’s sake. See how it’s hanging?” Esteban worked on his most appealing expression.
“Well, you look good. I see you on the MCN every day.” Jose shrugged, “Where you get the cock-meat, though? I didn’t do that.”
“MCN put it on when I signed with them. They said the seam-work was quality, but I always thought one day to come and check with you. Not for gratis... of course.” Esteban added hastily, “Just to make sure this work matched your standards.”
“Did they enhance or replace?” Jose grunted as he doffed the optic assembly and rubbed his scalp with his flesh-hand.
“Enhance and sculpt.” Esteban smiled again, “It’s still me, somewhere.”
“Who’s this?” Jose seemed to relax slightly.
“She’s a friend, a Doctor and a med-mech from Cadiz, down by Hellas. We were travelling together for a contract when… you know, the weather.” Esteban gestured.
“Esteban thought to bring me along on his trip down memory lane.” the Doctor nodded at Jose, “The closest I come to the cyberware at the Clinic is pulling them out of their boxes from a shelf. I need to shop around for them and for myself for more... specialized clients.”
“Ah, you never been to a foundry?” Jose nodded, catching the gist.
“No, never. My first time.” she shook her head.
“There are rumors in Cadiz that we shave them on the price in Cartagena.” Esteban interjected smoothly, “So I say to her don’t worry about the supply, I’ll show you my connection’s warehouse. Your up-and-coming enterprises in Cadiz, sure… they got nothing, they might dip you.
“ Jose is my guy and has been doing this for so long, he’s got the stock. Maybe even some retro chrome Earth curios... from before the Fleet.”
The Doctor looked at Esteban quizzically, but picked up smoothly, “In Cadiz they say Cartagena has to make every piece on order from scratch, for the amount you charge them.”
“Rubbish!” Jose flushed, “They’re double-dipping you. I’ve got the supply, I promise. “Come, I’ll show you.”
Esteban fixed an expressio
n on his face and veeped Pele on a thin-client channel “We’re here, walk down the corridor, strip down like a doll.”
“What?” Pele’s communication sounded indignant.
Esteban sighed mentally, “Strip your clothes off look like a doll, you’ll see your chance to hide. You’ll see.”
Jose tapped on a console. “It’s not only for Esteban’s Mark 3. My contract for Cartagena was for five full-body replacement casings for Pondsmiths. The aquanaut was never a popular model. There’s still two waiting for allocation after twenty years. I don’t stock too much of what MCN did to his junk either, but I do keep at least one line of my streamlined model of the UroQt. That seems to be the take-away product from all the MCN publicity. I move at least four of the recreational sculpt of those a month in the Fleet markets.” Jose tapped on his smart-fabric console, “Just give me a few seconds to set the warehouse lights and you can see for yourself. Most of the work down here is on drone schedules so it’s not what you could call ‘meat-friendly’.”
“Why would that be your lead product? I don’t get it.” She snorted.
Jose’s craggy face split into a grin. “I know, right? I designed the Quart for sub-dermal perspiration and heat transfer in Industrial application. If you have a Mark 3 casing for sealed systems, you have to have a well for fluid transfer. But it turns out every other chaol tops up their kit with the recreational sculpt these days especially if they plan to do off-planet work.”
“So I’m an actual Doctor, but I’m not up to date on the gravity connection.” The Doctor shrugged, “Are you saying there is an actual design condition?”
“Yes. The fluid retention and buildup in the Belt and the Big Dark without the proper gravity lead to hyponatremia, so the last couple years I’ve moved a lot of the model.
“ I didn’t call it the ‘Doctor Pint’, it would dilute the product brand, but now I have every other joyboy, collarboy or chromer wanting to boost their goo with the UroQt-lite in case they contract up there.” Jose pointed to the roof.
“Considering the symptoms of hyponatremia, it suddenly makes sense to be able to expel large volumes of fluid. You stay sharper and live longer up there. I never made the connection before.” She mused.
“I only kept the Quart model for the full casings, dealing with serious temperature and pressure extremes.” Jose checked his console again, “Ese, remind me if your organ storage is with me.”
“No Jose. They’re in a family freezer in the Body Bank.” Esteban dropped his USSD channel and blinked as he caught up.
“Just as well, the bonelace and marrow stacks leaves genetic markers, unlike the wetware and nanoware modifications, they’re inheritable. A Family freezer is safer that way. If OutSystems got control of those glands, they could clone up three meter knockoffs of you any time they wanted; brew an army of license rip-offs.”
“I thought of that. Truth is the locker is pretty full already, some skin and a pair of gonads wasn’t too much to add and we pay for the volume, not the weight. Dad’s in there.” Esteban sighed inwardly, Jose didn’t appear to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.
“Here we are,” The door clicked and Jose rolled it open, “My stock room.” Racked up in front of them was inert doll after doll in storage frames extending to the back of a seriously big room.
The Doctor whistled quietly under her breath. “It seems at Partridge, Muckagee and da Silva we’re getting played by our current suppliers, as you say double-dipped.”
“You’re with that crowd? Word is your pricing suffers from all your Cadiz half-inchers, and you mostly deal with collarboys.”
“Ese! Be nice.” Esteban groaned, “The Doctor is doing me a favor… hopefully you as well.”
“Maybe, Cadiz tech is good but fickle with fashion changes. If you want good honest reliable tech, then Esteban here is my best work. Quality stuff.”
“I’m doing his maintenance now, I agree.” She nodded. “Jose, I’ll send you a pro-forma and a stock request. Let’s see where this leads, you already trump our current suppliers in guarantees, and if we move our procurement upstream we can control our costs as well. Thank you, Esteban for making this happen.”
Esteban beamed a quick Instant Message to Pele, “Now, go now.” While Jose and the Doctor chatted, a quick movement at the doorway and down a corridor of stacking crates was the only sign of the clock that he had seen since the hotel. Esteban felt some relief, so far his plan was working. “Ese, why do you store them as dolls like this?”
“Every piece of my work is complete. If I have to ship a piece, I can keep my inventory updated quickly. Flesh-tech and Cyber-tech need to be complete. There’s no reason to do otherwise if you’re just spitting out parts.” Jose shrugged as they moved back towards the tunnel, “With the dolls, all I have to do is load a cache and they can deliver themselves. Clocks are harder to work with because once they’re embedded with softpersona they have to be powered and maintained. De-commissioning and re-commissioning clocks is a lot of work.”
Pele tight-beamed Esteban, I’m in a frame. I have power and links and I’m going dark. It worked.
“That sounds more like art, Jose,” the Doctor smiled, “and not just tech anymore. There is one last thing I want to run past you, but it’s a bit delicate to bring up.”
Jose shrugged as he powered down the lights of the warehouse and sealed it, “You can always ask me. If I trust someone, I trust someone. It’s what I tell myself that matters.”
“It’s about a SEAT-09, Mark 3.” She looked over at Esteban, “Can you restock remotes for that model?”
“I’ve never heard of one of those.” Esteban shrugged.
“That’s a rare and specialized military-hive model.” Jose scrunched his face, “Those are very difficult to match, and it depends on the specification of the remote. I can’t equip the dolls with gunsmith tech, but I can match clock-control modules and sculpt to specification. That’s about as far as I can go with that. Once the remote is docked with the carrier, I know a gunsmith who can complete any job for the rest of it. If your client is worried about discretion, I can vouch for the gunsmith.”
“That should be enough to go on.” The Doctor nodded, “I’ll consult and get back to you.”
Esteban checked his sleeve for the time. “You want to look at my junk now?”
Jose nodded, “Sure bring it into my consulting room. Strip down, let’s see it.”
Esteban sat in the diagnostic chair while the doctor browsed through old news foils and special interest scans, his ankles held high with straps. Even though he was used to examinations, he still felt exposed as Jose ran through his diagnostic tools, especially over the smooth expanse where his scrotum used to be.
“This is quality work from what I can see. They’ve matched the sub-dermal weave seamlessly to the same specification. I couldn’t do it better. Have you noticed any any stress on tumescence?” Jose sat back and disengaged his optics.
“Nope, It gets harder, not bigger. The casing is the determinate. The meat inside conforms to the weave, and it works with the UroQt as a heat transfer vane for high-temperature environments. It was the best I could do within the range of the contract.”
“That makes sense. You were always very practical around your conversion.” Jose’s tools slipped back into their housing with a click and he flexed his fingers absently. “Good solid work and well to specification for the Pondsmith. I’d say you’ve got another thirty years on your guarantee before you start to risk legacy wear-and-tear, but by then we should be in the Mark-4 or Mark-5 product range so you should have a whole new range of choice.”
“Good. I just had to make sure.” Esteban dropped the lifts and stepped out of the chair.
“I’ve got to get back to the aerators for the homesteads. The storm looks like it’s almost over so I should get on with it. Will you let yourself out?” Jose nodded to the Doctor and closed the door behind him.
Esteban stepped into his suit as the Doctor hovered by
the door “Let’s get back to the hotel. The lunch carvery is almost ready.”
They threaded through the tunnels before she spoke again: “Esteban, you actually amaze me. Just stop here for a moment. Seriously, stop walking.” The Doctor pushed him back against the rock face and looked around.
“How so?” The corridor was suspiciously quiet and Esteban felt a growing sense of unease.
The Doctor looked puzzled… “You are very… human.” The Pondsmith upgrade is difficult, one of the most difficult there is. But you’ve done it. You have to endure the pain of upgrading your size, complications with your bone marrow, complete skin transplant, the sealed systems and all that it entails… and yet I get the sense of a complete person. All the psychological baggage that goes with that, you don’t seem to have. How do you do that?”
Esteban lowered his voice to match her tone, “When you dance, you have to get the feel of the movement before you begin. You have to visualize that outcome. Project a perfect execution while you are pushing yourself to match the execution, the ideal you have presented to yourself… you might beat yourself up if there are variations… but you know what your projection is… and you know what your execution is. I did that with the Pondsmith.”
She scrolled images on her smart-sleeve, apparently distracted from the conversation, “But other people only see your execution?”
“Yes. I do not think I will ever dance the Mapalé again, exactly like that. It was with Dona Senora that it was perfect. That moment will stand in my life, I will never have chance to return there.”
The Doctor looked up at him, Esteban noticed that her eyes had changed color, “Nothing will ever compare? Everything after that is just imitation of perfection?”
Esteban’s sense of unease ramped up a notch, “Quite correct. I will never have the same dance partner, I will never have the same sense of urgency and improvisation, I will never be as young or as old as that very moment. It was unique, and to pretend this is not so would be to rob that moment of its importance. What’s wrong?”