Driftmetal

by J. C. Staudt

  “Oh yeah?” he said, perking up. “What is it?”

  “I’m a techsoul,” I told him. “And I’d like to donate my body to science.”

  3

  The neurological pathways that connect my body to its augments are nothing short of miraculous. Don’t ask me why I was born with telerium-laced bones, skin the consistency of synthetic cloth, or bundles of polymer fibers for muscles. My veins are like fish tank tubing, my tendons and cartilage like hard rubber. Any given part of my body is twice as sturdy as a human’s. Yet somehow it all works. I think and breathe and eat and crap and sleep like a human. Only I’m not human. Not as far as humans are concerned.

  Even though I grew up the son of a mechanic, I’ve always felt like I’ve had an intimate knowledge of machinery in my blood. If something has moving parts, I can figure out how to fix it with the right tools. It’s just hard to fix your own arm when the job takes two hands. So I’d offered myself to the study of E. Chester Wheatley not because I needed his expertise, but because I needed his hardware and a pair of skilled hands.

  Techsouls are the unluckiest people in the world; we’re also the most plentiful, by far. I’ve undergone more surgeries than I can count; most of the later ones I performed on myself. I’ve tried dozens of mechanisms to change the functions of my body and serve as convenient little diversions from having to think about who or what I am. When your body is part machine, you can’t ignore technology. You can’t not think about improving yourself and staying relevant. You wonder if anyone would take you seriously if you decided to say ‘the heck with it’ and let yourself go, become an outdated model with rusty joints and toothless gears. Because the best thing about being human is never having to literally stretch yourself toward an ideal that says only the newest and shiniest tech is employable, only the latest and greatest is worth noticing. Primies are free from all that. They can lose weight or gain it, build muscle or pile on the fat, but that’s the extent of the decisions they have to make about their bodies. It’s possible for them to understand what it’s like to be me, but they’ll never know.

  Vilaris and Blaylocke approached as Chaz—née E. Chester Wheatley—was opening up my various compartments to investigate my insides. My wounds from the fall were smarting something awful. I could tell I’d taken at least one flecker shot to the lower back and a laser in the butt, but I’d get those tended to later.

  “You asked before why we decided to bring you into Pyras,” Vilaris said. “We don’t allow visitors often, but we need help.”

  I smirked. “I could’ve told you that.”

  “No, I mean we need your help.”

  “Sorry, I don’t do the ‘helping people’ thing.” I air-quoted the words, keeping my wrists together like I was making a shadow puppet, while Chaz held a bundle of polymer fibers aside and peered into my thigh.

  “This is unbelievable,” Chaz was saying. “The way the synthetic flesh and the augments are so seamlessly blended together. I never thought I’d get such a hands-on view of a techsoul’s body. The amalgamation of humanity and technology is astounding. This is going to change the course of my experiments for years to come. You have an array of neurosensors and twitch gyroelectrolyzers that are barely above detection, which I assume are intended for smoothing the interactions between the various brain-body-tech circuits. How does it all wire up, I wonder? How’s it all connected? Oops. Did that hurt? How do you feel?”

  “I feel close to either falling asleep or having an orgasm, depending on which one of those things you jab.” I also felt weird having another guy’s face six inches away from my crotch.

  “If I tell you why we brought you here, will you at least consider helping us?” asked Vilaris, annoying me.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “Unless there’s chips in it for me, in which case I’d be working for you, not helping you.”

  “We can probably pay you a little for your trouble,” Vilaris said.

  “Well why didn’t you say so? Or better yet, why didn’t you just use the phrase ‘work for us’ instead of ‘help us’?”

  “Because you don’t have a choice in the matter. We know you killed those miner thugs.”

  Chaz stopped fiddling with my leg. He shrank away, and I saw him gulp. “Killed?”

  “It’s not like it sounds, Chaz. They jumped me, and I—”

  “Why are you lying?” said Blaylocke. “First our gravstone buyer ends his contract with the city. Then we hear the Civvies’ chattering on the bluewave about so-and-so who’s wanted for murder and attempted larceny. Then to top it all off, the Civvies come down into the nearflow and risk having their boats dashed to pieces to find said murderer. They were looking for you, Muller. You told us yourself you weren’t far away from being the most wanted outlaw in the stream.”

  I gave Chaz a pleading look. “Chaz, I’m not a lunatic. You gotta believe me, I was minding my own business when—”

  “Tell me the truth,” Chaz said, shrugging out of his apparatus.

  Why do I have to be such a bigmouth? “Okay, I stole something,” I said, throwing up my bound hands. That made Chaz flinch. “I hid the haul on some floater and went to a tavern, planning to pick it up later in my boat. Gilfoyle and his goons found me first and said they’d kill me if I didn’t show them where it was. I did, but Gilfoyle decided he wanted me dead anyway. They put me on a beat-up old hovercell and sent me to the Churn to die. If Gilfoyle isn’t buying from you anymore, you should consider yourself lucky and find someone else to do business with. Someone who isn’t a lying sack of crap.”

  “What did you steal?” Blaylocke asked, as though he already knew.

  I hesitated. “Gravstone. A pretty big haul.”

  “And where do you think that gravstone came from?”

  It hit me, and I knew where this was going. “At the time, I thought it was from the Churn mines. It wasn’t though, was it? It was from Pyras.”

  Blaylocke shot me a look. “Do you know how we keep this old city so sparkling new? Why we’re so wealthy even though we’re humans? Because gravstone is our chief export. Every trade we make, every deal we strike, has to be done in secret. That’s how we keep Pyras under the radar. In the case of our gravstone, it’s by only dealing with one buyer. A buyer you tried to steal from. Who, after losing four of his men, a hovercell and a pair of hovertrucks, says it’s too dangerous around here. He’s packing up his operation and shipping off to friendlier nearflow, and he never paid a single chip for that entire truckload. That was almost half a year’s output. You just scared off the only person keeping Pyras funded.”

  I’d ruined the economy of an entire city, and they wanted to pay me to fix it. I had to hand it to myself.

  “We brought you back here because we want to give you the chance to make it right,” Blaylocke continued. “Now that you know how many innocent people depend on the exports from our ore veins, you must feel some compulsion to help.”

  If I had said I felt one iota of compulsion, I’d have been lying. They were the morons basing their livelihood on the sale of a single element. Just because it was the most valuable element in existence didn’t make it okay to put all their eggs in one basket. Besides, it’s not like I had known I was screwing them over.

  “So that’s what you wanted to pay me for? You were going to throw some arbitrary number of chips at me and say ‘Make it right’? ‘Fix what you didn’t know you broke’? What happens if I go out and tell the whole world about you instead?”

  “Good luck finding us again, first of all,” said Vilaris, running a hand through his long oily locks.

  “And second of all,” said Blaylocke, “that’s going to be hard for you to do with the device Chester is about to install, which is the reason we brought you down here to the Department of Innovation.”

  “I’m doing what, now?” Chaz was so gullible and easygoing, I’d started to like the guy.

  “Sorry for the short notice, Chester,” Vilaris said.

  “The old ‘Do what we s
ay, or we’ll kill you’ routine, huh?” I said. “I expected better from you guys.” I’ve always liked making people think I’m one step ahead of them. I also like being a wiseacre, so… two birds with one stone, there.

  “Not quite,” said Blaylocke. “We prefer to reward rather than punish. The device lets us keep tabs on you.”

  “A bluewave beacon? No thanks.”

  “It’s not on the bluewave. It’s a sub-signal. We’re the only ones who can trace it. The device will let us listen in on everything you’re saying. If we get wind of you doing anything that could jeopardize your task, you’ll get a shock just like the ones from the magnetic cuffs and the cracklefields on our bikes. Keep it up, and we’ll come find you.”

  “That’s your idea of a reward?”

  “The not-killing-you part was the reward.”

  “So I have no choice in the matter. You’re forcing me to do this.”

  Blaylocke shrugged. “We were hoping it wouldn’t come to that. We thought you’d want to help.”

  “Surprise, buttholes. I’m not a humanitarian. I don’t work for free. How do you expect me to do this, anyway? Why don’t you just do it yourselves?”

  “We will do it ourselves, if you fail. But even as a wanted man, a techsoul can get around in the stream easier than a human could. You said you’re an outlaw. Don’t outlaws know how to sell things under the radar? When you stole all that gravstone, did you plan on selling it?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “To one person?”

  I looked at him like I thought he was dumb. Wasn’t hard, since I did. “Highly unlikely that I could’ve found one person who could afford all that gravstone. Probably would’ve had to find a dozen.”

  “So all you have to do is pretend you have enough gravstone to sell to a dozen people. Then find us those people.”

  “That could take months, if I’m lucky. I’d need a boat to haul it in, and a crew to protect it.”

  “As human as we may be, we do have brains,” Vilaris said. “We’re not gonna give you the gravstone in advance. That’s how Gilfoyle burned us. You find the customers, we ship the goods.”

  “With the kinds of people I tend to deal with, asking them to take delivery after payment is as good as spitting in their faces,” I said.

  “There is one other option,” said Blaylocke.

  I waited.

  “You could convince Mr. Gilfoyle to pay us back.”

  I laughed out loud. “The guy keeps a whole crew of thugs on retainer. If you think I’m ever getting within a mile of him by myself, you’re delusional.”

  I wanted that medallion—the one I’d tried to trade away from Gilfoyle for his own truckful of gravstone. But I wasn’t stupid enough to go near him again.

  “What if you weren’t by yourself?” Vilaris said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, leveling my gaze at him.

  “Blaylocke and I will come with you. There isn’t time to build a streamboat, but we can charter an airship from the city.”

  Blaylocke disagreed. “This is his problem, Clint. Let him figure it out.”

  “A crew of humans?” I said. “Please. Spare me the fairy tales. If anyone gets wind of me riding around with a bunch of primies, we’ll all be dead before dinner.”

  “You’re forgetting what kind of primies you’ll be riding around with,” Vilaris said.

  “The kind with cracklefields and magnetic cuffs?” I said. “Ooh. The techsouls will be so scared, they’ll forget to bring their skin augurs.”

  “You think we don’t know how dangerous it is for us up there? That’s why we want you to go,” Blaylocke said.

  “Yet you won’t give me gravstone, money, a boat, or a half-decent crew. You’d better get ready to do a whole lot of crackling, because that’s the only way you’re getting me to move a muscle for your cause.”

  Vilaris gave a long sigh. “An airship and a crew of primies is the best we can do.”

  “Fine, but only if we switch from the airship to a streamboat once we get up there. I want to hire a few techsouls of my own choosing to supplement our crew. And I want Chaz to come. I’m gonna need a full kit and I’m gonna need it to be in working order.”

  Vilaris was too eager to wait for Chaz’s response. “Sure, we can do all of it. And Chaz comes too.”

  “Deal,” I said, quicker than quick. “Now will you take off these cuffs? I’m getting a headache from all the crackling.”

  Vilaris gestured, and Blaylocke obliged.

  Ladies and gents, I thought, rubbing my abraded wrists, that’s how you turn incarceration into salvation.

  “Let’s get moving,” said Vilaris. “We’ve got lots to do and too little time to do it in.”

  “Chester, you’d better take the tool in for repairs,” Blaylocke joked.

  I snatched Blaylocke by the collar and lifted him, legs dangling. I could smell his breath, rotten from mouth-breathing and vegetable soup. “Don’t ever call me a tool again.”

  I let him down, poked a finger into his face. “I will haunt your nightmares.”

  Vilaris had that look squirrels get before they decide to cross the street. I’d seen squirrels on Roathea, a floater that boasted both the largest city and one of the largest forested areas in the world.

  “Get that crackler installed first thing, Chester,” Vilaris said. “Will you be okay if we leave?”

  I could tell Chaz was more afraid of me now than ever, but he nodded and stayed with me in the warehouse as the two City Watchmen left to find us a flight into the stream.

  “I’m afraid my experience installing techsoul modifications is limited,” Chaz said.

  “That’s okay, Chaz.” He only flinched a little when I put a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect someone in a city full of primies to know how techsouls work. Fortunately for you, I know a lot about how I work. I have all the necessary ports and terminals. We just have to build some tech and make it fit.”

  Chaz gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Don’t worry, pal,” I said. “I don’t fly off the handle like that all the time. We can be buds without you worrying that I’m gonna flip out on you, right?”

  “Sure,” Chaz said.

  I didn’t believe him.

  It took us a few days to gather all the junk we needed to start building. Before we’d so much as lit our first blowtorch in the effort, Vilaris and Blaylocke were already antsy to get going. Lots of pressure from the big guys, they said. A council of three ruled Pyras; two primies, and one techsoul who fancied himself a sort of primie-rights activist, allowed in the city only because he was celibate and he’d sworn off mods of any kind. They’d actually made him swear never to augment himself, so his living in Pyras was no temporary whim. All this and more I learned from Chaz, who had started to open up to me with a little goading and my repeated assurances that while I was no law-lover, I wasn’t a psycho axe murderer either.

  “Any chance I could meet this guy?” I asked Chaz one day while we were looking over a set of schematics I’d drawn up for the new-and-improved hydraulic legs I wanted.

  “Councilor Yingler? He’s a bit on the busy side, as I understand it. And he’s forbidden to enter the Department of Innovation due to his Vow of Remaining.”

  “So I’ll go see him in the council chamber. Where’s that?”

  Chaz didn’t say anything for a while.

  “Somewhere in the building, huh…”

  He pursed his lips. “I shouldn’t say. Blaylocke told me—”

  “Blaylocke spews so much hot air he could get a second job as a furnace. Come on, Chaz, buddy. Introduce me.”

  “Before we leave the city, maybe,” was all he said before he changed the subject.

  An escort from the City Watch brought me home every night to the tiny apartment they’d made up for me. Another complement of guards stood outside my door all night, and a third brought me back to Kingsholme every morning. The city didn’t like the idea of playing host to another
techsoul any more than I liked being trapped there. They were serious about making sure I didn’t find a way to seduce some primie woman and breed my way into their perfectly preserved gene pool. I got dirty looks whenever I went out in the streets, so I focused on designing a killer set of tech and spent all the time I could in the workshop with Chaz. It felt like imprisonment, but it sure beat rotting in some Regency prison.

  My new kit wasn’t the collection of sought-after tech I’d lost to Gilfoyle and his men, but when Chaz and I were done tinkering, I was satisfied. I felt confident again too, something I hadn’t felt since the night they took it all away. And I was heavy, unused to being weighed down with so many extra components. If I’d wanted to shoulder a fuel tank the size of a cow, Chaz said, he could turn my feet into a pair of hover engines. Or if I wanted a turbine for a hat, he could make me a man-sized airplane. He had the idea of turning my fingertips into a swiss army knife, each one a different tool, and the one about putting driftmetal in my calves and rigging up a set of gravstone clinkers. He insisted that I install a few weapon mods until I told him any moron knows you never store explosives inside your body. If there’s one thing a techsoul knows, it’s how to exploit the tender spots on another techsoul. So I said ‘no thanks’ to all those things, but yes to a whole slew of others that I was planning to test before we got into the thick of things. As it turned out, I never got the chance.

  On departure day, a sparse crowd had already gathered in the city square by the time we arrived to find a small airship waiting to bear us aloft. An envelope of thick canvas skin, the sausage-shaped gasbag was an unremarkable beige color. Rigging lines attached it to the boat beneath, an aerodynamic wooden craft as slender and graceful as an old seafaring vessel. Rotating prop engines were mounted to its sides, and it had a windowed command bridge at the fore.