Bear Head

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “I’m still working on it, Jimmy. And I don’t want to have to take you over. As I said, it’s entirely against my deeply-held principles. So just tell her, why don’t you? She’s obviously someone in authority. Maybe she can help me.”

  Whatever the hell’s in my face when I turn it on Sugar, she actually flinches back a bit. “She wants,” I say quietly, “to talk to Bees.” I say it very carefully, so you can hear the upper case ‘B’.

  Sugar doesn’t pale at that, but then we none of us can, not with our lead-coloured skin tone. At last she nods, to herself, not to me. “I ain’t telling you who sent this package over, Jimbles, you know that. But it was from… an odd source. One I’ve dealt with before, and the money checks out, but still…” She’s troubled, and the two bears catch that off her and shuffle uncomfortably. “This voice of yours, it can get outside your head, hold a conversation?”

  “If she provides some manner of voice synthesiser I’m sure I can find a way,” Honey tells me, and I relay that like I’m only the messenger.

  “Maybe later,” Sugar says, still musing. “Jimbles, old son, I’m going to pop you somewhere safe and off-grid while I work out just what the fuck is going on with this deal. You hungry, thirsty? Sure you are. And I’m sure someone round here’s got a strip of Stringer. You’re just gonna sit tight while I see what’s what. You and this voice in your head.”

  “So you believe me?”

  “Don’t rightly know what I believe,” she says, mostly to herself, but she’s got a thoughtful look on her face I’ve seen before and it gives me a sinking feeling. It’s a look that says she reckons she can make a fat profit off this, and this, right now, means me.

  *

  “Perhaps,” Honey says to me, “we can start afresh. I appreciate this must be very distressing for you. We have rather got off on the wrong foot.”

  “Stop talking to me,” I tell her, reasonably.

  “Jimmy, believe me you wouldn’t have been my first choice, but neither of us got to choose. I do have an important mission to carry out here on Mars, though—”

  “Which you don’t know what is.”

  “It’s coming back to me, piece by piece. Although right now I am more engaged with trying to familiarise myself with this construction project and how it works. I was only peripherally interested in it back on Earth.”

  “You’re not doing shit,” I point out. “Sugar’s got this place jammed three ways from Sunday.” We are, in fact, inside one of the big containers, which Sugar apparently already had fitted out like a little hotel room. It’s four times the size of my nook and there’s a place to sleep and a place to piss and I’ve got a selection of ration bars and a line of clean water. No media, though, no channels out, utterly cut off. Wonder what she needs this little love nest for.

  “Well, she thinks she has,” Honey says, with that smug tone that’s really getting on my nerves about now. “I’ve been able to download quite a lot of non-classified information about the Hellas Planitia project and its workforce. About you, Jimmy.”

  “You don’t know jack about me.”

  “But I do, and you’re quite the work of engineering,” she says, like I should be grateful she’s taking an interest. “I knew the Building Mars Workforce project was the most extensive human bioengineering ever – World Senate only allowed it because you’d all be off-planet, otherwise you break about a hundred different bans on human experimentation. And I was interested mostly because of the lab that did your neurotech, your headware, but your biomod specs are very impressive.” As though I’m her pony that’s come best in show. “You can actually go outside the complex unsuited?”

  “How’d you expect we get anything done, else?” I ask her. I mean, how can she not know these things? Except, I guess, people back on Earth don’t really give a shit about us, only about the city we’re building for them. “I mean, not out there forever, and only within the crater where the atmosphere’s denser. Can’t just go frolic on the surface of Mars. And even under the canopy the air’s not so thick all over, still pushing out from the centre. Got to wear suits out at the edges still.”

  “Even with all of that, Jimmy, you can walk around on some part of Mars without protective equipment. On another world, Jimmy.”

  “Fish,” I tell her, and she’s obviously completely baffled, and that’s my ration of fun for the day so I don’t elaborate. Was a guy at the lab, one of the biotech boys who worked on us, was really into his fish. “We’re all fish,” he used to say to me. “Everything with a spine’s a fish.” And there’s a lot of fish in the way they remade us. Antifreeze blood from fish, variable pressure tissues from fish, more efficient oxygen take-up from fish. Because, the way he said it, there’s crap-all O2 in water compared to air, so fish are super-good at sieving it out, and now so are my lungs. You could drop me in the deep ocean back home, I’d be just fine.

  “What surprises me is that you volunteered for the changes, given the way most people are about biotech mods,” she muses.

  “Money was good,” I say shortly. There’s a whole history there, of the way Earth has gone to shit. Cities flooded, breadbaskets gone barren, seas gone toxic. Hell City is worth the investment because a lot of rich people are thinking maybe they need somewhere to live that hasn’t been shat on for the last couple of centuries. And for the programme they were only taking people without families, without serious ties to Earth; wasn’t like I had anything to stick around for. “It’s a living, right. And they’ll change us back after.”

  “Will they?”

  “It’s in the contract.”

  “Ah, well then.” And she’s needling me because I wouldn’t talk about the fish. “There was an idea back home when they were designing you,” Honey says thoughtfully, “that they’d just grow purpose-built clone bodies and then install personality uploads into the shells. So you’d all believe you were real people, but you’d be no more than copies, like me.”

  I go cold all over. “Listen, lady—”

  “It didn’t happen,” she goes on implacably, and I know she knows just how much she just rattled me, getting her own ration of fun however she can. “There were worries about long-term stability. More expensive to take real people and give them extensive modifications, but a better long-term investment. After all, this city won’t get built in a day. I was just searching around for a reason you’ve got such extensive headware, Jimmy. I mean, you don’t need all this space. You’re not using it. You can literally fit a whole other person in here because, look, here I am.”

  “Lucky fucking me,” I tell her.

  I think I’ve finally grouched enough to make her go sulk in some over-engineered corner of my head, because she shuts up for a bit then. I pop another tab of Stringer but it isn’t really cutting through all the misery, and when I go to take a second right on its heels Honey tells me that I’m in danger of exceeding the safe dosage and she’ll pour my stash down the chemical crapper if I get stupid with the body we’re both sharing. I cannot, seriously, I cannot tell you how much I hate her right then. I mean it’s one thing to have a voice in your head and another to lose control of your entire body, but to be so goddamn judge-y with it?

  “Perhaps I can take your mind off your cravings,” she suggests, after a beat. “Can you see this?”

  Whatever it is, I can’t; nor can I when she says, “This?” or even the much-awaited sequel, “How about this, then?” and the whole shebang’s shaping up to be the world’s worst game of blind man’s goddamn charades when suddenly I do actually start seeing things. Not sure it’s any better, if you ask me, but something’s sort of overlaid across the interior of the container; a grainy, fuzzy image of another room. I experiment and find it’s only in my left eye, and it looks like some of Sugar’s people moving boxes about; not exactly the most entertaining piece of footage in the history of telemedia.

  “I’ve established a link to their local loop here, their cameras,” Honey tells me, as though she should win an award for te
chnical innovation. “I’m feeding it into the visual centres of your brain. Tell me if it’s upside down or anything.”

  “You’re doing what to my brain?”

  “Oh do calm down. It’s all in the architecture. You were set up for this. Like I say, they fit you people out with far more…” And she trails off thoughtfully. “Braintree gave you the bells and whistles treatment, sure enough. And… I think it’s all of you, the whole BM Workforce crew. They really must have overbudgeted, unless…” More silent consideration, like a pressure behind my eyes. “So let’s see what we can…”

  The view changes, making me stagger with vertigo for a moment. Overlaid across my left field of vision I see the interior of another container, next is the corridor outside Storage Nineteen, then Sugar’s own throne room where the woman herself is entertaining a new visitor. And there the channel-hopping stops and for once Honey and I are on the same page because Sugar’s chatting with Rufus.

  The big dog still has his gun, and Murder and Marmalade’re standing either side of the throne, not right in his face but not exactly keeping their distance. Even through the terrible image quality, dog and bears are all definitely on a knife-edge. Sugar’s doing her best relaxed act, though, one leg thrown over the arm of her chair, doing her little innocent pixie for the sheriff.

  “Your clowns attacked me just as I was making the collar, Sugar,” Old Doggo’s voice comes to me through my radio implant. “What, I’m supposed to believe that was a coincidence?”

  “Sheriff, you show up unannounced at Mall’s, I’m amazed everyone there didn’t assume you were after them. I mean, I thought we had a system, you know, the light and the dark.”

  “There’s no system,” Rufus growls. “There’s maybe a little tolerance because I can’t exactly arrest half the work crews for all the shit they do for crooks like you.”

  Murder and Marmalade hunch forward a bit at the way he’s talking to their boss, and I got to admire Rufus’s nerve because each of them’s way bigger than him, and Murder’s got the rivet gun.

  “The system works,” Sugar says. “Like I always say, people need an outlet. You can either have one you got diplomatic relations with, or some other one you don’t know where it is, getting up to shit you can’t ever control and screwing you over when you least want it, Sheriff. I reckon you’re better off with the first. Not like our activities end up flicking your ballsack too often, now, is it? We’re practically law-abiding citizens hereabouts.”

  “Jimmy Marten.” And hearing your name snarled out of the jaws of an angry dog-form is nobody’s happy place.

  “Ain’t got him. I’ll tell the gang to keep an open eye.”

  Now I can tell she isn’t really fooling Rufus – either she has me or she’s already sold me on, is his assessment. Sugar can tell the same thing and Rufus knows it, and yet he doesn’t call her on it, not straight out. I hadn’t realised just how normalised the way we live our lives is, but there really is a system. Rufus doesn’t want open war with the criminal element, and they don’t want it with him and Admin and the Bad News Bears. You make a big enough stink, I guess, and you end up getting handed over by your own people just ’cos it’s easier that way. Or, at least, some scapegoat does. Except that nobody’ll be scapegoating for me.

  So Sheriff Rufus thinks for a moment and then cocks his head, one ear up like a quizzical eyebrow. “You do that,” he says slowly. “And while you’re putting the word out, you say that Admin is very keen to get back something that little Jimmy got hold of. Something off limits, Sugar. Something important enough to important enough people that, should you have it and not come clean, no system will protect you from my wrath, you got that?” And when Murder and Marmalade growl at him, he bares his yellow fangs right back at them. “You want to throw down now, I will have you in my quarters as rugs, girls. I am not messing around on this one.”

  I hold my goddamn breath, is what I do, but what actually happens is that the two bears shuffle and uff a bit, but back down. Rufus is more dog than they feel like dealing with right now. He turns his gaze back to Sugar, still defiantly trying to look casual.

  “On the other hand,” he says, voice all syrup and sweetness, “if it happened that you did chance across Jimmy Marten and pass him on to the relevant authorities, then you might find that a sizeable donation finds its way to your war chest over here. And maybe a few more blind eyes turned than you are used to. This is important, Sugar. You’re a smart woman. You do the math.” And he turns and stalks off, leaving Sugar with a very thoughtful look on her face.

  *

  When they come to get me, soon after that, I know exactly how it’ll go. The threats, the yappy dog act in there, that might have worked, might not’ve. Sugar has her face to keep up before her own people and before the other bit-part crooks who run Hell City’s makeshift black market scene. Give in too easy and you’re everyone’s bitch. But offer a big stack of scrip, or even Earthside cash, and suddenly it’s gone from knuckling under to a shrewd business decision. The moment Rufus sweetened the pot, I knew I was as good as sold.

  Still, no point trying to run from Murder and Marmalade here inside Sugar’s own domain, because if nothing else a bear can generally outpace a human, especially on all fours for extra traction and the way a bear body just seems to work better than human for the Martian biomods. If they hadn’t been so expensive to make and ship over, I swear they wouldn’t have had us humans here at all.

  Not exactly my first choice, then, but I’m prepared to face my fate with dignity when they take me back before Sugar. She’s not doing casual any more, I see, leaning forwards with her pointy elfin chin on her hands, a woman making a difficult but probably foregone decision.

  “How’s the voices, Jimbles?” she asks me.

  “A pain in the goddamn ass, is what.” Why not a free and frank exchange of views, given I’m stiffed here? “Look, just take it out. Pack it off to Rufus on its own. You don’t need me. He don’t need me. I’d just be in the way.”

  “Jimmy—” Honey says warningly, and of course I’ve just spilled the beans on our eavesdropping, but sue me, what precisely was I gaining by keeping the side up?

  “Well ‘just in the way’ is what they’ll put on your grave, Jimbles,” Sugar says lazily. “But I know damn well that you couldn’t hack through to see who I was talking to, so I guess maybe you have a little devil on your shoulder after all. You there, Honey two-point-zero? You linking in?”

  “I have located your synthesiser, yes.” The voice that comes from a box near Sugar’s throne isn’t much like the one I hear in my head, but I know it from the rhythm of the words. “I appreciate that you have been offered a substantial incentive to hand Mr Marten and myself over to the authorities, Ms Sugatsu, but I would ask—”

  Sugar makes a gesture and the artificial voice cuts off. See how you like it, I think with a stab of mean pleasure.

  “Wordy bint, ain’t she?” Sugar observes. I agree wholeheartedly, but when I try to plead my own case again she shuts me up with a sharp gesture and says, “So I have an offer on the table for you, Jimbles. More than your rat’s ass life could ever be worth, frankly. But I didn’t make a go of this business by measuring once and cutting twice. So I’m going to hear from another bidder first, just to see what’s in it for me. And you, Honey, are going to dance for me as and when I say, and I will kill the synth if I think you’re getting mouthy, you understand? Tell Jimbles here that you and I have an understanding.”

  Honey sighs disgustedly in my ear. “You may as well agree to her demands on my behalf.”

  “Yes,” I say. “You could just say ‘yes’. Not the whole goddamn dictionary.” But I indicate to Sugar that all’s agreed.

  “Well then, Marmalade, why don’t you go bring in our next lucky contestant,” suggests Sugar, and the bear drops to all fours and lopes off, and comes back with…

  A skinny guy in overalls, basically. Just one more working Joe from the construction site trekking rust-coloured dus
t in on Sugar’s floor. Except I know him. Except he is the absolute last goddamn person I expect to see ushered into this company like he’s some sort of VIP. Because it’s Brian. It’s Brian fucking Dey, my useless twat of a co-worker who never finishes his jobs properly and never has anything interesting to say.

  “So.” And Sugar is being all casual again. “What’ve you got for me, Mister? What are you in all this?”

  “’M’n’bassador,” he says, only he chonks the words together so it’s only a moment later I know he’s said I’m an ambassador. And then he adds, “You gon’ got hold’a something, you say.” His eyes flick awkwardly to me. “Hey, man. Di’n’ realise what you had, or wouldn’t be needin’ all this.”

  “What the…?” I just don’t have the words for him, and end up turning to Sugar, who’s obviously pissing herself wanting to laugh at me. “Ambassador from who.”

  “You tell him,” she directs, swinging my attention back to Brian.

  He lifts his head, and his eyes are suddenly very clear, like all the Brian-y muddle’s gone from them and I’m looking at some crazy-ass sonofabitch fanatic been hiding away inside interplanetary loser Brian Dey all this time.

  “’M come from Bees,” he says, like it’s a new Gospel. “’Ey say you got something they want.”

  11

  SPRINGER

  Not a hotel, this time. They were in New York, which meant a penthouse suite owned by one of Thompson’s companies’ companies where he paid himself to take up residence and then wrote it off against tax. More square footage than the average American’s suburban house and here he was in one corner of it, staring at the screen.

  Pat Grubb was in, come to report his latest successes in shaking down backers for cash. He had a list of topics he needed Thompson to slip into his next few appearances, just so everyone felt they were getting their money’s worth. Carole had wanted him to just mail it over. He’d insisted on turning up in person, said it was all too sensitive to trust to electronics. She knew he just wanted to be close to the man. He wanted recognition for what he’d done. Except Thompson hadn’t even registered him, just sat heavily, staring at the screen, face dead, eyes flickering with reflected images.