Exodus

by Farrell, Lisa

  Eating as he walked, Express made his way through a tourist area, where the streets were quieter. There were seccams outside the fancy themed hotels, but he didn’t bother to interrupt their feed. He had passed other Tenmas, out doing deliveries in the town, and not all of them wore a uniform. To tamper with the seccams would only draw attention to himself. It was better to hide in the open. One of the hotels had placed inactive bioroids flanking the main entrance, posed like guards. He could see the wires holding them in place. Some substance had hardened their flesh. Their eyes flashed silver at him as he passed.

  According to the tracker signal, he was closing in on Randi’s PAD. He left the tourist area behind and found himself in a street that reminded him of the chop-shop areas he knew in NA. Open shop fronts revealed mechanics at work stripping hoppers and fixing or redesigning hardware: some decades old, some barely out of the factory. An oily odor lingered as they refitted redundant vehicles to suit new purposes, combustion engines powering hologenerators and refrigeration units. People shouted, touting their services, straining to be heard over the crash and clank of metal, but the shouts weren’t directed at him. He was a delivery clone, just like all the others.

  Express allowed himself a small smile.

  He found her PAD at a market stall, one of many wiped for resale. The seller scowled at him as he waved his own PAD over them, locating the correct one, but he had to be sure.

  “How much?” Express asked.

  “A swap,” the man said, with a hoarse, grating voice that betrayed an addiction, or a run-in with a creditor.

  “No, it’s for a friend.” He needed that PAD—it was his only hope of finding her—but he couldn’t let his desperation show. “Come on, how much?”

  The man named an extortionate price, and Express haggled long enough to avoid suspicion. Then, gripping a PAD in each hand, he headed for the bridge, accessing the tracker program and mapping the route to display on his lenses. He would have to cross the border.

  Express flashed a Tenma ID to the official in a gaudy yellow uniform, who waved him on. He never saw the bridge itself; he took the freight tunnel for small goods, walking across a huge conveyor belt alongside crates of cigarettes, slaughtered gogs wrapped tightly in sterile film, and sealed carbosteel barrels that rolled alarmingly from side to side. It made him feel like he was inside a giant PacPac dispenser, but it was cheaper than traveling in a hopperbus or on the tourist-laden bridge.

  Another official in the same yellow uniform pointed him on his way when he reached other side. She was too busy supervising the collection of the goods from the conveyor to ask for his ID.

  A Tenma courier came running past, laden with luggage. Express followed his route between the hopper pads and a row of restaurants, then up into the town. The buildings were staggered, stepping up the landscape toward the manufactured green clouds that brightened the sky, emulating the region’s famous natural phenomenon.

  He approximated the route the PAD had taken through the town; he could map its path right back to where it first had been activated, on an empty mountainside. He had a program working through the available seccam feeds searching for Miranda Rhapsody, but with no success. If Maria had sold Randi on in Tulpiales, she had known better than to do so in view of a seccam. He had to hope that backtracking along the PAD’s route on foot would offer him some clue. If Randi left Tulpiales before he found her, he’d have the world and beyond to search.

  Express passed through markets very like those back across the border. In fact, were it not for the slight interruption of the border, he might have thought he was in the same place. Tulpiales was officially two towns, Tulcán and Ipiales, but both had grown toward the bridge they shared and enjoyed the same benefits from the arrangement. It was not an ominous place; the atmosphere was lively, the buildings not so tall as to block out the sun. Still, it wore on him, as in every market he crossed or street he passed through he was disappointed not to catch sight of Randi on the other side.

  Randi, or Maria. He couldn’t be sure of Maria’s involvement, but she’d be his next objective if he couldn’t find Randi. Could be she had passed Randi on as promised, and another party had betrayed her, but at least she could give him a name. Li11ith always arranged things so that her contractors only knew those they needed to know in the chain: it was safer that way, she’d said. Jinteki conditioning or not, he was determined to see this through now; he was focused on his task. He had chosen it himself, and he wasn’t even getting paid.

  He came across an open square where the goods suddenly changed from foodstuffs and tech to clones and livestock. There were noisy stands filled with cages of pets for risties, or more likely, pets that had belonged to risties when keeping live creatures had been in fashion. Color-changing birds squawked and miniaturized canines barked as Express passed, but he ignored them, focusing on the large pen in the center of the square.

  The clones inside stood very still, facing out, lined up perfectly. They watched the shoppers pass them, their faces neutral as they waited. They were an odd mix of Henrys, Molloys, and a few lines he didn’t recognize, as well as a couple of Tenmas. They wore uniforms, civilian clothes, or little at all. One of the Tenmas was naked from the waist up, the pale skin of his shoulders peeling in the sun even as he shivered. Express felt a corresponding ache in his own shoulders, then remembered that they had been shot and torn, so it wasn’t sympathy he felt, just coincidence.

  A man with a wide-brimmed hat stood smiling by the pen. Several interested parties inspected his wares or inquired about his prices. He nodded his head politely and answered their questions.

  Express stepped closer, looking among the clones just in case, but of course Randi was not there. She wouldn’t be sold in the open; she wasn’t supposed to exist. He couldn’t ask about her, and he’d been foolish to think he could find her like this. He should have gone home, forgotten about her. He was a runner and a criminal, not a detective. He couldn’t track Randi through Tulpiales like he tracked down hidden files on the Net. Meatspace worked differently.

  The clones inside the pen, which consisted of nothing more than a wire stretched around at waist height, watched him. They didn’t need cages, like the pets at the other stalls. He passed his eyes quickly over their faces, without meeting their eyes. He was close enough to reach out and touch them, and some of the potential buyers did just that, examining hands, teeth, the whites of the eyes, or asking questions of the clones themselves. Only that thin wire separated him from them, the free from the enslaved. His skin felt tight as his muscles tensed. He had to get away; he shouldn’t be here.

  “I can acquire more of course, but I assure you these are prime examples,” the merchant was saying. “Less than a year from the vats, long enough to have proved themselves healthy in body and mind. You’ll have no surprises with these, I promise you.”

  Express turned slowly to go, controlling his movements, fighting the desire to run.

  “A man in the next square has the same, but more variety. Don’t you deal in any specialist lines?”

  Express stopped to listen, clenching his hands by his sides. He examined the elderly gentleman who’d voiced it: a modded human, his ID shielded with top-of-the-range security. The merchant spotted the man’s potential as Express did, and moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, lowering his voice. Express had to move closer still to catch their conversation, concentrating on their words, thoughts of escape forgotten.

  “Any particular lines in mind? Are you a collector? I keep my more select wares back for a private auction…” He paused. “What do you want, clone?”

  Express felt the word like a blow to the chest. He stood rigid, forcing himself to lower his eyes, focusing on the steel toecaps of the merchant’s shoes.

  “If your master wants to purchase my wares, he can do so in person,” the merchant said, and waved his hand to move Express on.

  Express moved away, but he took up position on the other side of the square to observe their
exchange. They had already forgotten him. The merchant put an arm around the shoulders of the older man, who braced his horn-topped cane against the ground, suffering the contact. He was clearly interested in the auction. If Randi was in Tulpiales, that was where she’d be. She was specialist, to say the least.

  A flash of white as something exchanged hands. Express’s eyes followed it. It could be his ticket to Randi. He was perfectly still, but his heart was racing. This could be his chance.

  As the man pocketed the ticket, a ping told Express his infiltrating program had finally broken the man’s security. He checked the ID. The customer was Herman Hobbs, who, according to his site, owned some of the larger agroplexes in Colombia and was in the process of buying up more. He would certainly have the credits to be a collector.

  Hobbs set off across the square, swinging his cane. He did not need the thing to walk, but it kept the crowd at bay. Express followed him.

  Chapter 10

  Tulpiales had a different atmosphere at night, when the markets were empty and the tourists enjoyed the entertainment provided by the hotels and attached nightclubs. For Express, it was disorienting at first; he was used to NA, where night and day meant little. Here, it was like walking through another town entirely. It was a quiet town, full of dark doorways and narrow side streets, where anyone could be waiting for you to step out of view of the seccams.

  Herman Hobbs hadn’t been keen to part with his auction ticket, until Express explained what information he had gleaned from his PAD and what he might do with it if disappointed. The ticket gave him an address not far from the clone market, in a newer part of the town where the roads crisscrossed each other. The map on his lenses showed it as a grid, and he weaved his way across it, taking empty streets where he could. He walked at a brisk pace, passing under streetlights rather than keeping to the shadows. He didn’t want anyone to think he had something to hide.

  It looked like a warehouse, a large rectangular building with a corrugated double door. No lights or sounds leaked from inside. He waited in the doorway of a closed convenience store opposite and puffed alight the cigar he’d taken from Hobbs’s hand. He could recall the ticket details exactly without looking: the flashing digit he took to be his bidder number, the list of rules and warnings, the time of entry. He was a few minutes early, that was all. Someone would appear soon.

  He was not the only eager customer. Two women wearing unfamiliar pale-pink uniforms approached the door to the warehouse, but it did not open for them. He checked on the Net, and couldn’t find a match for the uniform. Some ristie’s personal staff, possibly.

  At 2200h, the hoppers began to arrive: sports hoppers painted like racers but without the power and big luxury models that took up half the street. Some had those fancy new engines with an ultrasonic whine, and they landed silently like enormous black moths. Express dropped the cigar and stamped on it. He might be the only clone to have tasted a Papa Classique, but it had tasted bitter anyway.

  The double doors opened, revealing a soft light and a not-so-soft bouncer with a Skorpios FM44 strapped conspicuously to his side. Attractive, healthy-looking individuals wearing everything from designer denim to cocktail dresses to the latest bulletproof synthsilk overcoats exited the hoppers and filed slowly past the bouncer. The hoppers departed, and Express moved to the end of the growing queue of clones and personal staff, waiting for the risties to enter first. Express counted them through. Including himself, there were fifty individuals entering the warehouse. Enough of a crowd to lose himself in, but only just.

  No one spoke as they entered, but as he drew closer to the door, Express heard music from inside the building, a classical score with a synthetic beat. The bouncer stopped some people and asked them to hand over their weapons, but most had known not to come armed. The line moved quickly, as though to keep up with the music.

  Express was last in line. As his turn came, he pulled the ticket from his pocket. The bouncer took it, glanced at his face, and held up a hand. Express halted.

  “It’s not yours,” the bouncer said.

  “I am here to bid on behalf of Mr. Hobbs.”

  The bouncer cocked his head, listening to a voice Express couldn’t hear. If they checked his story, they should find everything in order. If anything did go wrong, Herman Hobbs would find the details of his corrupt accounts leaking all over the Net in the morning.

  The bouncer returned the ticket, and Express walked on through, into the empty warehouse and down the steps at the far end. He heard the doors bang shut behind him and the bleep of an electronic lock. He followed the other bidders down a hundred meters or so in semidarkness before stepping out into the auction.

  The smugglers had converted a vast underground storage facility into a permanent auction house. Raised, podium-style terminals stood around the room so bidders would be visible to the crowd, which numbered many more than fifty. There must have been other entrances, but Express could not see them for the people. The raised stage in the center stood empty, but a holo light show spread over the ceiling, geometric shapes moving like dancers in time with the music, which seemed to rise from the floor itself. It was loud, but not so loud that the bidders couldn’t hold a conversation. The risties were networking, and a few Adonis-and Eve-model bioroids, still in good condition, moved among them with trays of drinks, offering compliments and promises to interested customers. One Eve flashed him a smile he found himself returning, before she registered him as a Tenma and moved on.

  Express worked his way carefully to one of the terminals, and stood ready to bid in case Randi appeared. He had intended to access any logs at the auction if Randi was not among the clones for sale, but his PAD could not access the Net or even a local network. The place had been constructed with anonymity in mind, the terminals negating the need for PADs. Fortunately, he had already loaded up an empty credstick with phantom credits.

  Express looked up at the terminal. If it was an isolated system, that was his only way in. If Randi was not here, he would have to find an excuse to use one, unless he found his way behind the scenes and posed as a member of the staff. He turned slowly, trying to identify employees. Apart from the obvious bioroids, the staff hid in the crowd, and they were human. He identified them by the way they watched the clients, and by the bulges in their jackets.

  “Honored Guests!”

  The music stopped, and a figure rose into position on the central stage, her hands raised for attention. Express moved forward, his eyes on those hands. She wore a floor-length blue dress, and diamonds glittered at her ears and in the choker at her throat, but one hand still wore the metallic glove. Maria. The virt display pulsed gently above her.

  “Welcome to our auction! I know you’re all eager to see what we have on offer for you tonight. Let me just take a moment to remind you that no one is allowed to leave until the conclusion of the auction, and our staff will meet any of your needs in the meantime.”

  She repeated herself in Spanish, and then walked off the stage into the crowd. Express tried to back away, but there was a wall of people behind him. His movement caught her eye, and she turned to face him, her mouth opening to ask something, but at that moment the first clones rose up to take her position on the stage. The crowd cheered and pressed forward, and Express managed to break through and away. He kept his pace steady; his success relied on Maria’s believing he was just another Tenma. With his hair slicked back, there was nothing unusual about his appearance. He found a different terminal to stand under, and hoped she hadn’t recognized him.

  Two Omoi clones stood on the stage, a matching set in dark suits, with bulky metal collars around their necks. Not rare, but a new genotype on the market, and the crowd seemed impressed. Bidders took to the terminals, and the auction began in earnest. The bids appeared as virts floating in midair as they were made, and a secretary AI announced them for the crowd to cheer. Groups gathered at the base of the terminals, urging the bidders on, jeering enthusiastically as they dropped out.

&nb
sp; Express spotted Maria as she returned to stand near the stage. She was accompanied by a broad, fierce-looking man with the telltale bulge in his jacket. Perhaps the sight of a Tenma was enough to make her nervous. It seemed she had knowingly betrayed him after all.

  Li11ith used to say she didn’t take any chances, that she checked up on everyone she worked with. He did not want to consider that she had known. He had trusted her more than anyone, more than he should have. He had never turned down her contracts; she had no reason to deceive him. If she had asked him to smuggle clones out of NA for auction in Tulpiales, he would have done it. Li11ith would have told him—unless she thought he would object simply because he was a clone himself. She had always claimed she saw him as more, as a person in his own right, but that didn’t make it true.

  The next clones were on the stage, some female line he didn’t know the name of, the first wave of a genotype that Jinteki had reconsidered and withdrawn. There was nothing visibly wrong with them, but the bidders were less enthusiastic, and the final price was considerably less than that of the Omoi. The next clones were not humanoid: oddities displayed together but bid for separately. They were drugged, docile. Only one tried to escape, some sort of miniature pachyderm, but its collar held it back, attached by an invisible force to the stage. There was a prototype Turtleback unit among them, but it just lay there with its limbs curled under its shell and didn’t move when prodded. A collector bought it anyway, but for a reduced price because of its state.

  After that, Maria returned to the stage.

  “I promised you something special, and as it happens we have two stars at our auction today. One you will recognize, a Hachi-Inu, which won’t be available to the general public in the near future because the NAPD has an exclusive contract. Of course, you are not the general public.” The crowd cheered, and Maria paused gracefully and with a smile before she continued. Express found himself drawn toward the stage. “The other is a unique treasure. Why be her when you can have her? There is no mark, there is no official line, there is only…” She took a step to the side and raised her hands as Express forced his way through to the front of the crowd. “Miranda Rhapsody!”