When the speaker crackled to life again, the voice was not cordial. “You can fuck right off, McGinty. Your friend scans like a tractor.”
McGinty held up a hand to stop Roland from doing something destructive. “Someone killed The Madame last night, Schultz. The tractor is wondering if it might have been you. If we can’t convince him otherwise, he might just start doing tractor shit to your building.”
“Madeleine’s dead?” The voice from the speaker sounded hopeful.
“Yup,” Billy responded. “Now open up.”
“Just you, Billy. I don’t want that thing in my workshop.”
This time it was Roland who spoke. “Did your scan show what I’m made of?”
“It sure did, buddy,” came the disembodied voice.
“Good. Then we both know you don’t have anything in there that can hurt me. Unlock or don’t, but I’m coming in either way.”
The speaker remained silent, but the loud click of the door unlocking was all the answer they needed. Billy and Roland stepped into the lobby with only a small degree of apprehension. Neither knew what horrors the eccentric owner might have waiting for them, but both were fairly confident Roland could handle things if it came to that. The lobby did not live up to their fears. Like so many other lobbies, it was beige and boring. A receptionist’s kiosk stood lonely and unmanned at one end, flanked by two boring gray doors leading to the main workshop floor. Passing through these, the pair found themselves surrounded by a psychotic carnival of macabre machinery.
Long benches lined the wide open space, and workstations equipped with all manner of fabricator’s tools filled the center. An assortment of strange-looking devices littered every inch of every workspace. Fantastic plastic and metal contraptions festooned with silicone implements and faux-skin oddities lay on benches in various states of disassembly. Expressionless android faces and naked synthetic torsos were stacked in large roller bins. The lifeless faces stared at them in silent open-mouthed horror, their gaping eyes blank and pleading. Next to these, a machine that appeared to be molding monstrous phallic prostheses whirred and squelched in an obscene rhythm as it deposited the flopping flesh-tubes into an unassuming plastic crate.
“Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a sick goddamn cracker,” Billy whispered at the unvarnished horror of his surroundings.
“Ditto,” Roland agreed.
From an office attached to the workshop, a man in a motorized wheelchair emerged. He had sandy hair and looked lean and healthy if not for his legs’ apparently non-functional status. Billy pushed his shock and horror far enough into the back of his mind to ask, “What the hell happened to you, Schultz?”
“My spine and pelvis were crushed. The pelvis has set but they are still regrowing my spine. What’s this about Madeleine being dead?”
“Nope. Nuh-uh. Not so fast,” Billy held out a hand. “How did your spine get so messed up?”
“Industrial accident,” was the cryptic reply. Schultz seemed in a rush to talk about anything else, but Billy could not let it go.
“This industry?” He swung his hands out in a wide arc, encompassing the workshop in all its horrific sexual splendor. “What the everlasting fuck, Schultz?”
The flustered man in the wheelchair looked to be losing patience with Billy. “Not every prototype is perfect, okay? Accidents happen.”
Realization hit Roland like a freight train, and he could not stop his next words from escaping. “Wait! What? You got paralyzed while testing out a sex ‘bot?” He did not want to keep talking about this. There were a thousand more important things he could talk about, but the old soldier knew for certain he would never sleep again if he left this place without getting the answers to his now-burning questions. “What kind of sex-bot is so powerful it can shatter your pelvis and break your spine? What does that even look like? What—? No. How—?” He lost his train of thought in that moment. Befuddled by the staggering stupidity of the situation, he could only shake his head and try his level best to wipe the look of horror and confusion from his face. “I don’t think I even want to know.”
“I may be curious,” Billy remarked.
Schultz seemed to appreciate neither Roland’s consternation nor Billy’s curiosity. “Listen, buddy. It’s none of your damn business how I got injured, all right? I make a whole variety of exotic designs here. These are precision-engineered for people with discerning tastes. A Luddite like you would never understand the beauty and genius of my work. Just because you can’t appreciate the higher level of carnal sophistication that my machines can offer—”
“You know, Schultz,” Billy interrupted. “It is functionally impossible to take you seriously while that machine keeps cranking out moose-dicks behind you.” He shuddered. “It’s going ‘whoosh, squish, flop, whoosh, squish, flop’ while you are over here trying to be all serious.” The redhead held up his hands in surrender. “I just can’t handle it.”
“Gah!” Schultz tossed McGinty a rude gesture. “Let’s go to my office, then.”
“I’m afraid of what we’ll find in there,” Roland mused. “And I’ve seen combat on twenty-two planets.”
“Hold my hand?” Billy asked with a whimper.
“Will you two cut the shit?” Schultz called over his shoulder as he rolled to the office door. “Fucking children.”
The interior of the crippled man’s office proved to be no more inviting than the workshop. Both men leered and flinched at the terrible quantity and variety of mechanical sex aids lying about in casual disarray. Billy turned to Roland and with a loud, exaggerated stage whisper said, “For the love of god, man! Don’t. Touch. Anything.”
“I want you to know that I’m choosing to ignore you, Billy,” said Schultz. “Now what is this about Madeleine?”
“Dead,” Roland said, trying not to look at a model of some insane sex machine that appeared to have more appendages than any normal person had orifices in which to insert them.
Schultz saw his gaze and swept the model off the desk. He shoved it into a drawer and squeaked with far more alarm than was necessary, “That’s patented!” Then he closed the drawer and added, “And I didn’t kill the bitch.”
Roland shrugged. “But you and she were not on good terms?”
“She was a thieving whore, and she cost me billions. So yeah, you could say we didn’t get along.” Then he added, “But that does not mean I killed her. I’m not a fool. Her stupid android pleasure houses were solid income for me. I wanted my patents back, sure. But killing her meant that they would end up in probate. Have you ever attempted to get anything out of probate?”
“No,” Roland admitted.
“Well don’t ever try, it’s impossible.”
Billy pried a little harder. “But you could just steal them back, or maybe you wanted to take over the houses with her out of the way.”
Schultz turned back to McGinty with a look that clearly demonstrated his low opinion of those theories. “Can you just imagine that, McGinty? Me? Running a brothel?” He shuddered visibly. “I am an artist, a craftsman, a modern-day Pygmalion. Even if I wanted to, I do not have what it takes to run that kind of business. I wouldn’t want to, either.” He turned his gaze back to Roland. “So, do whatever you want. Look around, threaten me, whatever. I didn’t kill that thieving bitch. Even though her death makes me happy, it has now made it nearly certain I’ll never get those patents back. My only hope is that she is now rotting eternally in the deepest depths of whatever frozen hell larcenous whores believe in.”
“So,” Billy finally acquiesced. “You’re a deranged pervert, but you aren’t a murdering deranged pervert?”
“I am choosing to ignore you again.”
“All right, then.” Roland turned to leave the office. “I’ll buy your story for now, Schultz. I’ll be back if I have more questions for you, though.”
“See ya around, Schultz,” Billy said affably. “I mean, as long as this place hasn’t given me some new kind of cybernetic super-herpes, that is.”
Schultz did not respond because he had chosen to ignore Billy.
CHAPTER TEN
With one tree fairly well shaken, Roland decided to make a day of it and go rattle another. He liked it when his assignments coincided with his skill set. The task of shaking down suspects was one of those things that always left him with a certain feeling of morbid satisfaction.
After leaving Big Woo, Roland pinged for a cargo transport and made his way all the way across town to The Old Fen Way. If one was inclined to eat exotic foods in lavish surroundings, or perhaps enamored of the kinds of liquor that came with five-figure price points, The Old Fen Way was the place to find such things. The hyper-rich elite of New Boston kept their homes in Cambridge, though they entertained themselves here.
Lucia had often noted that Roland was encumbered by a perverse sense of humor. It was so odd a thing that many who knew him claimed he had no sense of humor at all. This was not the case. The gruff old soldier found a great many things to be amusing, and was known to crack a smile or even loose a chuckle when presented with one. The Old Fen Way always brought a bit of mirth to the big man’s life. Or at least, a bizarre feeling of ironic non-malice that passed for mirth by his standards.
As soon as his feet touched the dazzlingly clean sidewalk, four street scanners rotated to orient on him. He made no attempt to move or be on his way. He knew very well what happened next.
The first police drone arrived in less than ten seconds. This neither surprised nor bothered him. The hovering blue machine scanned him with equipment far more sensitive than any street scanner, then buzzed off when it had determined nothing was amiss. The ten-second time frame was impressive, but this was Uptown and the cops here consisted of elite veterans and high-scoring prospects. These Uptown law enforcement contracts were hotly contested items, and any corp that wanted to play in this space sent only their very best. The scan itself had taken about five seconds, and that was telling. These drones were capable of rapidly scanning multiple targets at once. Spending that long on one man was illustrative of exactly how many registered augmentations Roland possessed and the overall quantity of administrative red tape his top-secret equipment employed to stymie the municipal security grid.
At least a dozen building scanners were doing the same thing while all this was happening. Each business had their own scanner to prevent augmented thieves and other nefarious types from interfering with the important games of conspicuous consumption and one-upmanship played by their wealthy patrons. Roland imagined rooms filled with security professionals scowling in confusion at the readouts. His body represented a security guard’s worst nightmare: a heavily augmented military cyborg that they had no information on and no legal right to bar entrance to. Roland could walk up to any of these businesses and go right through the front door. He might be bearing any number of dangerous abilities hidden behind those high-level government firewalls. The tally was close to two-hundred individual augmentations, all registered and most hidden behind military exemptions and redacted top-secret clearance codes.
It was the sort of thing that gave rich people the fits, and Roland loved it. Nevertheless, there was work to be done, so his moment of schadenfreude would have to be brief. A dozen sweating security supervisors heaved great sighs of relief in unison as the giant started to walk away from their buildings and moved down the block.
He knew exactly where he was going and he might have had his car drop him off closer to the destination were he so inclined. Roland wanted to be seen, though. Every step he took brought him past another restaurant, bar, or storefront. Each scanner taking in the improbable configuration of his body increased the overall buzz percolating throughout the zone. Security forces often shared information, and he was certain that before he traveled a quarter mile the only thing anyone in town would be talking about was the giant plodding down the streets of The Old Fen Way.
Most establishments that catered to the extremely wealthy preferred their security forces to remain unseen until needed. Visible guards were tacky and such menial laborers could often ruin the carefully crafted ambiance of an establishment. Roland had found this predilection toward preserving an aesthetic did not override the concurrent need to protect themselves from untoward interactions with scary cyborgs of mysterious provenance. It was thus a simple matter to determine the approximate level of fear in his proximity. He started counting the men and women in black or gray suits he saw outside the businesses. As he suspected would occur, the numbers of visible security personnel increased as he went.
By the time he arrived in front of his goal, he was being carefully watched by no less than thirty different wary-eyed guards from several different angles. The building before him was a towering white hotel. The edifice was replete with white marble statuary and columns reminiscent of the ancient Greeks. An appropriately magnificent entrance dominated the frontage with large crystalline doors sitting atop wide granite steps. Guards flanked these glittering portals, and more found their way into strategic positions along the expanse of steps. This arrangement was not subtle and the configuration deliberate. The message was quite clear: men like Roland Tankowicz were not welcome here.
With a jaunty spring in his step, Roland hopped up the enormous flight without a passing glance for the squad of guards arrayed to stop him. On the landing, he presented himself to the door guards with a toothy grin devoid of sincerity or warmth.
The first of the guards was a man nearly as large as Roland. His charcoal suit barely constrained his hypermuscular physique, and Roland suspected the seams in its armpits were in imminent danger of rupturing. Roland did not need a scanner to guess that some gene therapy, pharmaceutical enhancements, or even hard body-mods were in play. A man did not achieve such proportions without a little technological assistance after all. If not for Lucia’s careful attention to the maintenance of his wardrobe, Roland would have the same sartorial issues as this guard. He could afford to be sympathetic were he so inclined. He was not, and thus he granted the man no surplus of courtesy. He paused in front to give the rest of the security team enough time to move into what they probably felt was a good position to take him down.
“Tell The Widow Roland Tankowicz is here to see her.”
The guard’s response was cool and professional, betraying no fear and delivered with the confidence of a man convinced of his superior tactical positioning. “I’m sorry, sir. You appear to have made an error. The hotel currently has no such guest. Is there somewhere else I can direct you?”
Roland kept his own tone polite, matching that of the guard. “Is there another Hotel Colonnade around here?”
“No, sir.”
Something in that response struck a chord with Roland. It was something old and familiar. Roland took another long look at the guard. His jaw was square, his hair cut brutally short. The posture was ramrod straight yet not at all tense. This man had seen the scans of Roland’s body, and yet he was not afraid. Roland had become accustomed to the arrogance of tough guys and crooks. Every young punk thought they were unbeatable until they got beaten. This man had a different kind of confidence. A confidence it took Roland a second to recognize.
“Been out long, soldier?”
A small smile crept onto the guard’s features. “Few years. You?”
“Long time now.”
“It’s like they tell you in boot. You’re never really out.” Polite banter notwithstanding, the guard had not altered his stance or posture.
“I don’t want to sound rude, so please just think of this as two old soldiers talking. I did not come here because I thought The Widow would be here. I came here because I know she is. You know it, too. I’m not going to kick my way through your guys and barge in, though.”
“I appreciate that, sir,” said the guard. Though his expression made it clear that Roland should consider this an invitation to try.
“Right,” Roland went on. “I just want you to call up and mention my name to her. If she still doesn’t want to
talk to me, I’ll go. In that case, have someone relay to her that I will consider her reluctance an indication of her involvement in the matter I came to discuss.”
The guard remained cagey. “I can’t imagine that such a person, were she in fact on the premises, would want her position revealed one way or the other. The mere act of making such a call could be very telling to any potential enemies such a person may or may not have.”
Roland nodded. “Oh, I know. That’s why my people made sure she was here before I came out. Your firewalls are great but signal discipline was awful.” He looked back toward the men behind him. “Which one of these guys is Meyers?”
For the first time in their conversation, the lead guard flinched ever so slightly. Roland took that as a good sign and barreled ahead. “Yeah. Meyers has a big mouth and a gambling problem. He’s been selling her location to anyone with enough money to get his ass out of a sling with the loan sharks.”
Now the guard’s mouth was pressed in a tight thin line. Roland turned with an affable shrug. “I know a guy,” he offered by way of explanation. “Just make the call. I’ll wait here.”
Caught between an enormous rock and an extremely hard place, the guard was rescued by a chirp from his ear piece. A few tense grunts later, he looked back to Roland and said, “Okay. You can go in. Top floor.”
Roland gave the man an affable tip of the head. “Thank you.” Then he brushed past the guard and through the main doors. As he moved beyond the grim guard, Roland allowed himself to be impressed. Dedicated professional security could be a difficult thing to obtain. He was rather accustomed to the greed and incompetence of the average Dockside henchman. This was his normal. Thus, his occasional trips Uptown always left him with a grudging respect for those poor souls consigned to protecting the interests of uncaring plutocrats. He spared a moment of reflection for the abbreviated career of Meyers, and hoped the man’s period of unemployment was brief.
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