The first section dealt with management and ownership of Crashcart Medical Services Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiary, Crashcart Clinics Inc., both headquartered here in Seattle. Buddy had done a good job, listing the boards of both corporations-identical lists-and the members of the management team.
I skimmed through the names, looking for one I recognized-William Sutcliffe, perhaps?-but came up dry.
Ownership was detailed similarly. Apparently, Crash-cart MSC, the parent company, was a privately held corporation, owned by five individuals who sat on the boards of both it and the subsidiary company. On the surface, totally normal, and not even the Infernal Revenue could take issue. But Buddy had dug deeper, prying into the way credit flowed through the organization. When looked at this way, it became obvious that four of the five "owners" were actually fronts. Oh sure, they existed, sat on the boards, and voted, but they were just stage-dressing. The real power was the fifth shareholder, an elf called Dennison Harkness.
According to Buddy's analysis, his was the only decision that counted. The other four shareholders voted with him, or one or two voted against him when he wanted it to look like real democracy was at work. But they were, in fact, only puppets, with Harkness pulling their strings. Play-acting aside, the large and growing Crashcart medical empire was owned and run by one man.
Or so it seemed. Buddy had taken the saga one step further. As it turned out, Harkness wasn't his own elf either. He was in the pocket of a multinational conglomerate called Yamatetsu Corporation (head office in Kyoto, branch offices everywhere from Adelaide to Zurich), and he danced to their tune.
Interesting, yes. But was it relevant?
I asked Buddy what kinds of things Yamatetsu was involved with in Seattle.
She didn't answer directly, but the text on my screen scrolled without me touching the keyboard, and a small section appeared in inverse video. "Thanks," I said, and scanned the section.
Yamatetsu was a typical diversified multinational, in that it didn't manufacture any products or market any services. Instead, it bought and sold, raped and pillaged, other firms that did manufacture products ranging from diapers to nerve gas or else marketed services as diverse as interior design and corporate security.
No, that wasn't quite true. According to Buddy's research, the company did have one division that developed products for the military market. It was called ISP, for Integrated System Products, and was not a subsidiary but actually a part of the parent company. ISP was located in the sprawl. Somewhere. No specific location was given. I re-read the section, trying to make sense of what ISP did. They didn't develop weapons, as I'd assumed at first. Instead, they were working on something called Sympathetic-Parasympathetic Integrated Suprarenal Excitation Systems (SPISES), or "booster technology." I skimmed forward and backward through Buddy's report looking for further explanation of just what booster technology did, but found nothing. "What's this booster stuff?" I asked. Buddy's sour face appeared in a small window in one corner of my screen. "SPISES," she replied, pronouncing it "SPY-seas."
"Circuitry in cyberware, or just jacked in." She tapped her datajack. "Heightens sensory acuity, concentration, strength, reaction, all that drek. They say," she added.
It sounded like wired reflexes, maybe combined with skillwires. I said as much to Buddy.
"Drek," she shot back. "That's invasive, artificial. SPISES does it naturally. Doesn't just trigger adrenalin, but jacks your endorphins, too."
An "idea" light flashed through my brain, but I put the thought on hold. I'd have to talk it out with someone whose knowledge base was different from Buddy's before I could tell if it made any sense. "You did great," I told her. "Thanks. You're going to keep looking for William Sutcliffe, right?"
Buddy snorted. "Already found him." I did my gaffed fish imitation, and she grinned fleetingly. "Tough job. Fragging tough. It's gonna cost you." Of course it was going to cost me, but I'd worry about that later.
"Here he is," she said.
A dossier-style picture appeared on-screen. The guy looked totally neutral: apparently mid-height, hair mid-brown, nothing distinguishing about his face. Looked like a nonentity or an accountant. "So who is he," I said, "what is he, where is he?"
"Tough job," she repeated. "UCAS military, that's why it took so long."
"He's army?" She shrugged.
"Guess so. But no uniform, no rank."
"Civilian consultant, maybe?" I mused. Then I saw the impatience on Buddy's face. "Okay, okay, got it. So what's he do?"
"Something with evaluation and procurement, personnel-enhancement systems." She looked at me expectantly, apparently waiting for me to say something. To make some connection. I didn't answer at once, and second by second I could see her frustration and disdain building. Buddy waits faster than anyone else I know.
Personnel-enhancement systems . . . And then I saw the connection Buddy had picked up on. "He's dealing with Yamatetsu," I blurted. "Buddy, you amaze me."
That mollified her, I was glad to see. She nodded. "He brought them in to demo SPISES for the agency," she confirmed. "Full evaluation's scheduled for spring and summer."
I shook my head. This was getting way the frag too heavy and complex. Pieces of the puzzle led to more jigsaw pieces, and those pieces fit together, but I still didn't have the first clue what kind of picture they made up. Then I mentally shook the pieces, and two of them shifted, fitting together to form a different pattern. I suddenly had a hypothesis that made some sense.
I knew that military procurement, particularly anything involving cutting-edge systems, is a megamillion-nuyen business. If Yamatetsu could get its booster drek picked up by the UCAS army, what would their profit picture look like? Pretty fragging good, I expected. And any corp worthy of the name would do whatever it took to land that kind of contract. Up to and definitely including corruption, such as kickbacks of some serious nuyen to someone in the evaluation and procurement infrastructure. Someone like, say, William Sutcliffe. How sensitive would either party-Yamatetsu or Sutcliffe-be if they found out that Sutcliffe's line had been tapped and that Lone Star might have a record of them discussing this diversion of funds? Pretty fragging sensitive. Sensitive enough to geek the person washing the tap-Lolly-and anyone else with the slightest chance of finding out the dirt? To quote Pud the Prowler, fragging A.
I grinned. It hung together, and it answered a lot of questions. Maybe the connection with Crashcart and the possible tie-in to 2XS weren't relevant at all. Like, one hand doesn't know what the other hand's doing? Possible. The Lolly-Sutcliffe angle might involve Yamatetsu's ISP division, while the Crashcart-Waters-2XS angle involved Crashcart Medical Services Corporation, and never the twain shall meet.
And what about the apparent contract out on Patrick Bambra? I focused again on the screen, which showed me a very slotted-off Buddy. "What's the connection with the Universal Brotherhood?" I asked her.
"Sutcliffe's a member," she said. "Joined three years back. Now he does volunteer work for them.
Helps manage their counselors." She fixed me with a killer glare. "That's it," she declared. "Slot and clear."
"Thanks, Buddy," I said again as I slotted my credstick and transferred credit. A lot of credit. "I really appreciate it." But there was nobody there to hear my last sentence. Buddy had broken the connection the moment the transaction was complete, and I was left thanking a blank screen.
I sat back. My glance fell on an almost-full bottle of synthahol I'd picked up the day before. What the frag? I deserved a drink, and maybe it would help turbocharge the old brain cells. I poured a decent slug of indecent pseudo-whiskey, and settled back on the bed to cogitate. The closer I examined my hypothesis, looking for holes, the stronger it seemed to hang together. The corruption-kickback aspect and the under-the-counter relationship between Sutcliffe and Yamatetsu felt right, I'd lay money on having that part of it pegged. As to that being the reason for Lolly's death, I still wasn't 100 percent convinced, but anything else seemed
too coincidental. Call that 95 percent. The link between Crashcart and 2XS? The Waters case implied it strongly, but didn't prove it. Call that one 80 percent. And assign nominal 70 percent odds of no links between Sutcliffe and Crash-cart.
What about Patrick? Maybe Sutcliffe was getting twitchy, and had overreacted when Patrick started nosing around. Patrick knew nothing and cared less about Yamatetsu and the UCAS military, but Sutcliffe might not believe it. I wasn't confident at all about that part: call it 30-percent confidence. Theresa and the deceased Fitz? No data. Probably an indirect link, in that Pud's description of Theresa's symptoms sounded uncomfortably like 2XS addiction. (Frag Theresa for becoming a chiphead.) No firm link at all with Fitz's death. That was okay: coincidences do happen, and only a paranoid believes everything's connected to everything else.
Satisfied, I took a good swallow of my whiskey. I had it chipped.
Except for one little, niggling idea, the one that flashed into mind when Buddy was describing booster technology. SPISES didn't sound too unlike 2XS, neh? Of course, even if that was true, it didn't necessarily mean anything. "Convergent evolution" happens with technology as well as with life forms, and damaging developments frequently spin off from beneficial discoveries. But it nagged at me, and I had to confirm or deny it.
That meant Bent, of course. I felt guilty for a moment about how much of his time I was burning, but then I remembered the dinner I owed him. He'd even the ledger, I was sure of that.
"Hoi, Bent," I said as his face appeared on the screen. "Long time."
"All of eight hours," he chuckled. "What's buzzing?" I'd called Bent at the lab, but I saw from the out-of-focus background that he was at home'. Must have forwarded his calls from one phone to the other.
Obviously he didn't want to miss out on anything interesting. "I won't take up too many cycles," I promised, "but this may be important. Have you ever heard of SPISES?" He blinked, then shook his head. "No bells," he said. "How about booster technology?"
"In what context?"
"Military," I said. "Jazzing physical reactions, that kind of drek."
He started to shake his head again, then hesitated. "What does SPISES stand for?"
I racked my brain to remember. "Sympathetic-Para-Something Something-renal Excitation System," I burbled. "Okay, so I'm no expert," I threw in when Bent smirked.
"No, drek, but now we've got bells," he said. "I've read something about it in medical journals, but I don't know many of the details. The way I scan it, SPISES is, theoretically, the next logical development after boosted reflexes." His eyes half-closed and his voice became less animated, almost monotone, as he switched into lecture mode. I struggled to stay with him.
"With standard boosted reflexes, you've got to drop tiny little devices called 'initiators' right into the cortex of the adrenal glands-the suprarenals-and other glands. When you want to kick into overdrive, a neuroelectrical interface picks up the appropriate neural activity-the 'go-code,' as it were-and triggers control chips implanted in the brain, which then activate the initiators. Your suprarenals pour out adrenalin, and you get jazzed. Follow me?"
I nodded slowly. "Installing standard 'wired' or boosted reflexes is an enormously invasive procedure," he continued, "as you can imagine. Interface, control chips, and initiators, plus all the support technology, 'glue chips,' and wiring to get them to hang together. It's even more invasive than skillwires or even muscle replacement-and that's saying a lot. Are you still with me?"
I nodded again. "And SPISES booster-technology is less invasive, right?" I ventured.
He smiled broadly. "Right. Orders of magnitude less, in theory. The way I scan it, this is how it works.
When a non-wired person needs a jolt of adrenalin-say when he's scared or angry-the nervous system sends an activation impulse to the suprarenals." He hesitated. "I'm really simplifying here, maybe too much."
"I'm not going to have to install the drek," I told him with a grin. "Simplify it, use the Easter Bunny as an analogy if you have to, just so I know what this stuff does. Okay?"
Bent laughed out loud. "No Easter Bunny, but I'm giving you the real high-level-of-abstraction overview here." He paused, recalling his train of thought. "Anyway, the guys experimenting with second-generation booster technology asked, why do we have to put in our own wiring and initiators, when the body's got its own? In other words, the brain and the nerves. All they had to do, they figured, was give the subject conscious control of the neural mechanism the body already uses to dispense adrenalin and even some neurochemical substances. Theoretically, you could hook the little booster box into a subject's datajack. When the guy wants a jolt of warp-speed, he thinks the mental command. The booster box picks up the command, then sends a jolt to the right part of the brain to trigger a massive signal to the adrenals. If you've already got the datajack, getting boosted is just a matter of jacking in the box. Or, if you've got a cyberlimb or eye or anything, you just hook the booster circuitry into the cyberware, and use the neural interface that's already in place. And-again theoretically-the boost is completely natural because it uses the body's own mechanisms to deliver it."
"Sounds incredible," I said. "Why isn't it on the streets?"
Bent looked thoughtful. "It's never that simple. Remember your analogy about 2XS? Like goosing your car's engine from zero revs to red line in a split-second? That's what booster technology does. According to the literature, nobody's ever tried it on humans or metahumans. Just dogs, and they got a lot of really fast, really mean dogs who died really soon. I think a lot of people believe they'll never get it safe, and it's a dead-end technology." I thought that over for a few moments, then said, "What would you say if I told you somebody out there is marketing it?"
"Booster technology?" I nodded. "I'd say somebody's going to end up with a lot of really fast, really dead clients," Bent said, "unless someone else has made a major breakthrough but hasn't yet published in the literature."
He leaned forward. "Who's marketing," he said, "and who's buying?"
"Yamatetsu Corporation's selling."
He shook his head. "Never heard of them. And the client?"
"Potentially, the UCAS military."
"I suppose that makes a horrible kind of sense," he said slowly. "How did you stumble onto this, Dirk?"
"I honestly think you're better off not knowing," I told him. He accepted that with a nod. "Now I've got one more question for you. Is there any similarity at all between this, what did you call it, second-generation booster technology and 2XS?" Bent was silent for a moment. "Sometimes I despair of the scientific mindset," he said finally. "We learn to pigeonhole things, and because of that we miss connections and correlations that are obvious to other people." He looked me square in the eyes. "In answer to your question, yes: the two technologies could be very much alike. Could be," he stressed again. "The effects are very similar. Until now, it hadn't occurred to me just how similar. The actual technologies might be light years apart, you understand."
I nodded. "I understand," I told him.
He paused again, then asked very quietly, "What have you been working on, Dirk?"
I hesitated. "Look, Bent, I don't think you'd better phone me anymore, chummer. When I'm out the other end of this, I'll get back in touch with you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
His smile vanished instantly. He nodded slowly. "I understand. Don't worry. I can take care of myself." He paused. "But if things get really hairy, call me, no matter what, okay? You can't slay all the dragons yourself, neh?"
"Thanks, Bent. I'll talk to you soon."
"Keep your head down. Later, chummer." I broke the connection and sat back. I felt very much alone. If I was right about Yamatetsu's business arrangement with Sutcliffe, I was in a game with some very big players. Frag, they don't get much bigger than a major multinational and the slotting UCAS military complex. If our mysterious and murderous X was a member of either group, I was in deep drek.
The telecom beeped again, and I thumb
ed the Receive key. I expected it to be Bent, back with something he'd forgotten, and was pleasantly surprised to see Jocasta instead. "Hoi," she said. "I thought I'd check in and see if you'd found out anything."
I hesitated, debating. My first reaction was to brush her off, much as I'd done with Bent, and for the same reasons. But she was already involved, in as deep as me, simply because X had targeted her for removal as well. Given that, wouldn't I be doing her a disservice by withholding important information? I was forced to answer yes. (A wave of relief washed over me as I reached this conclusion. It was selfish and unworthy, but I was feeling very alone and very overwhelmed, and I desperately wanted to talk to somebody.)
She'd sat silently, watching me, as I went through the brief moment of soul-searching. Now it almost looked like concern in her eyes as she asked, "What is it?"
"The game just got a lot bigger," I began, then went on to tell her what I'd learned about Sutcliffe's position with the military, Yamatetsu's booster technology and its ownership of Crashcart, the possible similarities between SPISES and 2XS . . . Everything, no punches pulled. I even told her about my sister's disappearance. And I finished off with my suspicions about why Lolly had been killed.
I have to admit it, it felt good. I'd always heard about the power of catharsis, but I guess I'd never really tried it. The weight was still on my shoulders, the tension still in my chest, but now it seemed a little more bearable.
Jocasta was silent awhile after I finished, obviously running it through her own mind. "Thanks for telling me about your sister," she said quietly. "I appreciate your honesty, and I'm sorry." She paused again.
"Maybe the troll took her to another clinic. Or maybe she transferred herself for some reason. She could be lying in a bed right now waiting for you to get in touch. Have you checked elsewhere? Maybe it's all something innocent." I nodded. "You could be right." Her voice and expression had softened while we'd been talking about Theresa, but now her familiar businesslike mien returned. "You think the connection between 2XS and this booster drek is significant, don't you?" she asked.
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