Roo'd (26 page)

Cessus woke next, said nothing but shuffled off to the bathroom. A short time later he returned, looking freshly minted in his new clothes.

"Okay-dokay, boys. I figure I'm going to find me some gear. How much cred do we have to work with?"

Tonx tossed him a card, naked cartoon babes stenciled on its front in laser-bright reds and blues. "Use that. Don't know how much is in there, but it should do you. Just try to be discreet, eh?"

Cessus smiled, shook his dreads out.

"Soul of discretion, that's me" he said. "Who comes with?"

"Me" said Fed. He'd pulled on his highwater pants but ignored the suit coat and the vest. "I want a new coat."

"You joking me?" asked Cessus as he led the way out of the room. "That vest was the shit, man."

"Fed" called Cass. She sat up on the bed, her hair a tangled mess, makeup smeared and eyes bleary.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Hand me my bag" she said.

Fede looked quizzically at Cessus and then Tonx. They stopped, staring back at him expectantly. Suspicious, he shuffled through the pair of backpacks stuck in the crevice between the beds and the cot. There was a gunmetal gray plastic bag tucked between them, and as Fede looked at it Cass called out.

"Yeah, that one. Open it" she said.

He pulled the bag up and found it contained a overlong shoebox-shaped box. It matched the bag, no brand name anywhere on its surface. It was light, but something solid jostled inside it as he picked it up. Everyone watched him as he sat down on the bed and pulled back the lid.

Inside, nestled carefully on shredded paper pellets, was a pair of black carbon fiber Otto Bock C-legs. They had matching ComfortFlex sockets with heat shrink mounting pads and ultra-lightweight enclosed hydraulic knee adjustment units. There was an Alps silicone liner with distal pin attachment, and it already had an adjuster screwed in place for his older mounting pin. The feet were LuXon Max, a split-heel design that had only come out earlier that year. They looked like jet engines designed for running, like a racing bicycle you'd wear on your feet.

"You don't have to keep them if you don't want them" Cass said. "But they've got built-in neural nets for load-balancing and running adjustments."

"I got a development kit from a friend of mine" said Tonx. "Just in case you want to, you know, hack them or something."

He smiled, an awkward grin. Fede stared at his brother, at Cass, looked back to see Cessus beaming.

"Your old legs made this funny squeaking noise all the time" said Cass. "And besides, after the beach they were starting to smell."

Fede smiled then, and laughed, and got suddenly teary eyed. He pulled off his old legs and used the tiny packet of sanitizing gel to wipe down his stumps before he put the C-legs on. He paused after he pulled them in place. They were… comfortable. They felt like a tailored jacket, the way he'd imagined a good pair of shoes would feel. The distal pin adjuster socketed easily, and the Alps liner warmed to his body heat and was unnoticeable almost as soon as he got them in place. He eased himself upright and folded his pants legs up around the sockets. They didn't look like feet, he thought, and realized suddenly that he didn't care.

He stood up, almost fell forward over the cot.

"Whoa there captain" said Cessus, his hand out to steady him.

"These things have bounce" said Fed, surprised.

"It'll give you something to tweak" said Tonx.

Fede made his way to the doorway, his new legs steadying as he got used to their responsiveness. They were so much lighter and more comfortable than his old legs it was almost unbelievable. He couldn't believe how much weight he'd been carrying around, and for so long. When he got to the hallway he tried jumping and almost hit his head on the low ceiling.

"Shit!" he chirped.

"Careful, dude" said Cessus. "Those things are designed for sports, you know - you're going to be able to run and jump more than a norm in no time."

"Those are the same model they're using in the Paralympics" Cass said. "You use them for a while and they'll collect enough data to dynamically change resistance based on your behavior."

She smiled shyly. "They've also got optional gyroscopic plugin units, and galvanic-skin response mount-in adaptors to expand your data range, but I didn't know if you'd want them."

Fede didn't say anything, suddenly turned and ran down the hall. He hadn't tried running in years, not counting the shuffle sprinting he'd done on their way out of Cessus's place, and the feel of the air on his face made his heart race. He spun into a lunge at the end of the hall, the knee adjustments and dynamic ankle flexing beyond the range a flesh-and-bone foot could ever reach. He turned on a dime and bounced back into the room, laughing and heaving for breath.

Everyone smiled and Tonx got up to give Fede a big hug. Cessus ruffled his hair and slapped him on the back, and Cass just smiled quietly, her hands in her lap.

"I know you kept saying you didn't want them, but the other ones were giving you so much trouble, and"

"Thanks" Fede interrupted. "Seriously, Cass. Thanks. A lot."

She smiled, and glanced at Tonx.

"Okay" he said. "Now get the fuck out of here. I want you to get completely comfortable on those new legs before we do our run."

"Yes sir" said Fed. He bent to roll his pants down all the way over his new legs, decided against it. He bounced out of the hotel, Cessus following behind.

Cessus downloaded a map from the hotel LAN on their way through the hall, googled a few dozen electronics stores and found a listing for a street market that "specialized in esoteric Asia-only digital devices."

"No idea what that means, but it might be a good place to find something worthwhile" he said. "It'll be fun, anyway."

"Let's go there first, I'm freezing" said Fed. He'd regretted his decision to leave the jacket behind as soon as they'd walked out the front door. The air was cold and wet, a dirty smell like old dogs clinging to his shirt. But he still didn't care.

"Okay-dokay" Cessus said again, taking a deep breath. "Love that smell, man."

"You like that stink?" asked Fed.

"I like the smell of adventure. Never been to China myself. And you?"

Fede shook his head, smiling. They walked.

It turned out they were almost a dozen blocks from the market. It passed quickly, one nearly empty street filled with garbage bags giving way to a covered set of identical fashion shops the size of closets. The closets turned to restaurants turned to chicken-sellers, heads and feet waving gently in the air. Starving dogs ran from equally starving children, and everywhere they went they saw the tops of heads covered in shaggy straight black hair. Fed was taller than everyone. It was a bizarre feeling. As they pushed their way through a crowd of little old ladies holding woven-reed baskets he felt the power of tiny elbows in his crotch and hips. Cessus was pinned against the opposite side of the alley from him, pulling himself against the wall as the crowd passed, and their eyes met. Fede made a face and Cessus laughed, causing the ladies to titter and murmur behind their hands.

Eventually they reached the market, an endless sea of canvas overhangs parted by thin walkways, tables and piles of junk separating them all. Fede had never seen so many different kinds of people look so similar in so cramped a space. They entered the market and Fede pulled down his goggles, amazed. They passed pottery, tiny dogs in cages, and a man with a monkey almost as large as he was. Cessus soon zoomed in on the electronics part of the market and waved at him to follow, parting the sea of people who stepped nimbly out of the way so they could stare at him pass. They'd just gone by a huge tray of one-inch compartments, each holding a different color-coded resistor, when Fede saw an ancient motorcycle jacket hanging in a stall over a thick Turkish rug. As they approached he saw the stall had all manner of American clothing, from ancient to new, but all of it retro. The clashing combination of genuine classic American items like the jacket and the modern-retro items like the fiber-optic bellbottoms were an ugly fashion train wreck in Fed's mind, but he liked the jacket. It was real, and old.

"Don't stare, my friend" said Cessus, bending past Fede to express a sudden critical interest in a bronze teapot the size of his fist. "You stare, you lose your bargaining advantage."

"I don't want to bargain, I want to buy it" Fed said.

Cessus straightened and looked at Fede in disgust.

Twenty minutes later Fede walked out of the booth in his new jacket, sans his pressed shirt. They'd traded it in after Cessus had somehow convinced the proprietor that it was the same model as worn by Johnny Rotten during a U.S. tour. The entire transaction had taken place in a kind of pidgin English, but the careful interplay of glances, shuffled feet, heavy sighs and the beginning of steps out of the stall was obviously the important part. The words were just window dressing. Cessus seemed pleased with his deal, although he confessed to Fede after they'd left that he was sure they'd been taken.

Fede didn't care. He liked the jacket. It was too short in the arms, but both he and Cessus ignored the fact, and it looked good with his goggles hanging around his neck. And the old white tee they'd gotten in the bargain was clean, which was a bonus.

"Matches your hair" said Cessus, knocking his skull gently. It was true; the gel had hardened overnight into a carefully manicured shell, comb-lines like record grooves across his skull.

They entered the center of electronics area and Fede was immediately lost. He'd never seen so many LEDs or wires or tiny miniaturized components in one place. It was geek heaven, and despite not knowing much about hardware he was instantly entranced. Cessus bought a wooden picnic basket first thing and began haggling components into it like a pro. One of their first big finds was a tall stack of disposable cameras. The proprietor mimed taking a picture and stabbed the air with his middle finger, and in the end they had to make him write it down and use their comm's character recognition to find out the cameras were all equipped with only one shot. As soon as Cessus read that he was on the guy like a shark on bait, and they soon had a couple dozen of them wrapped in monofilament plastic in the bottom of their basket.

"What a deal" snickered Cessus as they strolled on. "Glad we made him write it down, the little demon. Thought he'd sucker the foreigners, did he?"

"What are you going to do with them?" asked Fed.

"The capacitors in these things are enormous. A few wires, a little tape, and you got yourself a crazy powerful stun-gun that looks like a camera" he said. "Neat trick I learned as a kid. You'll love it. Here, hold this."

He made Fede hold a large glass jar while he sorted tiny capacitors into it.

Almost an hour later the basket was nearly unliftable, and Cessus was arguing with a tiny wizened woman over an equally tiny toolset.

"These sockets aren't worth shit" Cessus insisted, miming trying to turn a screw. The woman smiled and demonstrated how she couldn't tear them apart using both hands.

Fede was getting tired of shopping. As he shifted the basket he turned to see a mirror image of himself stop suddenly at the end of the aisle. There was a group of five young men, all roughly his age, each clad in tight highwater pants and patent-leather shoes, each wearing an identical leather motorcycle jacket over a white tee shirt. Fede blinked, noticed they were staring back at him.

His head swam. Their black hair was all waxed down in careful curves, and as he looked their shock vanished and they all stood straight, looking suddenly casual. Fede stepped closer to Cessus, trying to get his attention as the boys bore down on them.

Cessus waved Fede off and made a show of tossing the set back on a pile of plastic slippers. Fede turned to find the lead boy standing directly in front of him, staring at his hair.

The boy nodded.

Fede inhaled, nodded back.

The boys broke into smiles and bobbed their heads enthusiastically at each other. Fede noticed that only the lead boy had a real leather jacket. The rest were made of pleather, fakes, with wear-marks pressed into the plastic. They began to yammer at him in Chinese, reaching out to finger his jacket, stroke his pants where the wool pulled tight against his thighs, poke the swivel joint in his new ankles. Fede stumbled back a little, bumping into Cessus.

"Hey hey" Cessus yelled, turning. If he noticed the boys he didn't show it, and pulled Fede up only to push him back into the aisle. The woman called back to him and he rolled his eyes, returned to demand a better price.

The lead boy pointed at the bulge in Fed's pocket where his chord rested, mimed keying in a number. He repeated something, and suddenly the boys started pulling things from their pocket. One produced what looked like a pocket calculator, but with letters on it. Fede keyed in one of his comm numbers, not sure if it would route right through the Chinese proxies. It did, and in a moment the lead boy stood back, chewing his gum enthusiastically as Fed's comm buzzed. He keyed it on and a hiss of static rushed at him. The boy in front of him spoke, and half a second later a woman's voice came from his comm in a charming British accent;

"Glad to make your acquaintance. Are you American?"

Fede said yes, and the lead boy turned and announced something to the group. They all nodded again, heads bobbing madly.

"Are you here on vacation?" the boy spoke with the woman's voice again.

"Sort of" said Fed, then laughed as the boy cocked his head, confused.

"Yes" he said. More head bobbing.

"Are there many people with this outfit in America?" the voice asked.

Fede froze for a moment, panicked.

"No" he said, deciding to go with the truth. The boy stared back at him, waiting.

"It's special" he said. This met with mad applause and much bowing as the lead boy repeated it to the others.

"Do you like Pokey?" the voice asked.

"What in holy hell is going on?" asked Cessus, one hand holding the tiny toolset wrapped neatly in plastic film.