Xenoform (19 page)

‘I don’t know – maybe one of the drugs we use in surgery, or after – maybe one of them leaves people prone to infection by the greenshit. P’raps the greenshit ’s everywhere, waitin’ for the right conditions to grow. Maybe something in the nanovat software we use to grow mods is makin’ it happen. I’ve checked it over though and I didn’t find nothin’. I only use clean software, man – it’s all legit, honest! Nobody knows why it’s happenin’. Nobody!’

‘Why is it only in the Undercity – the black market?’ asked Roberts. He twirled the gun in small, emphatic circles as he spoke.

‘
It fuckin’ ain’t, man,’ said Spake earnestly. ‘At first, maybe, but people are walking out of
legitimate
bodyshops with it, now. It’s gonna cause an economic meltdown, or some shit. They can’t keep it quiet for long. I dunno what’s goin’ on, but it’s way too big for you boys ‘n’ girls. I’m shuttin’ shop and movin’ into drugs or something.’

‘How noble of you,’ said Whistler, and kicked him. Spake squeaked and tried to back into the wall. ‘Anything in his shop?’ she asked the others.

‘No,’ said Roberts. ‘Only surgical kit, drugs and an evident and frightening lack of hygiene. Vat looks damned ancient but the stats are all okay. You think we should take it, maybe let Tec strip it down?’

‘No, man!’ cried Spake, holding out his hands in appeal. ‘You can’t take my vat! Please!’

‘Why would you fucking need it?’ demanded Whistler. ‘I thought you were moving into drugs.’

‘Please, I have a wife to support – I’ll sell it, or just sell the components. I need it!’

Whistler wrinkled her face up in distaste. ‘We’d probably catch some disease off it anyway. Come on.’

They squeezed past the cowering Spake and out. Sofi, who never liked to be left out of anything, kicked him on the way past, harder than Whistler had done. Her face was expressionless. They climbed the steps back into the chill night air. The car park was a desolate waste. Disused tenements hovered like spectres in the fog. From somewhere came a thunderous symphony of petrol engines – the racers had moved on into the streets, where they continued their sport out of sight, the heavy clattering of metal hooves echoing up and down the road.

The three harvesters stood in the wide space, their hearts heavy and hopes diminished. Whistler began to feel a suppressive sleepiness creeping up on her. She knew it was the adrenaline wearing off and patted herself down for the Get-Up stubby. She clicked it in her palm without taking it out. Roberts heard the quiet hiss and demanded a dose himself. His face was haggard and his scar looked more deeply etched than usual. He took the Get-Up, clicked, then stood momentarily trembling as it surged through his blood. His knuckles whitened around the plastic cylinder of the stubby. He shook himself like a dog drying itself and offered the Get-Up to Sofi. She took it, clicked it, handed it back, displaying no outward effects of the drug at all. Sofi had the constitution of a dinosaur – nothing seemed to affect her much, except early mornings.

‘Where was it, again, Rob?’ asked Whistler.

‘Twenty-seven Wrexham Place. Guy called Vivao.’

Whistler knew Roberts to be a useful repository of knowledge. He ran a smart-app on his DNI which picked out salient pieces of information in speech or text and recorded them. Occasionally he would have to change the spot behind his ear. Sofi could have done the same, naturally, but such administrative tasks bored her to a state of near-depression. Sofi was a fighter, not a secretary.

‘Right, then, let’s go see him. Direct us.’

‘Let’s get the van, then. I’ve done enough bloody walking for today,’ said Sofi.

Roberts’s eyes narrowed as he communicated with the wagon. Whistler waited impatiently, kicking her heels. Bits of rubbish drifted past like modern tumbleweeds.

‘
Well?’ prompted Sofi, one hand on her hip. Roberts looked eminently puzzled.
‘
Well
?’ she repeated with added rudeness.

‘
I couldn’t get any sense from it. I think something’s scrambling the signal.
Shit
! I hope the damn thing hasn’t got a virus. I guess we should go and get it, then.’

‘Right!’ exclaimed Sofi, severely displeased and already turning and stalking off into the night. ‘Fucking come on, then!’ she bellowed without stopping.

‘Who hired her, again?’ asked Roberts drily.

Whistler shrugged. ‘Seemed a good idea at the time. Come on.’

‘
Yeah, I know, I know.’ The two trailed after Sofi, not trying to catch her up. ‘Look, maybe we can get Vivao tomorrow – call it a night for now.
She’s
obviously in a strop again.’

‘Yeah, I’d love to. I’m burned, to be honest. But what if this guy dies overnight? He’s no use to us then. We don’t have any other leads to go on.’

‘You believe the surgeon?’

‘About what?’ Sofi was waiting for them at the edge of the car park, throwing and catching her knife with implied menace.

‘About all of it – the scale of it, him not knowing what’s causing it. All of it.’

‘Yay!’ said Sofi with sarcastic joy as they caught her up. ‘Slow team crosses the line.’

‘Give me a break, Sofe,’ said Whistler. A large unmarked truck was jack-knifed across the road outside the car park, all its doors open, its interior utterly plundered. It hadn’t been there when they had come in this way. Probably the Nightriders – they could be heard in the distance, whooping war cries as they raced away. Maybe they weren’t so small-time these days.

‘Yes, oh leader,’ mocked Sofi, bowing low. Whistler round kicked to the side of her head, but only playfully. Sofi wheeled away, striking up a fighting pose. ‘Yeah?’ she taunted. ‘Yeah?’

‘Come on, you young lovers,’ said Roberts, and he headed off in the direction where the van was parked in a spot designated safe by Roland earlier that night.

They trudged in a haze of drugs and tiredness through the shifting Undercity greys. Whistler felt like a woman crossing a desert on the verge of fatal dehydration, even though they only walked for a couple of miles. Pods were on the street here and there, sneaking quietly about their business. There weren’t many people around, though. The few small groups they saw seemed to deliberately avoid them. Possibly, Whistler reflected, Sofi’s heavily scowling face was proving an effective deterrent.

Once, they passed a tumbledown breeze-block house where a mottled weed as big as a tree had forced its way in and out of the walls as if sewing the decaying fabric of the building together. In one corner a cloud of spyflies buzzed in confused congregation, trapped between equidistant scrambler-baits, not near enough to be drawn in, but too fearful of their proximity to move. The trio stood and regarded them interestedly for a minute before concluding that yes, it was weird, but no, it wasn’t important enough to stand and stare at. They forced themselves to move on.

They reached the shaded alcove where the van was parked, a shadow wrapped in shadows, seeming to deflect any attempts to look at it directly. Nobody had touched it, as evidenced by the fact that it was still here and there were no loose body-parts scattered about.

‘Hey, wagon,’ said Whistler and the door opened. The van nosed out of its filthy stable to facilitate their boarding, bobbing minutely on its cushion.

‘Why didn’t you answer me, you sod?’ demanded Roberts as he climbed aboard. ‘I was calling you.’

The van was not allowed an actual voice – Whistler hated when it spoke, although she couldn’t explain exactly why – so it didn’t answer vocally. She was fond of it as a functional tool, but no more than that. She knew that Roberts would be conversing with it by DNI. Sofi scarcely had anything to say to the van. She hardly spoke to anybody unless she had to, and viewed any communication with the van as yet another chore. But Roberts spent hours chatting with the damn thing sometimes. Whistler couldn’t imagine how it had that much to say.

Roberts took the main computer console and Whistler assumed her customary driving position. Sofi sat in her usual space in the back, where she judged herself least likely to be called upon to actually do anything or say anything. Telltale LEDs, holo-cubes and screens lit up festively, tie-dying the shadows with colour.

‘Hey, I’ve got a message from Tec on here,’ said Roberts, his fingers playing across a virtual keypad.

‘
A
message
?’ asked Whistler, half-turning.

‘Yeah, says he couldn’t get through to us direct, but he managed to get the van. He’s taken in some stray. I think he said the guy had come from the sewers.’

‘Great!’ enthused Sofi sarcastically. ‘Why does everything have to be bursting with the fucking bizarre?’

‘The sewers?’ parroted Whistler.

‘Yeah, that’s what he says. I’ve sent back to let him know we’re okay. He says this guy needs some computer time, and he can pay well if they can figure out how to access his accounts.’

‘
If
? What the fuck is
if
?’

‘
A conjunction meaning
on condition that
,’ answered Roberts in flat tones.

‘Fuck you!’ shrieked Sofi, making to get out of her seat.

‘We’d better find this guy Vivao first,’ answered Roberts without looking up.

Whistler was impressed that Sofi managed to ignore this and sank instead back into her seat, nose pressed to the translucent skin of the van, glass-eyed and rage unusually contained. Whistler drove them out into the narrow street. Thunderheads were steam-rollering the sky to the south. Roland’s place was nearby and she considered how preferable it would be to spend the next hour or two talking weapons with him in the warmth of his ‘office’ rather than pursuing this fool’s errand. But business was business and pay days had to come back round again soon or they were all in deep trouble.

She took her frustrations out on the controls of the van, careening through the quiet streets aggressively. She turned out wide and swerved into the apex of a sharp corner, opening the throttle all the way. Indeterminate objects whooshed past close on the left, the noise of their passing so loud that several times Sofi thought they had actually hit something and appealed to Whistler to ease off. She was entirely ignored. The van raced on through the Undercity. A dopey bird took off too late from its path and thumped on the front of it like a thrown bundle of rags, disappearing into its wake in a cloud of feathers.

Soon Roberts informed Whistler that Wrexham Place was just two blocks away. She began to slow down, her body visibly relaxing in proportion to the reduction in velocity. They would have to close in on foot, hopefully a little more clandestinely than they had approached Spake’s place. She found a corner enclosed by squat buildings housing huge cable-car motors. Tall pylons wore massive gears like medals. The cable draped off into the dark streets. Snarls of untwining wire bunched along its length. Far away a single cable-car hung motionless before a vast warehouse, its broken windows like haunted eyes.

They tucked the van into the crease between two of the small buildings where the snaggle of machinery would break up its lines and blend it in. The dead street in front of it would make for a long, clear avenue of fire should anyone approach uninvited. The van was left to make the calls regarding its defence. It had used to have a camouflage projector at one time, but something had gone wrong with the complex equipment that ran it and Whistler had never paid to have Tec fix it. She preferred to be able to see the thing when it was needed.

They disembarked, hardly talking, and Roberts pointed them in the right direction. A thin, bat-winged young woman in hooker’s uniform watched them from across the road, smoking moodily. Her body was rippled with additional breasts and her wings beat lazily at the air like an idling engine. Her legs were pallid wax in the darkness. A bass-heavy sound system was pumping out the Deaf Composer’s
Spunk, Funk and Junk
from somewhere in the bowels of the building behind her and the sound-waves tore at her reeferette smoke with each throb of the bass.

‘Look at that fucking gargoyle,’ commented Sofi, nodding towards the young woman.

‘No accounting for taste, Sofe,’ replied Whistler as they set off towards Wrexham Place on foot, Roberts following behind like a bodyguard.

They walked in the shade of a line of low towerblocks. Across the road a swathe of bare, scarred earth stretched away into the night. It looked like the grave where a park had been buried. People, or at least humanoids, of indeterminate number were running around in the darkness there. Whistler saw Roberts staring at them, presumably observing them by infrared, his face set and squinting. He didn’t say anything, so she assumed it was safe. Sofi kicked a can and it clattered racketously into the littered depths of a faceless old shop.

‘Keep it down!’ Whistler hissed, more harshly than she had really intended. Roberts simply shook his head contemptuously.

They rounded a corner and Roberts ushered them into the cover of a khaki-coloured bush that bloomed before a block of flats like a cloud of smoke. There was a wide hollow in the bush like a cave and they pressed themselves tightly into the piss-stinking space. The ground was springy with a thick mulch of rotting paper and food-wrappers. Some lights were on in the block but their temporary hiding place was well-concealed from at least three sides.