Machina Viva (8 page)

The clubs and saloons of Shadowtown did most of their business at night, inasmuch as the time of day could be determined due to the comparative lack of
Zeitgebers
down there. During the day, the buzz of activity centered around the docks. Eve took a look around out of curiosity. A cargo ship had recently arrived from Fullerton, and the teamsters were unpacking crates that had just been brought off the ship by the harnessmen, dangling from their perches above the open cargo decks of the docked ships. Eve couldn’t tell exactly what was in the crates, but it was some kind of complicated equipment judging by the number of synthetic gelatin filler pads they were throwing away.

Just then, Eve caught a smell of the discarded pads from a garbage bin. It was the same smell that had caused her so much embarrassment at the beach. She could already feel her judgment leaking away.

The pads were full of silicone gel.

As she made her way discreetly over to the garbage, she saw a couple of Security officers on patrol. They were carrying their usual loadout, dazzlers to blind and disorient a suspect and binding cement to immobilize them, and they were keeping an eye on all the ships in the harbor, paying particular attention to the gangplanks. They were watching to make sure she didn’t skip town. Well, she wasn’t about to go to Fullerton or the Klein Commune, not as long as all the best robot builders were still working in Tetropolis, in a building less than a mile away.

She inched toward the garbage and managed to fill a bag with gel packs, and on her way out of the harbor, she saw another Security patrol. One of them was carrying the usual equipment, but the other one was carrying a taspar.

For most law enforcement situations, a dazzler and a tube of binding cement would do the trick. The dazzler would shine a light at the subject, at which they would instinctively look. The light would then intensify to overload the subject’s optic nerve (or other optical receptor in the case of robots) and render them unconscious. The officer would then spray the subject’s extremities with binding cement to fix them in place until they could be collected. However, the city’s burgeoning criminal element had figured out how to shield their eyes from the dazzlers. Security had responded with the Thomas A. Swift Plasma Arc Rifle, a weapon that didn’t require a target’s attention to work. It used a high-powered laser to create a conductive plasma channel between the weapon and the target, and a split second later, it released an electrical charge along the channel that caused the target to spasm out of control, completely incapacitating them. With a subdermal scanner attachment, it would work on robots as well as humans.

Security only carried taspars to deal with experienced criminals, or if they were expecting violence.

Eve took her bag of silicone and very quietly edged away from the harbor, taking refuge in a saloon so she could indulge herself. She found a secluded table in a corner and used her scissors to pierce the bladder of one of the filler pads, and she sucked it dry.

“Morning, hon. Anything I can get you?”

Eve looked up with a jolt to see a woman standing in front of her. She was carrying a tray of drinks, so she must have been a waitress. She was also wearing a skin-tight halter top, a long sash around her waist, and a pair of over-the calf boots. To complete the look, she had a pair of animated tattoos, a starburst that rotated around her navel and a wavy band that wrapped around her midriff, giving the impression of a stylized rack and pinion. The whole ensemble suggested a holistic therapist, but not one of the conspicuously cultured ones up above. Holistic therapy in Shadowtown adopted more of a punk look, since the ship crews didn’t care so much for incense and peppermint.

“Excuse me?” said Eve.

“I’m Suzie, you friendly neighborhood serving wench,” said the woman, with a twinkle in her eye. “Can I get you a drink, or are you here to watch the run?” She gave Eve a discerning look. “Or did you want to come upstairs for a spell?”

Eve looked over to the big screen on the wall, around which most of the clientele were gathered. They were watching footage of a vapor run currently taking place in the deep vapor. It seemed from the attitudes of the onlookers that the current leader was not well thought of among them, but the favorite competitor was quickly gaining.

Vapor running was basically an elaborate race through a series of checkpoints. They involved around a dozen ships at a time, and the first to the finish took home the prize. The first vapor runners used kelper boats or other small utility vessels, but as the sport grew in popularity, ship builders began designing vessels solely for racing, incorporating extra thrusters or increased fuel capacity as the course dictated. There were many small courses, but three well-established venues drew the vast majority of the viewership among them. The Hummingbird Run was a cluster of checkpoints in mid-vapor. Their position was carefully monitored, and the pilots received constantly updated coordinates. This was because the checkpoints were constrained to their cluster, but within that they were free to drift among themselves. The challenge of the Hummingbird Run lay in anticipating the drift of the gates and maneuvering from one to the next, which required the ability to execute tight turns and rapid reversals in direction. Top finishers on the Hummingbird Run had supersonic reflexes and some of the most responsive ships in the vapor.

The Godwit Run, by contrast, was a ring of gates that reached all the way around the vapor at high altitude. A Godwit Runner could truthfully say that they had seen the entire vapor from one end to the other. The key skill required for the Godwit Run was not maneuverability, but endurance. The challenge was not so much physical as psychological, as pilots often spent weeks without seeing another creature and had to do what they could to keep from going mad from the isolation. Some people had attempted the Godwit with teams of pilots crewing the same ship to keep each other company, but multiplying the bodies also multiplied the provisions and the fuel, and thus the stress on the engine to carry the extra weight, so the skilled Godwit Runners remained those with unbounded patience, concentration, and tolerance for solitude.

The third run, the one being showed on the wall, was the most exciting and dangerous: the Kestrel Run. It ran through the deep vapor near Fullerton, where visibility was poor and ships had to button up to avoid vapor toxicity. Since the vapor was so thick, surveillance was difficult, and the officials of the run could only officiate using coordinate data. Kestrel Runners had quickly taken advantage of the lack of oversight, outfitting their ships with rams and other improvised weapons to disable their competition. Half the fun of the Kestrel Run was in guessing which of the ships would be eliminated first, and the added danger of unforeseen obstacles and interference from playful Merfolk made the Kestrel Run the most popular among the typical saloon crowd. The Hummingbird Run was favorite among piloting aficionados, and the Godwit Run was preferred by the armchair psychoanalysts and amateur warrior poets, but the Kestrel Run was for the people who just liked to see things smash together.

“No, no,” said Eve, “I’m here to watch the run.” She looked down at her table, and added, “I’m meeting a friend here soon. I’m just waiting here until they arrive.” Eve thought that would allay enough suspicion.

The waitress nodded and sashayed to another table to refill their drinks. Eve calmed down and looked around the rest of the saloon. There were all sorts of people in here, mainly dockworkers on their break and freighter crews killing time until their ships were ready to leave. Most of them were watching the run, but there were plenty of diversions that had their own small audiences, from card tables to a close combat ring. There were also plenty of other waitresses wandering around the floor, all of whom clearly doubled as holistic therapists and who were tending to the various denizens of the saloon in all sorts of ways. She even saw a couple of Stitchers, enjoying the activities with everyone else and quaffing the fermented kelp porridge drinks that they favored so much.

As Eve surveyed the saloon searching for a crowd to blend into, she reached for another gel pack and sliced it open, waiting and wondering what to do next.

16

Around midday, Will knocked on Raymond’s door. After a few moments, he heard Mrs. Whitlow toddle up to let him in.

“Oh, hello, dear.”

“Has anyone else returned yet?”

“Yes, Lucy’s sitting in at the table. And dear Raymond’s around the place somewhere, of course. Can I get you anything? Lovely stick of camphor?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Whitlow,” said Will. He went into the meeting room and sat across from Lucy, tapping a small data cartridge on the table.

“Productive morning, Will?” said Lucy, indicating the cartridge.

“I hope so,” said Will. “I got everything I thought was important, but I can’t tell what any of it means. It might be nothing. Philip doesn’t keep very organized notes, I’m afraid.”

“May I have a look, please?” said Raymond. A small hatch opened in the wall, revealing a number of slots and plugs. Will walked over and inserted the cartridge into one of them, which began to glow.

“There,” said Will. “Maybe you’ll be able to make something of it.”

“Possibly,” said Raymond. “It will at least serve to occupy me until Brian arrives.”

“Oh, is Brian due to arrive soon?” said Will. “When did you last hear from him?”

In the next room, Will and Lucy heard a noise that sounded like someone climbing through the window and landing unceremoniously on the floor.

“That would be him, then,” said Lucy as Brian staggered into the room. Mrs. Whitlow shuffled in, pulled out the chair at the end of the table, and arranged his cushion, and Brian managed to haul himself up the chair and onto the table, where he collapsed into the cushion with his legs twitching and his face buried in his own fur.

“All right, then,” said Will. “Now that we’re all here, we can discuss what we’ve learned so far. Brian, would you like to start?”

“No,” came the muffled reply.

“What happened?”

“Don’t want to talk about it!”

“All . . . right, then. Lucy?”

“I . . . yes, thanks, Will.” She glanced awkwardly at Brian for a moment, and then went on. “I looked up Eve’s address and stopped by to see what I could turn up. There was a pair of Security officers standing at the door. They wouldn’t let me in.”

“Human or robot?” said Raymond.

“One of each. I said that I was looking for Eve, and they started questioning me about what I knew about her.”

“Were you able to learn anything from them?” said Will.

“Well, the human one did let slip that they were looking for her in Shadowtown, but then the robot one shut him up, and that was that.”

“Well, you did learn something else of value, too.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s clearly something more going on than the bulletin said, if Security is keeping Eve’s rooms under such tight guard. Brian, were you able to track down Philip?”

“Ugh,” said Brian. “All I can say is, don’t ask me about kit rats.”

“What about kit rats?” said Lucy.

“Oh, for the love of goodness, how I hate kit rats!” said Brian. He rolled over on his cushion. “You know, it’s like they think it’s funny! Robot Production says to themselves, ‘Let’s be all educational!’ So they whip up a simple little tutorial kit for kids. Build Your Own Robot! A little speck of HPU, some cheap parts, and a furry bag to pack them all in, and some doting parents can give their little spawn his very own robot kit! He can learn all about robots, and maybe he can be a builder when he grows up! He can even build his own chassis, so he can make his own pet hamster or even a giant cockroach if he wants to! And it’s like a pet you can build and train yourself! Program the little vermin to fetch your socks for you, or maybe you want it to cuddle up with you at night and read you your favorite book!”

Lucy and Will shared an amused look. Brian was not inspired to rant about very many things, but those topics that did draw his ire tended to draw it in fairly consistent ways.

“And of course kids never stay interested in the vile little things for more than a few weeks, so eventually they lose track of them, and they end up climbing out the window and crawling out into the city, and they chew up wires just so they can stay charged, which just makes more work for Infrastructure. And you know the worst part?”

“What’s the worst part?” said Lucy, Will, and Raymond at the same time.

“They don’t even know how stunted and infuriating they are! They crawl around in the underbelly of the city and they get in your way and they jabber on and on and on. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? What’s going on? What are you doing now? How about now? Looks like fun! What are you doing now?’ Uuugh, it makes me want to find something small and rodent-like and smash it with a hammer.”

“How about a backrub instead?” said Lucy, as she massaged his shoulder blades. “Will that be enough to suppress your destructive impulses?”

“It might suffice for the moment,” said Brian, as he pressed his back against Lucy’s fingers, “but you know my long-term contentment cannot be purchased for such a paltry recompense.”

“And did your adventure in bitter hatred actually result in any information?” said Will.

“A little. I did some eavesdropping on the Security frequencies. They’ve got a new resident in their cells, which I’m assuming is Philip. Of course, locating him isn’t easy, since with their shuffling system, not even the officer that stuck him in his cell would know which one he’s in. They’re still looking for Eve, and they’re searching Shadowtown with taspar teams. They’re watching passenger manifests on all outgoing ships, and they’re searching the cargo shipments for stowaways.”

“Is there good news in there somewhere?” said Will.

“Well, they’re still looking for her, and it’s been at least sixteen hours,” said Brian. “Eve has obviously been clever enough to evade pursuit so far.”