Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (15 page)

Starli nodded, some of
the tension easing from her stance. "Mir Tatian. I'm Starli
Massingberd."

"Honored, mirrim,"
Tatian said, and knew better than to offer his hand. "Reiss tells
me you repair implants."

"For
kittereen
racers, yes." Starli tipped her head to the side, the wrinkles at
the corners of her eyes tightening either in contemplation or the
beginnings of laughter. "And you should know I'm not licensed."

"Reiss told me. He
also said you were good."

Starli smiled then, a
quick baring of teeth. Tatian was suddenly aware again of the
hovering technicians, pretending to work while they listened. "He's
right, mir, and good costs money. But I give discounts for metal, and
I'm willing to make terms."

"And I," Tatian
said, "would like to hear what you can do for me before we start
talking prices."

Starli's smile
widened, became for a fleeting instant genuinely amused. "Fair
enough. Will you step into my office, mir?"

Tatian looked at Reiss,
who said quickly, "I'll wait here." Tatian nodded, and the
younger man moved to join the technicians, who relaxed at his
approach.

The office was tucked
into a corner, a square room that had obviously been an afterthought.
The walls were glass brick, the cheapest of Hara's building
materials, half clear, half translucent, and in the instant before
Tatian followed her into the milk-white room, he could see how the
interior lights glowed through the walls, like radiant ice. It was an
odd image, on a planet as warm as Hara, and he was smiling as she
shut the door behind them. Starli gave him a curious look, as though
she wondered what had amused him, but said only, "What's your
system, then?"

Tatian shrugged out of
his suncheater, laid his arm on the battered desktop, turning his
wrist to expose the control plate on the inside of his right forearm.
"Inomata Cie., parts and bioware." Their implants were the
standard throughout the Concord Worlds; if you didn't wear
Inomata's implants, you wore their clones.

Starli grunted,
switching on a powerful viewlens, and tugged it down toward his arm.
She turned away and rummaged on shelves crowded with bits of
equipment to produce a black-foam cradle and a set of multicolored
cables. "Have a seat and let me run a few quick tests. No charge."

Tatian nodded, and
pulled a stool close to the desk, sat down opposite her. He placed
his arm in the cradle, plate uppermost, and Starli pulled the
viewlens closer still, its thick edge blocking his sight. He could
feel the heat of the lights, and then, more distantly, the click of
the plate release. He tilted his head slightly, wanting to see what
she was doing, but the viewlens was still in his way. Starli saw the
movement, however, and glanced up, a quizzical expression on her
face.

"Do you want to
watch?"
Most people
don't
, her tone implied.

Tatian said, "Yes. If
you don't mind."

She shook her head. "No
problem." She pulled the viewlens down and slightly to one side. "How's
that, can you see all right now?"

"Thanks."

Starli mumbled an
absent acknowledgment and leaned close over the lens. Now that the
flesh-toned plate was removed, Tatian could see the shallow cavity,
and the gray, faintly spongy surface of the interface box, with its
remote reader, circular i/o port and the quintet of smaller needle
ports surrounding it. Flesh welds bound it into place, the ridged
scars normally concealed by the protective plate: Frankenstein
welding, the cheapest kind of implant surgery. Starli fanned a
handful of fine wires and plugged them deftly into the needle ports;
watching her certainty, Tatian began to relax. She was more like a
mem than most women, certainly more so than the fem he had briefly
suspected she might be, stolid and quietly competent in her work--but
that was an old stereotype, and just as untrue as all the less
flattering ones. Prane Am had been a technician, too, and a good one,
and there was no mistaking her for a mem.

"All right," Starli
said, and plugged a jack into the main port. "Tell me when it
hurts."

"Right now," Tatian
said, and winced as more static sang along his nerves.

Starli murmured
something, squinting through the viewlens. Tatian could see blue
lines and pale pink shapes drifting in the glass, but it was
impossible to read their message at this angle. Static ebbed and
flowed along his arm, was replaced briefly by numbing cold, and then
the sensations vanished.

"Well, you're in
luck, mir," Starli said. "It's the port, that's all."

"All" was a
relative term, Tatian thought, but he understood her point. "Which
one?"

Starli pushed the
viewlens to one side, met his eyes for the first time across the
desktop. "I can run some more tests and tell you for sure--at a
price--or you can replace the box altogether. Frankly, I'd
recommend the latter."

Tatian waited and,
after an instant, tilted his head to one side. Starli sighed and
folded the viewlens back down to the desktop, then tugged the cables
one by one from the needleports.

"You can get a better
deal at the port yourself, and you're likely to have better luck
getting it officially imported--or whatever--than I would."

That was also true, and
Tatian nodded slowly, thinking of Prane Am. If he wanted a good deal,
he would have to go to her, which was not a pleasant thought--or
maybe Reiss had connections there as well. He said, "Probably. Do
you do installation?"

"Yes. But--"
Starli showed her teeth again. "I'd want to be paid in metal."

"And I'd want to
see your medical set-up," Tatian said, and matched her tooth for
tooth.

"Fair enough,"
Starli said. She pushed herself up from her chair, went to a cabinet
built into the wall, and tugged open the double doors. The first
layer of the interior folded down automatically into an operating
table, the clean-field lighting automatically; the multicolored
telltales of the monitoring system glowed in the space behind it.
Tatian scanned it quickly, recognizing the bulk of a doc-in-a-box and
the familiar stacks of test equipment, and only then saw the twined
KJ etched into the edge of the table. It was an older system, but it
had been top of the line once: it was certainly good enough to
replace an interface box.

"Okay," he said
aloud. "What are you asking?"

"Fifty kilos of hard
steel," Starli answered promptly.

"Try reality."

"That's two
starcrates," Starli said. "NAPD must be able to spare that
much--especially compared to what it'd cost you to get this done
in the port."

She certainly bargained
like a fem. Tatian said, "I still have to buy the box. You're not
saving me anything there. Besides, star-crates aren't cheap, and
they come out of my budget. Twenty thousand meg." That was eighty
percent of what he'd pay in the port, but she wanted metal: she
would take less in cash, if she could get a starcrate or two with it.
He ran the company inventory rapidly through his head, enjoying the
game. He knew they couldn't spare any of the working crates--they
were too expensive, nearly a thousand concord dollars apiece--but
most of the value was in the electronics package. If there were any
damaged crates, he might be able to use the metal shell to buy her
services.

"I'll take a crate
instead," Starli said, as though she'd read his thought. "Or
just the metal. Forty kilos hard steel."

"I can get you ten,"
Tatian said. "And five thousand meg in cash."

"Thirty kilos, and no
cash needed," Starli answered.

"Twenty and six
thousand," Tatian said. "I--even the company doesn't have that
much metal to spare. And you're not supplying the parts."

There was a little
silence, and then Starli sighed and touched the latch plate to refold
the operating theater into its cabinet. "All right. Twenty kilos
hard steel, and six thousand meg, White or Red cash. Agreed?"

The currencies issued
by the White and Red Watches were the most stable, had the best rate
of exchange against the concord dollar, though most Harans didn't
bother with those considerations. But then, Tatian thought, Starli
would be buying metal, or metal parts, with a good bit of her fee,
and that meant dealing with the port technicians. "Agreed."

Starli bowed, touching
lips and forehead. "Then it can be done at your convenience, mir.
Whenever you get the box, give me an hour's warning, and I can put
it in."

"Good enough,"
Tatian said. "Thanks, mirrim."

They went back out into
the bay. Reiss was sitting with the technicians, passing a bottle of
something from hand to hand. He rose hurriedly at Tatian's
approach, but not so quickly that Tatian couldn't recognize the
familiar squat brown jar of quarta. He lifted an eyebrow at that, but
said only, "I need you to run me out to the port."

Reiss nodded. "No
problem."

"It had better not
be," Tatian said, and Reiss had the grace to look abashed. He
looked at Starli. "I'll contact you then, mirrim, about the
scheduling."

"As I said, give me
warning," Starli answered. "I'll be ready."

Tatian nodded, and
swung himself into the jigg's passenger seat. Reiss kicked the
starter twice, and the engine caught with a roar that was almost
deafening in the confined space. He twisted the throttle, muting the
sound, and backed decorously out into the hot street.

Traffic was heavier
than ever, and Reiss took an indirect route through the city,
skirting the Souk and the congested streets that led into Startown.
Even so, progress was slow, and he glanced over his shoulder in
apology.

"Sorry--" His eyes
slid sideways then, fixing on something in the crowd behind the jigg,
and he swerved abruptly, pulling the jigg into a partially cleared
space between a four-up and an unloading shay.

"Reiss?" Tatian
looked over his shoulder, scanning the crowd, but saw nothing
immediately out of the ordinary. Then Reiss was wresting himself free
of the safety webbing. "Hey--"

"Æ,
mosstaas
,"
Reiss called, and levered himself out of the jigg before Tatian could
even think of stopping him. The crowd parted for him, and Tatian
swore under his breath. In the center of the square they had just
skirted, by the dry fountain, two of the city militia had stopped a
woman--were questioning her, by their stance and her gestures. Reiss
shoved his way through the crowd, which melted around him:
not
a good sign at all
, Tatian thought, and freed himself from
the jigg.
Why the hell does
he have to do this?
He started after the younger man,
hoping that their off-world clothes, and the pharmaceutical mark on
the nose of the jigg would keep them out of trouble.

"--mistake," Reiss
was saying, as Tatian came into earshot. "Astfer works with me."

"So the
wyfie's
yours?" one of the
mosstaas
demanded, smirking, and Tatian bit back another curse. Reiss was
getting them involved in trade, despite his--despite
Masani's--explicit prohibitions.

"We work together,"
Reiss said again.

The woman looked warily
from him to the
mosstaas
and back again. Or, rather, the fem: this close, Tatian could see the
height, the full breasts and narrow hips, the typical build that %er
off-world shirt and trousers did nothing to conceal. The other
militiaman gave a snort of laughter, and the first one said, "I
just bet the
wyfie
gives excellent--service."

He wore a pin at his
collar, not a rank marking, but an anchor on a bed of red and white
flames. Both were symbols of the Captain, Tatian knew, and then
remembered someone saying that Tendlathe's party had adopted the
combined signs as their badge. So this was trade again, Tatian
thought. And more than that, the damned two-sex model. He said, "Is
there a problem, officer?" He spoke in
franca
:
it was unlikely either of the
mosstaas
understood creole, but more than that, the reminder of off-world
power could only make the situation worse.

"Œ," one of the
mosstaas
began,
and Reiss cut in quickly, in creole.

"Ser, I told them
Astfer works for us, for NAPD. She's a good friend, they say she
was throwing rocks at one of the ranas last night--inciting
trouble."

"Which I was not,"
the fem said, in
franca
.
%e sounded more annoyed than anything, but Tatian could see %er hands
trembling. %e seemed to realize it %erself, and shoved them into %er
pockets.

Tatian took a deep
breath. One way or another, this was likely to be expensive--and
could be very expensive, if the Old Dame found out and didn't
believe his explanation--but he'd taken a dislike to the
mosstaas
the minute they called %er "
wyfie
." "What's the problem, miri?"
he said, in
franca
.

The militiamen
exchanged glances, and then the taller of the two, a bulky man with a
ragged mustache and beard, said, "Mir, this--woman--was seen
throwing rocks at a rana band last night. There have been a number of
complaints filed against the
wrangwys
lately, and they have to be investigated."

"Last night?"
Tatian said, and kept his tone remote. "Our people were working
late last night, getting ready for the harvest." He slipped his
hand into his pocket as he spoke, a familiar, ostentatious movement.
The taller man's eyes followed the gesture, but his partner was
looking at the fem.

"We've got
witnesses, and a complaint from someone who matters--"

"Witnesses who could
be mistaken," the first
mosstaas
said firmly. "With people like her--hells, they look alike."

"I'm sure there's
been a mistake," Tatian said, and took his hand out of his pocket.
He kept a wad of White Watch bills folded there, for emergencies, and
let the corner of the folded packet show as he extended his hand. "Let
me recoup your losses."