The Night's Dawn Trilogy (376 page)

Terminal babe. Taller than him by a good ten centimetres, with the most gorgeous cloak of hair. A face with soft features
so delicate as to be way beyond anything cosmetic adapter packages could achieve—a natural beauty. She wore a white sleeveless
T-shirt that showed off a hot figure without revealing anything, and a scarlet skirt that didn’t reach her knees. But it was
the way she carried herself that clinched it for him. Perfectly composed, yet she still looked round the shop with child-like
curiosity.

The rest of the staff were all giving her clandestine glances as the doorway scanners datavised their findings. Then the smaller
girl entered behind her, and the scanners gave out an almost duplicate alert. How weird. They couldn’t possibly be a cop grab
operation, too obvious. Besides, the manager was pretty regular when it came to slipping the shop’s bung to the district station.

Andy told the customer he was dealing with, “Look it over, and have a think about it, you won’t find a better deal in London,”
then left them to scoot over to the girl before any of his so-called colleagues could reach her. If the floor manager had
seen, he’d probably lose his job.
Abandoning a customer before the sale is sealed—capital crime
.

“Hi, I’m Andy. I’m your sellrat. Anything you want, it’s my job to push the more expensive model on you.” He grinned broadly.

“You’re my what?” Louise asked. Her expression was half puzzlement, half smile.

Her accent did strange things along Andy’s spine, making him shiver. The ultimate in class, and foreign-exotic, too. He scanned
his enhanced retinas across her face, desperate to capture her image. Even if she walked out of his life now, she would never
be entirely lost. Andy had certain male-orientated software packages that could superimpose her into sensenviron recordings.
He felt shabby even as he recorded her.

“Sellrat. That’s what the public calls Customer Interactivity Officers round these parts.”

“Oh,” the smaller girl sighed dismissively. “He’s just a shopboy, Louise.”

Andy’s neural nanonics had to reinforce his smile. Why do they always come in pairs? And why always one obnoxious one? He
clicked his fingers and pointed both index fingers at the smaller girl. “That’s me. Try not to be too disappointed, I really
am here to help.”

“I’d like to buy some neural nanonics,” Louise said. “Is it very difficult?”

The request startled Andy. Her clothes alone must have cost more than twice his weekly pay, why didn’t she have a set already?
Beautiful and enigmatic. He smiled up at her. “Not at all. What were you looking for?”

She sucked her lower lip. “I’m really not very sure. The best I can afford, I suppose.”

“We don’t have them on Norfolk,” Genevieve said. “That’s where we’re from.”

Louise tried not to frown. “Gen, we don’t have to give our history to everyone we meet.”

Rich foreigners. Andy’s conscience struggled against temptation. Conscience won out, backed up by infatuation. I can’t sell
her a pirate set. Not her. “Okay, your lucky day. We’ve got some top-of-the-range sets in stock. I can fix a reasonable deal
for them, too, so there’s no need to get sweaty about the money. This way.”

He led them over to his section of the counter, managing to get her name on the way. His neural nanonics faithfully recorded
the way she walked, her body movements, even her speech pattern. Like most nineteen-year-olds who’d grown up in London’s manky
Islington district with its history of low-income employment, Andy Behoo fancied himself as a prospective net don. It combined
the goal of fringe-legal work (also his heritage), with very little actual effort. He’d taken didactic memory courses on electronics,
nanonics, and software every month since he’d passed his fourteenth birthday. His two-room flat was stocked to the ceiling
with ancient processor blocks and every redundant peripheral he’d managed to scrounge or steal. Everyone in his tenement knew
Andy was the guy to visit when you had a technical problem.

As to why such an embryonic datasmart prince of darkness was working as a sellrat in Jude’s Eworld, he had to get the money
to finance his revolutionary schemes from somewhere—or maybe even go to college. And the shop always employed technerd teenagers
as their outfront salesforce, they were the only ones who kept up to date on upgrades and new marques that would work on minimumwage
weeks.

The wall behind the counter was made up entirely from boxes of consumer electronics. All of them had colourful logos and names.
Louise read a few of the contents labels, not understanding a word. Genevieve was already bored; looking round at other parts
of the slightly shabby shop—one of seemingly hundreds of near-identical outlets along Tottenham Court Road. The inside was
a maze formed by counters and walls of boxes, with old company posters and holomorph stickers stuck up on every available
surface. Holographic screens flashed out enticing pictures of products in action. The section opposite Andy Behoo had a big
GAMES sign above it. And Louise had promised.

Andy began pulling boxes down and lining them up on the counter. They were rectangular, the size of his hand, wrapped in translucent
foil, with the manufacturer’s guarantee seal on the front. “Okay,” Andy said with familiar confidence. “What we have here,
the Presson050, is a basic neural nanonics set. Everything you need to survive daily arcology life: datavises, mid-rez neuroiconic
display, enhanced memory retrieval, axon block. It’s preformatted to NAS2600 standard, which means it can handle just about
every software package on the market. There’s a company-supplied didactic operations imprint that comes with it, but we do
sell alternative operations courses.”

“That sounds very… comprehensive,” Louise said. “How much?”

“How are you paying?”

“Fuseodollars.” She showed him her Jovian Bank disk.

“Okay. Good move. I can give you a favourable rate on that. So, we’re looking at about three and a half thousand, for which
we’ll throw in five free Quantumsoft supplement packages from their BCD30 range. Your choice of functions. I can arrange finance
for you if you want, better percentage than any Sol-system bank.”

“I see.”

“Then we’ve got—” His hand moved on to the next box.

“Andy. What’s the top of the range, please?”

“Okay, good question.” He disappeared behind the counter for a moment, returning with a fresh box and a suitably awed tone.
“Kulu Corporation ANI5000. The King himself uses this model. We’ve only got three left because of the starflight quarantine.
These are most wanted items all over town right now. But I can still give you level retail.”

“And that’s better than the first one?”

“Yes indeedie. Runs NAS2600, of course, with parallel upgrade potential for when the 2615 comes out.”

“Um. What’s this NAS number you keep saying?”

“Neural Augmentation Software. It’s the operating system for the whole filament network, and the number is the version. 2600
was introduced turn of the century, and boy was it a bugfeist when it came out. But it’s a smooth proved system now. And the
supplement packages are just about unlimited, every software house in the Confederation publishes compatible products. If
you’re going serious professional you can add physiological monitors, encyclopaedia galactica, employment waldoing, SII suit
control, weapons integration, linguistic translation, news informant, starship astrogration, net search—the full monty. Then
there’s games applications as well, I can’t even list them you have so many.” He patted the box with reverence. “No fooling,
Louise, this set gives you the full interface range: nerve overrides to control your body, sense amplification, sight-equivalent
neuroiconic generation, complete reality sensen-viron, implant command, total indexed memory recall.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Got to warn you: not cheap. Seventeen thousand fuseodollars.” He held up his hands in placation. “Sorry.”

Daddy will kill me, Louise thought, but it has to be done. I promised Fletcher, and that horrid Brent Roi never really believed
me. “All right.”

Andy smiled in admiration. “Talk about power choosing. That’s impressive, Louise. But, hey, I can lighten the burden. For
a 5000 set, we’ll throw in twenty-five software supplements, and give you twenty per cent discount on the next twenty-five
you buy from us.”

“That sounds like a jolly good deal,” she said inanely, swept along by his enthusiasm. “How long does it take to get a set?”

“For one this complex, ninety minutes. I can give you the operating didactic at the same time.”

“What’s one of those?”

Andy’s breezy ebullience faltered in the face of such an astonishing question. He started to access his encyclopaedia’s file
on Norfolk, and put a news search in primary mode for good measure. “You don’t have them on your planet?”

“No. Our constitution is pastoral, we don’t have much technology. Or weapons.” Defending Norfolk, yet again.

“No weapons; hey, good policy. Didactic imprints are sort of like the instruction manual, but it gets written directly inside
your brain, and you never forget it.”

“Well if I’m going to spend this much money, I certainly need to know how to work it, don’t I?”

Andy laughed heartily, then stopped quickly when he caught sight of Genevieve’s expression. How come nobody ever produced
a suavity program he could load? Talking to and impressing girls would be so much easier. The floor supervisor was datavising
questions about his oddball customer and the door sensor alert, which he answered briefly. Then the Norfolk information started
to emerge.

“We have a preparation room,” Andy gestured to the back of the shop.

“Louise, I want to look round,” Genevieve said win-ningly. “There might be something for me.”

“All right. But if you see something just ask, don’t touch anything. That’s all right, isn’t it?” she asked Andy.

“Sure thing.” Andy winked at Genevieve and gave her a thumbs up. Her sneer could have withered an oak tree.

Louise followed Andy into the small preparation room, a cube-space whose walls were fashioned from dark panelling, with various
electronic units poking out. It was furnished with just a glass cubicle, like a shower but without any visible nozzle; and
a low padded bench similar to a doctor’s examination table.

The attention Andy showed her was somewhat amusing. She thought possibly it wasn’t entirely due to her high-spending customer
status. Most of the young gentlemen (and others—slightly older) on Norfolk had shown a similar, if less blatant, interest
over the last couple of years. Now, of course, she was wearing what amounted to little more than an exhibitionist’s costume.
Though by Earth’s standards it was tame. But the top and skirt had made her look so damn good in the department store’s mirror.
She could hold her own against London girls in this. For the first time in her life she was
sassy
. And free to enjoy it. And loving it.

The glass door slid shut with a definitive
click
behind her. She shot Andy a suspicious glance.

______

“Bugger,” Western Europe muttered as his linkages with Louise were cut. He switched to Genevieve, which was about as useless;
the little girl was investigating a Gothic fantasy, standing in a castle courtyard as a column of priestess warriors rode
off to battle on their unicorns.

Western Europe had wanted Louise to discover the bugs at some stage. He just hadn’t planned on it being quite so early in
the operation. But then, buying neural nanonics wasn’t what he expected of a girl from Norfolk, either. She was quite a remarkable
little thing, really.

______

Andy Behoo scratched at his arm awkwardly. “You do know you’ve been stung, don’t you?” he asked.

“Stung?” Louise took a guess. “You’re not talking about insects, are you?”

“No. The door sensors spotted it as soon as you and your sister came in. There are nanonic bugs in your skin; like miniature
radios I guess you’d call them. They transmit all sorts of information about where you are, and what’s going on around you.
There are four on you, Genevieve has three. That we can detect, anyway.”

She drew in a shocked breath. How stupid! Of course Brent Roi wouldn’t let her walk round freely. Not someone who’d tried
to sneak a possessed down to Earth. He was bound to want to see what she did next. “Oh sweet Jesus.”

“I reckon Govcentral must be nervous about foreigners right now, especially as you come from Norfolk,” Andy said. “What with
the possessed, and all. Don’t worry, this room is screened, they can’t hear us now.”

His sellrat swagger had diminished as he tried to reassure her. In fact, he’d become almost sheepish, which made him actually
quite pleasant, she thought. “Thank you for telling me, Andy. Do you scan all your customers?”

“Oh yes. Mainly for dodgy implants. There’s quite a few gangs try to siphon our software fleks. Then we do sell bugs ourselves,
see, so sometimes we get cops coming in and trying to find who those customers are. Jude’s Eworld has a strong neutrality
policy, which we enforce. We have to, or we’d never sell anything.”

“Can you get them off me?”

“All part of our customer service. I can give you a more detailed scan, too, see if there are any others.”

She followed his instructions, standing in the cubicle, which gave her a comprehensive bodyscan down to a sub-cellular level.
So now someone else knows I’m pregnant, she acknowledged in resignation. No wonder Earth’s population value their privacy
so, they don’t get very much of it. The bodyscan located another two bugs. Andy applied a small rectangular patch similar
to a medical package (same technology, he said) to her arms and leg; then she pulled up her T-shirt up so he could press it
against her back.

“Is there any way of knowing if the police sting me again?” she asked.

“An electronic warfare block should tell you. We had a shipment of front-line equipment in from Valisk a couple of months
back. I think there’s still some left. Good stuff.”

“I think you’d better put one of those removal patches on the list as well.” Louise called Genevieve into the room, and explained
what’d happened. Thankfully her sister was more curious than outraged. She peered at her skin after Andy took the nanonic
package away, fascinated by the removal process. “It doesn’t look any different,” she complained.