Chapter NINETEEN
Ortega’s fightdrome was an ancient bulk carrier, moored up in the north end of the Bay, alongside acres of abandoned warehouses. The vessel must have been over half a kilometre long with six clearly discernible cargo cells between stem and stern. The one at the rear appeared to be open. From the air, the body of the carrier was a uniform orange that I assumed was rust.
“Don’t let it fool you,” Ortega grunted as we circled. “They’ve polymered the hull a quarter-metre thick all over. Take a shaped charge to sink it now.”
“Expensive.”
She shrugged. “They’ve got the backing.”
We landed on the quay. Ortega killed the motors and leaned across me to peer up at the ship’s superstructure, which at a glance appeared to be deserted. I pushed myself back into the seat a little, discomfited in equal parts by the pressure of the lithe torso in my lap and my slightly overfull stomach. She felt the movement, seemed suddenly to realise what she was doing and pulled herself abruptly upright again.
“No one home,” she said awkwardly.
“So it seems. Shall we go and have a look?”
We got out into the customary blanket-snap of wind off the Bay and made for a tubular aluminium gangway that led onto the vessel near the stern. It was uncomfortably open ground, and I crossed it with an eye constantly sweeping the railed and craned lines of the ship’s deck and bridge tower. Nothing stirred. I squeezed my left arm lightly against my side to check the Fibregrip holster hadn’t slipped down, as the cheaper varieties often did after a couple of days’ wear. With the Nemex I was tolerably sure I could air out anyone shooting at us from the rail.
In the event it wasn’t necessary. We reached the end of the gangway without incident. A slim chain was fixed across the open entrance with a hand-lettered sign hung on it.
PANAMA ROSE
FIGHT TONITE—22.00
GATE PRICE DOUBLE
I lifted the rectangle of thin metal and looked at the crude lettering dubiously.
“Are you sure Rutherford called here?”
“Like I said before, don’t let it fool you.” Ortega was unhooking the chain. “Fighter chic. Crude’s the in thing. Last season it was neon signs, but even that’s not cool enough now. Place is f*cking globally hyped. Only about three or four like it on the planet. There’s no coverage allowed in the arenas. No holos, not even televisuals. You coming, or what?”
“Weird.” I followed her down the tubular corridor, thinking of the freak fights I’d gone to when I was younger. On Harlan’s World, all fights were broadcast. They got the highest viewing figures of any transmitted entertainment online. “Don’t people like watching this sort of stuff?”
“Yeah, of course they do.” Even with the distortion of the echoing corridor, I could hear Ortega’s lip curling in the tone of her voice. “Never get enough of it. That’s how this scam works. See, first they set up the Creed—”
“Creed?”
“Yeah, Creed of Purity or some such shit. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to interrupt? Creed goes, you want to see the fight, you go see it in the flesh. That’s better than watching it on the web. More classy. So, limited audience seating, sky-high demand. That makes the tickets very sexy, which makes them very expensive, which makes them even more sexy and whoever thought of it just rides that spiral up through the roof.”
“Smart.”
“Yeah, smart.”
We came to the end of the gangway, and stepped out again onto a wind-whipped deck. On either side of us the roofing of two of the cargo cells swelled smoothly to waist height like two enormous steel blisters on the ship’s skin. Beyond the rear swelling, the bridge towered blankly into the sky, seeming entirely unconnected with the hull we were standing on. The only motion came from the chains of a loading crane ahead of us that the wind had set swinging fractionally.
“The last time I was out here,” said Ortega, raising her voice to compete with the wind, “was because some dipshit newsprick from WorldWeb One got caught trying to walk recording implants into a title fight. They threw him into the Bay. After they’d removed the implants with a pair of pliers.”
“Nice.”
“Like I said, it’s a classy place.”
“Such flattery, lieutenant. I hardly know how to respond.”
The voice coughed from rusty-looking tannoy horns set on two-metre-high stalks along the rail. My hand flew to the Nemex butt, and my vision cycled out to peripheral scan with a rapidity that hurt. Ortega gave me an almost imperceptible shake of the head and looked up at the bridge. The two of us swept the superstructure for movement in opposite directions, coordinating unconsciously. Under the immediacy of the tension, I felt a warm shiver of pleasure at that unlooked-for symmetry.
“No, no. Over here,” said the metallic voice, this time relegated to the horns at the stern. As I watched, the chains on one of the rear loading cranes grated into motion and began to run, presumably hauling something up from the open cell in front of the bridge. I left my hand on the Nemex. Overhead, the sun was breaking through the cloud cover.
The chain ended in a massive iron hook, in the crook of which stood the speaker, one hand still holding a prehistoric tannoy microphone, the other gripped lightly around the rising chain. He was dressed in an inappropriate-looking grey suit that flapped in the wind, leaning out from the chain at a fastidious angle, hair glinting in a wandering shaft of sunlight. I narrowed my eyes to confirm. Synthetic. Cheap synthetic.
The crane swung out over the curved cover of the cargo cell and the synth alighted elegantly on the top, looking down on us.
“Elias Ryker,” he said, and his voice was not much smoother than the tannoy had been. Someone had done a real cut-rate job on the vocal cords. He shook his head. “We thought we’d seen the last of you. How short the legislature’s memory.”
“Carnage?” Ortega lifted a hand to shade against the sudden sunlight. “That you?”
The synthetic bowed faintly and stowed the tannoy mike inside his jacket. He began to pick his way down the sloping cell cover.
“Emcee Carnage, at your service, officers. And pray what have we done to offend today?”
I said nothing. From the sound of it, I was supposed to know this Carnage, and I didn’t have enough to work with at the moment. Remembering what Ortega had told me, I fixed the approaching synth with a blank stare, and hoped I was being sufficiently Ryker-like.
The synthetic reached the edge of the cell cover and jumped down. Up close, I saw that it wasn’t only the vocal cords that were crude. This body was so far from the one Trepp had been using when I torched her, it was barely deserving of the same name. I wondered briefly if it was some kind of antique. The black hair was coarse and enamelled-looking, the face slack silicoflesh, the pale blue eyes clearly logo’d across the white. The body looked solid, but a little too solid, and the arms were slightly wrong, reminiscent of snakes rather than limbs. The hands at the ends of the cuffs were smooth and lineless. The synth offered one featureless palm, as if for inspection.
“Well?” he asked gently.
“Routine check, Carnage,” said Ortega, helping me out. “Been some bomb threats on tonight’s fight. We’re here to have a look.”
Carnage laughed, jarringly. “As if you cared.”
“Well, like I said,” Ortega answered evenly, “it’s routine.”
“Oh well, you’d better come along then.” The synthetic sighed and nodded at me. “What’s the matter with him? Did they lose his speech functions in the stack?”
We followed him towards the back of the ship and found ourselves skirting the pit formed by the rolled-back cover of the rearmost cargo cell. I glanced down inside and saw a circular white fighting ring, walled on four sides by slopes of steel and plastic seating. Banks of lighting equipment were strung above but there were none of the spiky spherical units I associated with telemetry. In the centre of the ring, someone was knelt, painting a design on the mat by hand. He looked up as we passed.
“Thematic,” said Carnage, seeing where I was looking. “Means something in Arabic. This season’s fights are all themed around Protectorate police actions. Tonight it’s Sharya. Right Hand of God Martyrs versus Protec Marines. Hand to hand, no blades over ten centimetres.”
“Bloodbath, in other words,” said Ortega.
The synth shrugged. “What the public wants, the public pays for. I understand it is possible to inflict an outright mortal wound with a ten-centimetre blade. Just very difficult. A real test of skill, they say. This way.”
We went down a narrow companionway into the body of the ship, our own footsteps clanging around us in the tight confines.
“Arenas first, I presume,” Carnage shouted above the echoes.
“No, let’s see the tanks first,” suggested Ortega.
“Really?” It was hard to tell with the low-grade synthetic voice, but Carnage seemed to be amused. “Are you quite sure it’s a bomb you’re looking for, lieutenant? It seems to me the arena would be the obvious place to—”
“Got something to hide, Carnage?”
The synthetic turned back to look at me for a moment, quizzically. “No, not at all, detective Ryker. The tanks it is, then. Welcome to the conversation, by the way. Was it cold on stack? Of course, you probably never expected to be there yourself.”
“That’s enough.” Ortega interposed herself. “Just take us to the tanks and save the small talk for tonight.”
“But of course. We aim to co-operate with law enforcement. As a legally incorporated—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ortega waved the verbiage away with weary patience. “Just take us to the f*cking tanks.”
I reverted to my dangerous stare.
We rode to the tank area in a dinky little electromag train that ran along one side of the hull, through two more converted cargo cells equipped with the same fighting rings and banks of seats but this time covered over with plastic sheeting. At the far end, we disembarked and stepped through the customary sonic cleansing lock. A great deal dirtier than PsychaSec’s facilities, ostensibly made of black iron, the heavy door swung outward to reveal a spotlessly white interior.
“At this point we dispense with image,” said Carnage carelessly. “Bare bones low-tech is all very well for the audience, but behind the scenes, well,” he gestured around at the gleaming facilities, “you can’t make an omelette without a little oil in the pan.”
The forward cargo section was huge and chilly, the lighting gloomy, the technology aggressively massive. Where Bancroft’s low-lit womb mausoleum at PsychaSec had spoken in soft, cultured tones of the trappings of wealth, where the re-sleeving room at the Bay City storage facility had groaned minimal funding for minimal deservers, the Panama Rose’s body bank was a brutal growl of power. The storage tubes were racked on heavy chains like torpedoes on either side of us, jacked into a central monitor system at one end of the hold via thick black cables that twisted across the floor like pythons. The monitor unit itself squatted heavily ahead of us like an altar to some unpleasant spider god. We approached it on a metal jetty raised a quarter-metre above the frozen writhings of the data cables. Behind it to left and right, set into the far wall, were the square glass sides of two spacious decanting tanks. The right-hand tank already held a sleeve, floating backlit and tethered cruciform by monitor lines.
It was like walking into the Andric cathedral in New-pest.
Carnage walked to the central monitor, turned and spread his arms rather like the sleeve above and behind him.
“Where would you like to start? I assume you’ve brought sophisticated bomb detection equipment with you.”
Ortega ignored him. She took a couple of steps closer to the decanting tank and looked up into the wash of cool green light it cast down into the gloom. “This one of tonight’s whores?” she asked.
Carnage sniffed. “In not so many words, it is. I do wish you’d understand the difference between what they peddle in those greasy little shops down the coast, and this.”
“So do I,” Ortega told him, eyes still upward on the body. “Where’d you get this one from, then?”
“How should I know?” Carnage made a show of studying the plastic nails on his right hand. “Oh, we have the bill of sale somewhere, if you must look. By the look of him, I’d say this one’s out of Nippon Organics, or one of the Pacific Rim combines. Does it really matter?”
I went to the wall and stared up at the floating sleeve. Slim, hard-looking and brown, with the delicately lifted Japanese eyes on the shelf of unscaleably high cheekbones, a thick, straight drift of impenetrably black hair like seaweed in the tank fluid. Gracefully flexible with the long hands of an artist, but muscled for speed combat. It was the body of a tech ninja, the body I’d dreamed about having at fifteen, on dreary rain-filled days in Newpest. It wasn’t far off the sleeve they’d given me to fight the Sharya war in. It was a variation on the sleeve I’d bought with my first big pay-off in Millsport, the sleeve I’d met Sarah in.
It was like looking at myself under glass. The self I’d built somewhere in the coils of memory that trail all the way back to childhood. Suddenly I stood, exiled into Caucasian flesh, on the wrong side of the mirror.
Carnage came up to me and slapped the glass. “You approve, detective Ryker?” When I said nothing, he went on. “I’m sure you do, someone with your appetite for, well, brawling. The specs are quite remarkable. Reinforced chassis, the bones are all culture-grown marrow alloy jointed with polybond ligamenting, carbon-reinforced tendons, Khumalo neurachem—”
“Got neurachem,” I said, for something to say.
“I know all about your neurachem, detective Ryker.” Even through the poor-quality voice, I thought I could hear a soft, sticky delight. “The fightdrome scanned your specs when you were on stack. There was some talk of buying you up, you know. Physically I mean. It was thought your sleeve could be used in a humiliation bout. Faked, of course, we would never dream of the actual thing here. That would be, well, criminal?” Carnage paused dramatically.“But then it was decided that humiliation fights were not the, uh, the spirit of the establishment. A lowering of tone, you understand. Not a real contest. Shame really, with all the friends you’ve made, it would have been a big crowd-puller.”
I wasn’t really listening to him, but it dawned on me that Ryker was being insulted and I pivoted away from the glass to fix Carnage with what seemed like an appropriate glare.
“But I digress,” the synthetic went on smoothly. “What I meant to say is that your neurachem is to this system as my voice is to that of Anchana Salomao. This,” he gestured once more at the tank, “is Khumalo neurachem, patented by Cape Neuronics only last year. A development of almost spiritual proportions. There are no synaptic chemical amplifiers, no servo chips or implanted wiring. The system is grown in, and it responds directly to thought. Consider that, detective. No one offworld has it yet, the UN are thought to be considering a ten-year colonial embargo, though myself I doubt the efficacy of such—”
“Carnage.” Ortega drifted in behind him, impatiently. “Why haven’t you decanted the other fighter yet?”
“But we are doing, lieutenant.” Carnage waved one hand at the rack of body tubes on the left. From behind them came the sound of prowling heavy machinery. I peered into the gloom and made out a big automated forklift unit rolling down the rows of containers. As we watched, it locked to a stop and bright, directed lighting sprang up on its frame. The forks reached and clamped on a tube, extracting it from the chained cradle while smaller servos disconnected the cabling from it. Separation complete, the machine withdrew slightly, swivelled about and trundled back along the rows towards the empty decanting tank.
“The system is entirely automated,” said Carnage superfluously.
Below the tank, I now noticed a line of three circular openings, like the forward discharge ports of an IP dreadnought. The forklift rose up a little on hydraulic pistons and loaded the tube it was carrying smoothly into the centre port. The tube fitted snugly, the visible end rotating through about ninety degrees before a steel baffle slammed down over it. Its task completed, the forklift sank back down on its hydraulics and its engines died.
I watched the tank.
It seemed like a while, but in fact probably took less than a minute. A hatch broke open in the floor of the tank and a silvery shoal of bubbles erupted upwards. Drifting after them came the body. It bobbed fetally for a moment, turning this way and that in the eddies caused by the air, then its arms and legs began to unfold, aided by the gently tugging monitor wires secured at wrist and ankle. It was bigger boned than the Khumalo sleeve, blocky and more heavily muscled but similar in colour. A strong-boned, hawk-nosed visage tipped lazily towards us as the thin wires pulled it upright.
“Sharyan Right Hand of God martyr,” said Carnage beamingly. “Not really, of course, but the race type’s accurate and it’s got an authentic Will of God enhanced response system.” He nodded at the other tank. “The marines on Sharya were multi-racial, but there were enough Jap-types there to make it believable.”
“Not much of a contest, is it?” I said. “State-of-the-art neurachem against century-old Sharyan biomech.”
Carnage grinned with his slack silicoflesh face. “Well, that will depend on the fighters. I’m told the Khumalo system takes a bit of getting used to, and to be honest it isn’t always the best sleeve that wins. It’s more about psychology. Endurance, pain tolerance…”
“Savagery,” added Ortega. “Lack of empathy.”
“Things like that,” agreed the synthetic. “That’s what makes it exciting, of course. If you’d care to come tonight, lieutenant, detective, I’m sure I can find you a couple of remaindered seats near the back.”
“You’ll be commentating,” I surmised, already hearing the specs-rich vocabulary that Carnage used come tumbling out over the tannoy, the killing ring drenched in focused white light, the roaring, surging crowd in the darkened seating, the smell of sweat and bloodlust.
“Of course I will.” Carnage’s logo’d eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been away so long, you know.”
“Are we going to look for these bombs?” said Ortega loudly.
It took us over an hour to go over the hold, looking for imaginary bombs, while Carnage looked on with poorly veiled amusement. Up above, the two sleeves destined for slaughter in the arena looked clown on us from their green-lit glass-sided wombs, their presences weighing no less heavily for their closed eyes and dreaming visages.