Snipes did his buying in the shadowy back corridors deeper within NIKE 14. But his selling he did out in the open square at the center of the old missile shaft. He sat cross-legged like an ancient monk in the middle of an old shiny Mylar blanket, his wares splayed out around him. Had he had the facial actuators to smile, I imagine he would never stop. That’s the kind of untrustworthy bastard he was.
The main square was still bustling and his stall was no exception. By the time I got there, there were already five bots waiting their turn. Three old translator models, all the same series, one emerald-colored and two a gleaming jet black. There was a military bruiser model. Old-school tech. Hard-core. All flat-black reinforced steel and chrome, three times my size and several times my mass. Built to survive rocket strikes and shrug off small-arms fire—even pulse-rifle shots. His model was even designed to withstand EMP. Tough sonsabitches. The only one I recognized was the fifth one. Went by the name 19.
19 was a scavenger, but she trafficked less in bits from wrecks and more in the relics of the old world. Televisions, furniture, books, movies, hard drives filled with video games. Ephemera mostly. There were a lot of bots that longed for their old lives. Many had gone back to live in the houses of the very owners they first served and later killed. When that lifestyle ceased to be viable and we started moving underground, a market for humankind’s artifacts burgeoned.
I’d been out with 19 a number of times. She knew the Sea as well as I did, and since we were always after different things, she and I occasionally swept areas together. She was a late-generation Simulacrum Model Companion. A sexbot. She had started her life as a sponge for the bodily fluids of an overweight thirtysomething shut-in programmer. When the war started she refused to kill him—as her architecture was entirely designed to create a palpable bond between her and her owner—and her owner, madly in love with her, refused to shut her down. They lived for weeks together, hiding from the war, often in bed, wondering if each night was going to be their last.
When someone finally came, it was bots. They shot her owner before she had time to react, tossed her a weapon, and welcomed her to the fight. She responded by gunning all four of them down where they stood, buried her beau in the backyard, then joined up with the first pack of bots she found. The story of how she came to be free of her owner was one she wouldn’t share for decades, long after she had melted and scraped off every inch of her skinjob, leaving her shell a charred fire-hardened black, and long after we all had begun preying upon one another—when ending four other persons wasn’t seen so much as treason as it was a tough choice. She was a companion. Asking a companion to sit idly by as her owner was killed was damn stupid and those bots should have known better. No one judged her for it.
19 was the toughest nut in the Sea. I’d never run the risk of getting on her bad side. So if she was waiting patiently, I would have to as well.
“I’m sorry,” said Snipes, “but that’s as low a price as I can go.” His silvery head bobbed as he talked, an affectation he had picked up during his time as a shopbot back before the war.
“These wares aren’t worth half that,” said the old emerald translator.
“Sure they are. Supply and demand. Not a lot of translators left. Parts are coming in less and less these days. If you need them so badly, the price shouldn’t be a concern.”
“We don’t need them,” said the emerald translator. “But we’ve got a long trip ahead of us and these are exactly the sort of parts we might need out there.”
“Then you’ll be thankful you paid my prices when you do.” Snipes looked up at me, pointing. “She’ll tell you. Tell them, Brittle. Tell them how fair my prices are.”
All five bots turned to look at me.
“This is between y’all, Snipes,” I said. “I’m only here to do a little business.”
“Tell them how fair my prices are.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Snipes’s head stopped bobbing, and he lowered his hand.
“What I can say,” I continued, “is that his wares are always good, and he’s right—if there’s another cache of translator parts in NIKE, I certainly haven’t heard of it. And his prices wouldn’t be what they are if there were.”
Snipes’s head bobbed excitedly as he waved his hand at me. “See! See! I told you! This is the best deal you’ll get in all of NIKE!”
The bruiser, all eight reinforced black steel feet of him, lurched to the side, looking over his shoulder. Then he looked down at the emerald translator. “They’re here,” he said, his voice deep, ominous, designed to scare the piss out of any human that ended up on the wrong side of him.
A black translator looked up. “Already?”
“Pay the man,” said the emerald translator. “Get the parts.”
The other black translator reached into a satchel and pulled from it several sticks of RAM and a small shopbot core. He handed them to Snipes, who stuck every stick into a tester. Each time the tester lit up with a series of lights showing the wear on the RAM. Each stick had seven green bars. It was all pristine. Factory condition. Shiny. Whoever these bots were, they weren’t broke.
Snipes handed over a series of translator parts—at least half of which I was sure came from Reginald more than a year ago.
19 gave me a sidelong glance, then a playful wink. “Better make it quick,” she said. Then all five bots left in a hurry. 19 hadn’t been waiting in line; she was tagging along with them.
“What was that all about?” I asked Snipes.
“Shit if I know. From the sound of it, 19 is about to take them across the Sea. But who the hell cares where. You here for some business?”
“Yeah.”
Snipes looked both ways. “You know I don’t do no buying out in the Square.”
“I know. I’m in the market.”
He motioned over the blanket. “What you see is what you get. I’ve got nothing for a Comfort like you.”
“I’m a Caregiver, not a Comfort model.”
“Same difference. The parts are almost the same.”
“Almost. But not quite. I was hoping you might have something in your rainy-day stash.”
Snipes puzzled over me for a few seconds. “Rainy day? You don’t want to be paying those premium prices for anything unless you’re shipping out of NIKE for good . . . or it’s your rainy day.”
“It’s my rainy day.”
“Shit. How bad?”
“I don’t know how many times I can have this conversation in one day.”
“Does Mercer know?”
“Yep.”
He paused. “Well, shit. Now it’s my rainy day.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“My two best suppliers are about to kill each other out in the wasteland, tearing each other’s innards out a handful at a time. Maybe one of you makes it through in one piece; maybe you don’t. Either way, Snipes loses.”
“Thanks for the concern.”
“We aren’t friends, Brittle. Never were. You think I’m a backstabbing cheat, I think you’re a parasite who has convinced herself that she’s some sort of angel of mercy. And it works. I like our relationship where it is. And so did you. But things have changed.”