“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 fucking 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.