"Interesting, huh?"
"Snazz,Doc."
Doc Threadneedle laughed.
"What is it?"
"Snazz. You haven't talked like that since you got here."
"I suppose not. You have to grow up sometime."
"Not if you can afford the Zarathustra Treatment."
She eased her legs off the table. Her blastic-augmented kneejoints were smooth.
She touched the floor, and pushed herself away from the table. She was a little unsteady. A touch of dizziness. The Doc supported her with an arm around her waist.
"Wait a moment. The optic cyberfeed will kick in. Your brain's been told what to expect. It's just warming up."
He walked her to the centre of the room, and let her go. She tottered, and put her arms out. The Doc pushed the wheeled table back against the wall, giving her some space.
It was like a click inside her. The dizziness went away.
"Try it," the Doc encouraged her. "The flamingo position."
She tucked one foot into her crotch, sticking out her knee, and lifted her heel from the floor. Finally, she was balanced in perfect comfort on the ball of her big toe.
"How does it feel?"
"Wonderful. There's no strain."
"You should be able to stand like that for a week before the nerve implants get tired. Here, catch…"
He tossed a book at her. She reached out and caught it without so much as wobbling.
"You could take up ballet."
She balanced the book on her head, and laughed, turning in a slow pirouette on her toe.
Doc Threadneedle slowly turned up the lights. The line drawing faded, and she saw the colours as well as the warmths.
She looked down at herself. Below her hospital gown, her legs were still as she remembered—although her reinforced thigh and shin bones made them two and a half inches longer. She still had the faint white scar on her ankle, although the cross-hatch of scratches on her right knee was gone.
She dropped her other foot to the floor, and turned around. She felt good. The Doc's patented micro-organisms were beavering away inside, keeping her at the peak of perfection. She was hungry, not with a need for food but with a desire for tastes.
"Makes you feel kinda sexy, doesn't it?"
She smiled. "Well…yes."
"Everything will be better, Jessamyn. Food, sex, exercise. You should develop an ear for good music. Forget sovrock and get into Mozart and Bach. You've got the grey mass for it now."
"Doc, have you…?"
He grinned. She realized she didn't know, couldn't imagine, how old he really was.
"Yes, of course. You don't think I'd do anything to a patient I wouldn't have done to myself?"
He put his hands out and fell to the floor, as if to do fingertip push-ups. Tipping himself forwards, he touched his forehead to the tile and kicked into the air. He straightened out, feet extended towards the ceiling, and rose into a handstand. Then, balanced on the fingers of his left hand, he put his right into the pocket of his labcoat and brought out a packet of sweets. He poured one into his mouth and offered the pack to her.
"Showoff," she said.
He pushed the floor, and flipped over in the air, landing on his feet. Straightening up, he was a middle-aged, rangy black guy again.
"Yes, of course. I don't get much chance to, you know, out here in the sand."
"Couldn't you…?"
"Go back?" Wrinkles appeared on his forehead. The fun sapped out of him. "No. GenTech doesn't forget. Zarathustra won't forget. One day, he'll try to take me out, you know. That's the real reason for all these 'improvements.' One slip, and you're excommunicated. He's not like he seems on the talkshows. They called me a Frankenstein, but his ambitions go further. He's a Faust, a Prometheus…and, in the end, I'm afraid he's a Pandora."
"You've lost me. Frankenstein I know from the videoshockers, but who are the others?"
"It doesn't matter, Jessamyn. I'm not like him. I've changed your body, and I tried to rewire a few of your neurons, but I've left you alone where it counts."
"And Zarathustra?"
"He doesn't want to improve the quality of an individual life. He wants to recreate the human race in the image of his ideal. Zarathustra isn't his real name, you know. It's something German, really."
"He's a…what was that old gangcult called…Nazti?"
"Nazi. Maybe. There are still a few left. The Mayor of Berlin, for instance, Rudolf Hess. Zarathustra has certainly dosed himself on some of his own miracle rejuvenators."
They left the surgery, and Doc Threadneedle locked up that part of the house. He had a large place, with as many modern conveniences as a sandhole like Dead Rat could offer, but it wasn't what someone with his skills could rate in a PZ.
He didn't seem to miss the gadgets and gizmos, though. His house was full of things she had only ever seen in old films with Rock Hudson and Doris Day: a vacuum cleaner, which did the work of a suckerdrone; a gramophone, which played unwieldy round black musidiscs with added scratch and hiss as part of the music; an electric kettle that took ages, maybe two minutes, to heat up enough water for a cup of recaff, and didn't do anything about the impurities and pollutants.
Buzzsaw, the cat, curled around Jessamyn's legs.
"I've got you some clothes," said the Doc. "Your desert gear was more holes than hide. Magda ze Schluderpacheru had something surplus down at the Silver Shuriken."
He indicated a neat pile of drab-coloured garments.
"The Silver Shuriken?"
"It's the local saloon. A yakuza operation, naturally.
They're the only people who can keep anything open out in the sand, and not be closed down by the gangcults. Magda is a honey. You should meet her."
"I'd like to. It's been so long since,.."
The Doc grinned. "…since you saw anything but my ugly mug, I understand. It's time you got out of the house. You must be stir crazy."
She wandered over to the chicken-wired window, and looked out. It was a clear night. The constellations twinkled.
"You should be with young people your own age, get yourself back into the swing of society."
"Uhh?" She had been distracted, looking out the chicken-wired windows at the half-disc of the moon. "I'm sorry. You're right. I need to…to do something."
She felt funny, as if things were happening inside her.
"I meant to tell you about that. Your body is like an engine. If you don't turn it over regularly, it will complain. With all the alterations you've had. you'll need to take vigorous exercise for several hours a day. I'd prescribe running, dancing, fighting, healthy eating and athletic sex."
"You could get to be very popular back in the city-states, Doc."
Doc Threadneedle smiled sadly. "Yes, but not with the right people."
Jessamyn picked up Buzzsaw, and felt the tingle of static from the cat's fur. It was like a mini-rush in itself. She realized she was down from the morph-plus, and that her senses were sharper than they had ever been before.
"Suck your finger and stick it in a light-socket sometime," the Doc said. "You'll be surprised."
She stroked the cat. It squealed and struggled from her grip. It disappeared upstairs.
"You don't know your own strength yet. You'll have to be careful. Here, try one of these."
He tossed her a thick yellow-covered book. She held it between her forefingers and thumbs and neatly tore it in half.
"I lose more telephone directories that way."
IV
Dead Rat, Arizona. What a place for an Englishman to end up, don't ch'know? Bloody buggering ha-ha-ha, eh what? Of course, Sarn't Major James Graham Biggleswade couldn't exactly go back to Blighty and expect them to hang out the welcome mat in Fulham, not after that tricky bit of bloody buggering business down in the Falklands—oh, excuuuuse meeee, the Mal-bloody-buggering-vinas—back in '81. Bit of a blooming sodding disgrace really, in actual fact, eh? These fakenham days, nobody hupped, frupped and trupped when the older Mastsarge yelled. Fact was, nobody knew who James Graham Buggered-to-bejaizus Biggleswade was. The sandrats just called him Jitters. His hands sometimes stopped shaking long enough for him to light a fag or give his teeth the once-over with Pepsodent, but that was every other Scumday in a month with a zed in it.