‘Perhaps — but do you really want to take that risk? The hardware’s just going to be sitting in your head like a time-bomb. Might as well have it out. You can always have it put back in again, after all.’
‘By a woman in a tent who calls herself Madame Dominika? I’d rather take my chances with a rusty penknife and a mirror.’
‘Whatever. Just so long as you do it before you go wacko.’
The kid was already dragging Quirrenbach through the partition into the room beyond. ‘Talking of money, Tanner — neither of us are exactly flush. We don’t know we can afford Dominika’s services, do we?’
‘That’s a very good point.’ I grabbed Tom by the collar, hauling him gently back into the ante-room. ‘My friend and I need to sell some goods in a hurry, unless your Madame Dominika is given to charity.’ When that remark had no effect on Tom, I opened my suitcase and showed him some of what was inside. ‘Sell, for cash. Where?’
That seemed to work. ‘Green and silver tent, ’cross market. Say Dominika sent you, you no get major sting.’
‘Hey, wait a minute.’ Quirrenbach was halfway through the gash now. I could see into the main room, where a phenomenally bulky woman sat behind a long couch, consulting her fingernails, medical equipment suspended over the couch on articulated booms, metal glinting in candlelight.
‘What?’
‘Why should I be the guinea pig? I thought you said you needed to have your implants removed as well.’
‘You’re right. And I’ll be back shortly. I just need to convert some of my possessions into cash. Tom said I could do it in the bazaar.’
His face turned from incomprehension to fury.
‘But you can’t go now! I thought we were in this together! Travelling companions! Don’t betray a friendship almost before it’s begun, Tanner…’
‘Hey, calm down. I’m not betraying anything. By the time she’s finished with you, I’ll have got enough cash together.’ I clicked a finger towards the fat woman. ‘Dominika!’
Languidly, she turned to face me, her lips forming a silent interrogative.
‘How long will it take with him?’
‘One hour,’ she answered. ‘Dominika real quick.’
I nodded. ‘That’s more than enough time, Quirrenbach. Just sit back and let her do her job.’
He looked into Dominika’s face and seemed to calm slightly. ‘Really? You will be back?’
‘Of course. I’m not stepping into the city with implants still in my head. What do you think I am, insane? But I do need money.’
‘What are you planning to sell?’
‘Some of my own goods. Some of the stuff I lifted from our mutual friend Vadim. There’s got to be a market for that kind of thing or he wouldn’t have been hoarding it.’
Dominika was trying to pull him onto her couch, but Quirrenbach was still managing to stay on his feet. I remembered how he had impulsively changed his mind when we began looting Vadim’s quarters — at first resisting the theft, then throwing himself enthusiastically into the process. I saw a similar sea-change now.
‘Dammit,’ he murmured, shaking his head. He looked at me curiously, then cracked open his own case, riffling through sheet music until he reached a set of compartments below it. He fished out some of the experientials he had taken from Vadim. ‘I’m no good at bartering anyway. Take these and get a good price on them, Tanner. I’m assuming they’ll cover the cost of this.’
‘You trust me to do that?’
He looked at me through squinted eyes. ‘Just get a good price.’
I took the items and placed them amongst my own.
Behind him, the bulky woman hovered across the room like an unmoored dirigible, her feet skimming inches from the ground. She was cradled in a black metal harness, attached to one wall by a complexly-jointed pneumatic arm, hissing steam as it articulated and flexed. Rolls of fat disguised the indeterminate region where her head and torso merged. Her hands were spread out as if she was drying recently painted fingernails. Each fingertip vanished into — or possibly became — a kind of thimble. Each thimble was tipped with something medical and specialised.
‘No; him first,’ she said, extending a little finger in my direction, its thimble adorned with what looked like a tiny sterile harpoon.
‘Thank you, Dominika,’ I said. ‘But you’d best attend to Quirrenbach first.’
‘You come back?’
‘Yes — once I’ve acquired some finance.’
I smiled and left the tent, hearing the sound of drills whining up to speed.
FOURTEEN
The man who looked through my belongings had a whirring and clicking eyeglass strapped to his head. His hairless scalp was quilted with fine scars, like a broken vase that had been inexpertly mended. He examined everything I showed him with tweezers, holding the items up to his eyeglass in the manner of an aged lepidopterist. Next to him, smoking a handmade cigarette, was a youth wearing the same kind of helmet I’d taken from Vadim.
‘I can use some of this shit,’ the man with the eyeglass said. ‘Probably. You say it’s all real, huh? All factual?’
‘The military episodes were trawled from soldiers’ memories after the combat situations in question, as part of the normal intelligence gathering process.’
‘Yeah? And how’d they fall into your hands?’
Without waiting for an answer, he reached under the table, pulled out a little tin sealed with an elastic band and counted out a few dozen bills of the local currency. As I had noticed before, the bills seemed to have been printed in strange denominations — thirteens, fours, twenty-sevens, threes.
‘It’s none of your damned business where I got them from,’ I said.
‘No, but that doesn’t stop me asking.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Anything else, now that you’re wasting my time?’
I allowed him to examine the experientials I’d taken from Quirrenbach, watching as his lip curled first into contempt and then disgust.
‘Well?’
‘Now you’re insulting me, and I don’t like it.’
‘If the items are worthless,’ I said, ‘just tell me and I’ll leave.’
‘The items aren’t worthless,’ he said, after examining them again. ‘Fact is, they’re exactly the kind of the thing I might have bought, a month or two ago. Grand Teton’s popular. People can’t get enough of those slime-tower formations.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘This shit has already hit the market, that’s what. These experientials are already out there, depreciating. These must be — what? Third- or fourth-generation bootlegs? Real cheap-ass crap.’
He still tore off a few more bills, but nowhere near as much as he’d paid for my own experientials.
‘Anything else up your sleeve?’
I shrugged. ‘Depends what you’re after, doesn’t it.’
‘Use your imagination.’ He passed one of the military experientials to his sidekick. The youth’s chin was fuzzed by the first tentative wisps of a beard. He ejected the experiential he was running at the time and slipped mine in instead, without once lifting the goggles from his eyes. ‘Anything black. Matte-black. You know what I mean, don’t you?’
‘I’ve a reasonably good idea.’
‘Then either cough up or get out of the premises.’ Next to him, the youth started convulsing in his seat. ‘Hey, what is that shit?’
‘Does that helmet have enough spatial resolution to stimulate the pleasure and pain centres?’ I said.
‘What if it does?’ He leaned over and slapped the convulsing youth hard on the head, knocking the playback helmet flying. Drooling, still convulsing, the youth subsided into his seat, his eyes glazed over.