Code Noir (19 page)

Tulu!
I could see enough to know.

The maybe-Ike figure straightened up and swivelled towards her. He wore magnifying glasses. Not just shades. The real thing! I mean nobody wore optical glasses anymore. Nobody
made
glasses - corrections were as easy as scoring painkill or Lark. And shades were used only for . . . style.

Beneath his glasses I imagined rather than saw a set of wide, crazy eyes. His body was encased in a top-shelf, matt-black exoskeleton. I’d heard about them, dreamt about them; never seen one. They bulked you up; gave enhanced endurance, speed and recovery.

A fine black web grew out of the back of the suit and attached into his neck and bald head. Colour coordinated wetware. His head looked like an exorcism - his body looked like a graphic novel. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t quite nail it.

‘Yes, Plessis,’ he observed. ‘Why this obsession with her?’

‘I admit an interest. And so should you. According to the Chino she’s the only one able to resist the change.’

Mei! Wait ’till I got the scrawny little
. . . But Tulu hadn’t finished.

‘I have other reasons, though. Plessis may be useful barter. I’ve tried to get to her before, but she’s crudely unpredictable. She has a lot of people watching her back. In the end it seemed simpler to get her and Loyl Daac to hunt me.’

‘I’m impressed by your thinking. But what does an erratic hothead like Plessis offer as barter?’ Ike picked up and gently handled the top of a dish. ‘She’s what you might call sociopathic trash.’

I swallowed hard on the personality analysis and leant further out into the aisle, risking discovery. This I had to hear.

‘Let’s just say I have to have her. You understand?’ She picked up a dish and rattled it.

‘Put it back,’ he said coldly. ‘I don’t tolerate blackmail. Besides, now I have Daac she’ll come for him. Anna tells me they have a . . . bond of sorts.’

A bond? With Loyl Daac?
I wanted to shriek. Eavesdropping was more mindblowing than any trip.
And who was Anna?

I moved back behind the rack to let out a deep, indignant breath. Too deep. A set of aluminium dishes clanged against each other.

‘Someone’s in here?’

‘It’s the frij,’ said maybe-Ike. ‘The
polychephalum
are stretching its ability to cool.’

‘Why do you have to keep the filthy stuff cold anyway?’

‘It reproduces rapidly above fifteen degrees. That’s why it’s so effective as a containment field if you possess the dispersion emulsion or some way of cooling it.’

I could almost hear his voice shine with pride. The Devil was a geek.

‘What did you want with Daac?’ Tulu’s question sounded casual but I could tell it was far from that.

‘He’s the Cabal’s heir apparent. His contacts go deep into Viva. I can’t risk him uspetting my projects. You see he’s the one who commissioned Anna to do the original research when he realised some of the inhabitants of the Fishertown slums were displaying immunity to the heavy metals. He knew what he was doing when he involved her. Her intellectual pedigree is impeccable. But she can be so . . . unimaginative.’

Schaum! She’s alive. And she’s here?
The two thoughts simultaneously elated and depressed me. I peeked around the shelving again.

‘What will you do with him? Didn’t the Cabal run you out of The Tertiary?’

‘You
are
informed.’ Ike’s exoskel practically swelled in reaction to his anger. ‘You say you want Plessis as barter. I wish to use the Cabal’s prince for the same purposes. But it can wait until she’s taken the bait.’

‘If I don’t get her, our agreement will be at risk.’

Maybe-Ike studied her hard, as if he didn’t trust her. ‘I am allowing you the use of equipment and a trouble-free environment to work in. So far I have seen very little return on my investment. You put me at risk with my providers.’

‘I brought you Loyl Daac. My primary end is fulfilled. As for the other matters, I need Plessis and I need time.’

‘Anna has nearly finished her contamination process on the Trophins. I’ll send more of them out for Plessis - after the drop. Meanwhile, stay out of sight. If you are seen,
our
arrangement will be fatal for
you
.’

‘Keep your promise to me. I know a lot of people.’ Tulu’s voice lowered to a dangerous timbre. She raised a threatening hand to him but he batted it away with a wheeze of his skel.

The air filled with the sound of heavy blade traffic just as I thought they might hurt each other.

‘It’s here.’ He turned and walked out.

Tulu stayed behind. She ranged down through the shelves, bringing her closer to me.

I crept across to the nearest frij door and slipped in between two vats, squeezing behind them, hoping she couldn’t pick my chattering teeth from the indigestion of my gelatinous companions.

She stopped and stared into each frij cabinet as if she could sense something.

I willed myself to think serene thoughts. Like how I would like to stick her potion pouch down her throat and tape her mouth and nose up. Choking to death was memorable.

She uttered some words I couldn’t hear and sprinkled a pinch of something from her pouch.

I suddenly wanted to run out past her. It came on me as an intense, unquenchable craving. In desperation I pressed my body hard against the steel of the vat. My muscles bucked and twitched but my flesh stuck where it contacted the freezing metal and the sensation shortcircuited the compulsion.

I felt rather than saw her go - the draining aftermath of her voodoo.

Cursing and crying, I peeled my skin off the vat and crawled out of the frij. It wasn’t until I thumped the circulation back into my legs with the backs of my bleeding hands that I realised I’d picked up a passenger.

A dribble of PP suckered enthusiastically at my ankle. I pulled out the Cabal dagger and sliced it clean off, along with a hunk of my pants. It fell to the floor and writhed.

With a shudder I made for the door. All I wanted to do was to go home, but I still had to find Daac and the shaman.

And now there was the small matter of Anna Schaum. This was where Lang had brought her.

My toes itched. If there was one person in this whole goddamn world I desired to put the fear of all things bad into it was that little babe. Looks like I needn’t have bothered, she’d done it herself.

The quad was where I’d left it and I gunned across to the next building, hoping the noise of the ’copts landing covered the engine.

Outside the near-full moon hung behind a dross of grey cloud leaving a dull illumination. I reparked the quad and in my hurry to get under cover tripped over the concrete lip and crashed against the door jamb.

It would have been nice to lie there, maybe sort my love life out, but the moon was only a night off being full. No shaman by tomorrow night, no cure.

Seemed like everyone had plans for King Tide.

I got up and wobbled inside.

The door sucked shut behind me, climate controlled, cool and dry, belying its dilapidated façade.

Squinting around, I wished I had nightsight augmentation. I could see less in here than outside, so I found a wall and shuffled along it. I’d made it a few metres down the west side when I tripped a light sensor.

A section of the building blanched into surreal shadows. I took me moments to make sense of it - the surfeit of fancy metals, hydraulics, moulds, tables of ’tronics all in catalogued order. Around the edge of them sat tanks of human body parts, tissue parts and other organic bits and blobs. Dotted among the tables were small aquariums - lots and lots, containing the weirdest, most inert fish I’d ever seen.

They say reality bites! Well this reality bit, chewed, gobbled and hawked. I’d found Ike’s shop of post-human lunacy.

It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. I mean I’d met the ma’soops. I’d got close and personal with the Twitcher army. I’d already witnessed plenty of his walking leftovers. But something about seeing the raw materials assembled underneath one roof was like opening the garbage on the butcher’s off-cuts.

Vomit burnt the back of my throat. I ducked to the nearest window and pressed my nose against it to stop the spin.

Outside a legion of unmarked cargo ’copts had settled on a brilliantly lit slab. Twitchers climbed about their gizzards unloading crates of all shapes: long flat boxes of weapons, chillers of foodstuffs. I now knew how Mo-Vay’s punters were getting their food, and probably everything else that kept this sick little ’burb fermenting along.

I also knew that for once my timing was immaculate. It would be all hands on deck while the drop was on. Hopefully the Twitchers would be kept busy while I finished my snoop.

I peered along to the other end of the slab. An UL sat there, composed and at home - the same one I’d seen at the water park.

And next to it a Prier.

Pieces of information played tag in my head. I wanted to sit right where I was and have a first rate cog, but behind me someone moaned.

I hit the floor. A punter was in trouble, but that didn’t mean he was on my side.

I crabbed along underneath the workbenches tracing the sound until the moans got louder. Peering through coils of wiring, I saw clear-plas partitions.

I crept along peering through them until I found the moaner under lights, strapped on to a surgical table.

He was naked apart from bedfilm and the hussy in my heart beat an excited tattoo. ‘Loyl?’ I whispered.

No answer.

I tore the partition aside, charged over to him and began loosening the immobilisers. The one that adhered his hands to the inside of his thighs gave me some trouble. I tried not to look.

In truth, though, I was more worried whether he was still paralysed.

As I pared away the last restraint, he opened his eyes. Blinking once, he rolled sideways and kneed me hard in the crotch.

Call it shock, but I staggered, straightened and punched him right back.

The momentum of my hit knocked him on to the floor. He got up slowly.

I didn’t help.

‘What the freak was that for?’ I whispered fiercely, cupping my pubic bone.

He held his jaw with a shaky hand and flashed me a look of relief. ‘One sure way to know if it was you.’

My breath caught in my chest. That could only mean one thing.
Shape-changers.

‘Brilliant timing for once, Parrish.’

Hadn’t I just been telling myself that?
‘Whyso?’

He gestured to a robotic arm with a thermal scalpel attached. ‘They’ve been prepping me for a total skin strip. Seems they wanted to take my skin off in layers. Some heavy ’copter traffic started up and suddenly they all disappeared.’

I flung back the plas partition and looked squeamishly out to the aquariums with the strange floppy fish.

Not fish . . . but skin.

‘There’s a supply drop going on outside. Mainly weapons, by the look of it. We’ve probably got a bit longer,’ I said. ‘What is this place?’

He ineptly tried to make a sarong out of the bedfilm.

I slipped my pack off my back and fished around inside. One pair of fatigues and a tee left. I didn’t turn away as he squeezed into them.

The tee was too short and left his stomach bare, but I could live with that.

He talked fast. ‘It’s the old depot. Where the ’gineering factories got their fuel. The underground is littered with huge fuel storage tanks. The dirt was so toxic here even the villa developers didn’t dare build on it. They walled it off instead.’

‘Some secret garden, eh?’ I muttered.

He gave me a funny look and shrugged. ‘He’s converted the buildings to a bunch of labs.’

I whistled under my breath. ‘Seems to be the thing.’

‘Yeah, and this makes it easy.’ He pointed to a humming machine with a perceptible haze over it. ‘It spits motes into the air. With them you can create a sterile environment on a two-day-old corpse. Any science geek with enough money can set up.’

My gaze ranged over the host of mobile modules wedged between tabletops. They resembled kitchen appliances but their labels read ‘autoclave’, ‘centrifuge’, ‘thermal cycler’ and ‘spectrophotometer’.

‘This is more than pocket money.’

He rifled through a neatly stacked shelf under the bed and grabbed a derm. Checking the label, he whacked himself with it. ‘Someone from outside’s propping up a mini economy here.’

‘Yeah, I figured that.’ I twisted nervously towards the door. ‘What else?’

‘The loon who runs this show calls himself Ike. I think I know him, or at least . . . know who he was. Used to call himself “Wombat” among other names.’

‘Mr Microwave!’ Amazing how the real wackos always survived.

‘Yeah. He was
the man
when I was a kid. His cult was pretty big here. It died out when he supposedly did - but somehow his name stuck. He used to have a saying. Something like “evolve or eff of”. I didn’t go for it anyway.’

‘You wouldn’t need anyone else’s religion. You’ve got your own brand,’ I threw back at him over my shoulder. Call me dogmatic, but I just couldn’t let a chance go by on that particular topic.

He ignored me. ‘Where’s Tulu?’

‘She’s with him. They’ve got some deal going between them which included suckering you and me to the happy house of horrors.’ I pointed out of the cubicle to the far end and another set of doors. ‘What’s through there?’

He brushed past and wrenched a two-handled pincer from a tray of evil-looking instruments. ‘Let’s find out.’

I squeezed between tables after him. ‘There’s something you should know. I overheard Ike talking to Tulu.’

‘And?’

‘Anna Schaum is alive. Here.’