Engineman - Eric Brown [197]
I managed somehow to get him into the flier and back to my pad.
Once inside he collapsed on the bunk, the Joe Gomez I knew and loved, but different. The only part of him that had survived the fluxdeath was his brain, and the rest of him was a power-assisted Somatic-Simulation with all the sex bits and the latest Nikon optics. It was impossible to tell that the body was a Soma-Sim; the surgeons had been faithful to Joe's old appearance, if anything making him even more good looking than the original version.
I thought maybe I was still hallucinating...
"They were waiting at the port," he said. "They waited till I got in from the medic-base and they shot me, Sita. But I got away..." And he indicated his leg.
There was a hole in his thigh big enough to contain my fist. Charred strands of microcircuitry fuzzed the circumference, and the synthetic flesh had melted and congealed in dribbles like cold wax.
"It doesn't hurt," Joe reassured me, peering down. "I don't feel a thing. It's just that I can't walk..."
"We'll get you fixed up," I said.
"You've got a spare half million?"
"Surely the Line-?"
He laughed. "They took all my savings to put me in this."
"We'll find some way," I said. "Can't you go back-?"
His hand moved to touch the hole, with just the faintest whirr of servo-motors. "The Line's fired me, Sita. I'm in no condition to flux and I'm out of a job..." Tears were beyond the expertise of 21st-century cyberneticists, or Joe would have cried, then.
"Can you remember anything about the attack?" I asked.
"Not much. Three guys piled out of an air-car and called out to me. When I began to run, they opened fire-"
"Did you get the flier's plate?"
"I was too busy trying to survive, Sita."
I probed. I relived the attack and saw the same three guys I'd seen outside the Yin-Yang. The subconscious mind forgets nothing, and the quick glance Joe had taken at the air-car had lodged the plate code in his head. I memorised the code and came out. It was a slim lead, but perhaps a valuable one.
Joe reached out and pulled me to him. "You haven't said how good it is to have me back, Sita."
"No?" I opened up, and we merged. Beyond his relief at being with me I saw a dark shadow in the background, a sharp regret that he would never flux again. He was like a junkie deprived his fix, and the withdrawal symptoms were craving and melancholia. I shouldn't have felt jealous, but I did.
The following day I decided that my pad was not a safe place for Joe. Too many people had seen his arrival, and all it would take was for the scrape-tape pirate's telepath to send out a chance probe in the vicinity.
I had a contact in the cryogenic-hive complex uptown, and Joe agreed that this would be the best place for him until I came up with the creds to buy the services of a cyber-surgeon. I had a few ideas I wanted to think over during the next couple of days. I installed him in the hive, then left for Gassner's office.
I told my boss I was using the Batan II to check detail on the current case, and instead tapped into the city plate file. I found the number of the flier Joe had seen, and I was in luck. The flier was a company vehicle belonging to the Wringsby-Saunders Corporation. I looked them up and found they were into everything, but their biggest turnover was in the personatape market...
So I dropped to the boulevard and rode uptown.
The Wringsby-Saunders Corporation had a towerpile all to themselves, a hundred storey obelisk with a flashy WS entwined and rotating above the penthouse suit.
I marched in, exuding bravura.
I roamed. I was looking for company personnel with faces that matched those I carried around in my head. I took in every level and a couple of hours later found what I wanted. A tall executive left his office and strode along the corridor towards me. He wore silvered shades and an arrogant expression. He was shielded, of course - as he was on the last occasion I had encountered him. In the defective fluorescent lighting outside the Yin-Yang bar.
The glow-tag on the door of his office told me: Martin Kennedy. He