Machine Man - Max Barry [61]
We reached the elevator bank. I pressed DOWN. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She came around in front of me. “I want to be a test subject for Better Skin.”
I tried not to look at the spots on her forehead but couldn’t help it. “I don’t actually select test subjects.”
“But you could. You could get me in.”
“Um …”
“I’d follow protocol. I would be an extremely good test subject.”
“I know you would, Elaine.” At last, the elevator arrived.
“I wash my face eight times a day. I use aloe vera. I use methylhydroxide. I sleep with a face mask. It wakes me up but I use it. Please.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I entered the elevator and pressed for the labs. Elaine stayed where she was, her hands pressed together.
“Thanks,” she said. “Thank you.”
I SWIPED my way into Lab 5 and interrupted a bunch of lab assistants shaving off Mirka’s hair. The floor was littered with dark filaments. In a bald head, Mirka’s cat eyes looked enormous, like a Japanese cartoon. We all stared at one another and then I clomped across the lab and began searching for the hand scanner.
“We’re, ah …” said Jason. “I guess you’re wondering what we’re doing.”
“No.” Half-dissected electronics lay all over the workbench. “Where’s the scanner?”
“There,” said several cats at once. I couldn’t see where they meant until I followed their pointing fingers and shifted a schematic. A tiny part of it must have been poking out, too small for me to notice. A cat said, “Why aren’t you wearing your Eyes, Dr. Neumann?”
One of the assistants held a surgical drill, I noticed. That couldn’t be good. But I didn’t have time for this. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said, and left.
I RODE the elevator up to ground, turning the scanner over in my hands. It was very basic, with a narrow electromagnetic range. But that should be enough to tell what was happening inside Lola. Right now I couldn’t imagine why her heart would start emitting a magnetic field. It was a pump.
The elevator doors opened. For a second I expected Elaine. Can I have the Skin? But the area was empty. It was very empty. I thumped along the corridor and past the atrium and now its tables were empty, the muesli-eating suits vanished. When I reached the elevators for Building C and went to press the call button, it was dark. All the panels above the elevators were blank but one, which ticked downward from 18. I waited. When it opened, it had Cassandra Cautery in it. “Charlie. We need to talk.”
“Something’s wrong with Lola.”
“It’s taken care of. Come here.”
I hesitated, then entered the elevator. Cassandra Cautery swiped her ID tag. The doors closed.
“We have a little situation.” She touched her palms together, as if praying, and put the fingers to her lips. “It’s all right. Everything is fine. But we do have a problem we need to deal with.”
“Is her heart malfunctioning?”
“Let me just lay something on the table. The company has made a significant investment in Lola Shanks. That life-saving operation, that did not come cheap.” This did not strike me as a very fair assessment, since the operation was life-saving only because she was shot by Carl, but I kept silent because I wanted to get to the part where Cassandra Cautery explained what was wrong with Lola. “You can debate whether the right decision was made. I know I had concerns. But that was not my call.” Her eyes flicked to the floor numbers ticking upward. “I’ve always tried to do the right thing, Charlie. You understand that, don’t you?”
I said nothing.
Her tone sharpened. “When you asked me to dispose of Carl, did I quibble? Did I say, ‘Gee, Charlie, that’s a little heartless, he’s a ten-year employee with no arms?’ No. I didn’t.”
“Fire.”
“What?”
“I asked you to fire Carl.”
“You said get rid of.”
“That’s the same thing.”
She hesitated. “Of course it is. The point is, I’ve tried to provide you with a supportive