Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [116]
THE DOG LOOKED like he had just stepped out of a children’s book. There must have been a hundred physical adaptations required to allow him to walk upright. The pelvis, of course, had been entirely reshaped. The feet alone would have needed dozens of changes. He had knees, and knees were tricky.
To say nothing of the neurological enhancements.
But what Darger found himself most fascinated by was the creature’s costume. His suit fit him perfectly, with a slit in the back for the tail, and—again—a hundred invisible adaptations that caused it to hang on his body in a way that looked perfectly natural.
“You must have an extraordinary tailor,” Darger said.
The dog shifted his cane from one paw to the other, so they could shake, and in the least affected manner imaginable replied, “That is a common observation, sir.”
“You’re from the States?” It was a safe assumption, given where they stood — on the docks—and that the schooner Yankee Dreamer had sailed up the Thames with the morning tide. Darger had seen its bubble sails over the rooftops, like so many rainbows. “Have you found lodgings yet?”
“Indeed I am, and no I have not. If you could recommend a tavern of the cleaner sort?”
“No need for that. I would be only too happy to put you up for a few days in my own rooms.” And, lowering his voice, Darger said, “I have a business proposition to put to you.”
“Then lead on, sir, and I shall follow you with a right good will.”
The dog’s name was Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, but “Call me Sir Plus,” he said with a self-denigrating smile, and “Surplus” he was ever after.
Surplus was, as Darger had at first glance suspected and by conversation confirmed, a bit of a rogue — something more than mischievous and less than a cut-throat. A dog, in fine, after Darger’s own heart.
Over drinks in a public house, Darger displayed his box and explained his intentions for it. Surplus warily touched the intricately carved teak housing, and then drew away from it. “You outline an intriguing scheme, Master Darger—”
“Please. Call me Aubrey.”
“Aubrey, then. Yet here we have a delicate point. How shall we divide up the…ah, spoils of this enterprise? I hesitate to mention this, but many a promising partnership has foundered on precisely such shoals.”
Darger unscrewed the salt cellar and poured its contents onto the table. With his dagger, he drew a fine line down the middle of the heap. “I divide — you choose. Or the other way around, if you please. From self-interest, you’ll not find a grain’s difference between the two.”
“Excellent!” cried Surplus and, dropping a pinch of salt in his beer, drank to the bargain.
It was raining when they left for Buckingham Labyrinth. Darger stared out the carriage window at the drear streets and worn buildings gliding by and sighed. “Poor, weary old London! History is a grinding-wheel that has been applied too many a time to thy face.”
“It is also,” Surplus reminded him, “to be the making of our fortunes. Raise your eyes to the Labyrinth, sir, with its soaring towers and bright surfaces rising above these shops and flats like a crystal mountain rearing up out of a ramshackle wooden sea, and be comforted.”
“That is fine advice,” Darger agreed. “But it cannot comfort a lover of cities, nor one of a melancholic turn of mind.”
“Pah!” cried Surplus, and said no more until they arrived at their destination.
At the portal into Buckingham, the sergeant-interface strode forward as they stepped down from the carriage. He blinked at the sight of Surplus, but said only, “Papers?”
Surplus presented the man with his passport and the credentials Darger had spent the morning forging, then added with a negligent wave of his paw, “And this is my autistic.”
The sergeant-interface glanced once at Darger, and forgot about him completely. Darger had the gift, priceless to one in his profession, of a face so nondescript that once someone looked away, it disappeared from that person’s consciousness