Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe (16 page)

“Oh.” She surveyed the vast deposit of leftover pieces. Ever since she’d walked in she’d been itching to look at some of it. Ella added slowly, “But, this is like being in a candy shop. It’s not all junk?”

“Look. This.” He took up a small golden palm-sized gear. Sunlight sparked on the gold. Plito lobbed it into the air then listening to the distant crash and tinkle. “It’s
kak
. Mostly. Here and there, now and then, I find good stuff. That’s why I’m here.”

A cybernetic leg lay next to his cart. She’d seen him eyeing it. Next to her was a tiny finger-length robotic bird with blue wings and silver elsewhere. She kneeled and picked it up, letting it lie in her hand. The little robotic corpse seemed as sad as a broken child would be.

“You repair these?”

“Mostly we use them for parts. That bird’s common. Most like that are toys. Too fiddly to fix. Got to pay the gatekeeper for parts we take and it’s a bit of a gamble. I get some back and find the insides are gone – rusted, melted, or dirty. RMD’d we call those. Eats into the profits.”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t look like he had profits, not with his legs gone and all. She picked up the leg too, sliding it out from under a heap of ball bearings and screws.

“Leave that.” Plito frowned, his mouth down-turning. “It’s RMD’d. Look at the corrosion on the conduits even. Pity. First match for ages.”

“For?”

At his grimace she flushed hot. “Oh.”

“Anyway. Look, girl. Ella. Sorry. I can’t break slave codes.”

“Okay.” She nodded a few times. “I like honesty.” She did. Seeing someone as devastated by his own past, whatever it was that had cost him his legs, be as positive and moral, it made her feel good. Anyone who could do that deserved some good karma back at them. She gently laid down the leg then straightened. “I don’t really need it done now anyway. I have another hacking job. To find out my past.”

“That is almost too easy. Unless you’ve had a government job that put your past behind a wall?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah? Ten units a half hour of work. That may go up. It would depend on developments. This isn’t likely to be dangerous? Why don’t you know your own past?”

“I don’t think so. Not dangerous. It’s complicated, why I can’t remember.” She shifted her feet, slipping down slope a little. Being too trusting wasn’t wise though. “I need to see you work, to start with.”

“Sure. If you think you can tell anything from watching, you can do that. I can tell you more once I begin. Once I see the problems.”

That was when she felt the absence. Mimi was gone. She’d been with Ella all day until the girl showed up.

“We can go now.” Plito shrugged and tossed aside another piece.

“Can I take this?” She still had the little bird.

“I don’t want it. It’s up to you. Junk really.”

The gatekeeper was a squarish humanoid bot with worn purple paint. “Whatcha got? Whatcha got?” it hustled as they approached. After Plito haggled for what he wanted, it gave her bird one glance and made a derisive
blart
sound. “Half a unit.”

She paid and tucked it into her backpack.

“What are you going to do with that little bird?” Plito seemed genuinely interested. His cart made few sounds. She assumed it was a variation of the hoverboards and his long, spine-like appendages that substituted for legs must control it somehow.

“I don’t know.”

It drew her though. She wanted desperately to fix it. The little thing was so cute.

“Well. I guess, show it to Doc and Gears. They’ll ask a fee, you know? But if you want it alive again?”

“I do. Yes.” She smiled at him and put her hand out as they walked side by side. “Thanks Plito.”

“It’s nothing.” But he touched hands hesitantly then shook hers. “I’ll
ummm
look up the plans for it once we’re at the shop. ’Cause it might help.”

“Great.”

The fruit cart guy was still in business and though he offered her and Plito a great and wondrous deal on a superb specimen of ruby-colored fruit she could only grin and slip past.

“The prices he charges!” she said in an aside to Plito.

“Yeah. He gets people to buy, though, doesn’t he? I’ve not seen him before. One day I’ll be able to afford some of that.”

“You’ve never had fruit?”

“Fresh? No. Never.” With a flick of his metal legs, he sent his cart humming to the right. To Ella’s surprise he went another hundred yards then headed for a low door that was half below Horuk’s ground level. At the top of the door was a rough sign that read
Hack and Slash Cyber Repairers
in a degraded red text. A few irregular steps heralded the little rusted door and the center of the steps were so worn Ella noticed a dip as she skip-jumped down them.

Plito scoffed. “A happy one. Where’d I get you?”

“The dump I seem to recall.” She grinned.

That she made him shake his head and grin back brightened her day even more. She almost felt guilty about being so happy without Torgeir.

After tapping a virtual keypad, he unlocked the door then swung it inward. “Please. In.” Ella came up to him but hesitated. He pushed it even more open. “So you know it’s not like a trap with slavers and monsters with sharp teeth or anything. That’s Doc and Gears.”

The room was about half the size of the living room of Torgeir’s place above. She was beginning to see the difference between Torgeir’s idea of not rich and what kids like Plito would see it as. Though clean, the floor and the tops of the five or six benches scattered through the room were covered with varied cybernetic, AI, and electronic mess. There were numerous boxes and shelves with equipment spilling from them and four holoscreens going at once.

Doc was a young man who seemed a few years older than Plito, with white tattoos all over his olive-skinned body and a small goatee to go with his silver hair. Even his eyes were pale. He waved a hand and kept staring at the innards of a hat-sized sphere while a remotely controlled skeleton probe poked around inside the device.

The second of Plito’s friends, Gears, came around the side of the door. He blinked and raised a mug to her and Plito. Steam wafted her way. Not coffee, but something bitter.

Convergent evolution had produced a coffee substitute.

Looked like nerds here needed the same crap to keep them awake and functioning.

Gears was a head shorter than her and had hair as bright a magenta as Plito’s was yellow, except his was shaved short with even closer-to-the-skin shaved designs baring his scalp. There were whorls and what she recognized as ’verse standard mathematical symbols and numbers. Did these boys compete for weirdest hairstyle?

In her limited time out in the ’verse, she’d seen enough equipment, enough repairs on the
Finatar
, to know what was archaic, though top-of-the-line tech might look the same to her as ten-year-old stuff. A basic ocular device was fastened over Gear’s eyes, with the paintwork as chipped as the gatekeeper robot’s.

“What is this, Plito?” He peered at her. “A girl? Excuse me, miss, but don’t trust either of these two, they’re both mad.”

“Flip to mid-range vision on your
vir-specs
, Gears. You can’t see
kak
with it tuned so close. Eh. Look.” He reached and wriggled the
vir-specs
up to Gear’s forehead. “This is Ella.” He beckoned to her and went in, bypassing Gears. “Gears, Doc, this is Miss Ella, a new client of mine, so be nice.
No
dirty jokes.”

She followed him, careful not to step on anything that looked important. Off to the right a clear-fronted cabinet held a sparkling cyber arm that twinkled as a line of blue light swept across it repeatedly. Plito placed the used cybernetic pieces he’d bought in an overflowing bin and headed for a corner table with multiple AI pedestals. A wave of his hand brought several holoscreens to life.

“Want some slurg?” He asked as he slid into a chair before the screens, his cyber legs curling around the chair. Leaning over, he dragged a second chair in close.

“Slurg?”

“It’s what we call the beverage Gears is slurping.” Doc flashed her a grin. “High stimulant but legal, thick as mud, and it’s cheap and nasty.”

“Ummm.” She was feeling thirsty. “Sure.”

She sat next to Plito, watching him gesturing, whispering, and air-typing like an orchestral conductor with ADD. The holoscreens flickered and settled.

“Okay. Ella. Need more details. You’re from Earth, right? I figured. Freaky though. When you were born, place, parents. How you got released into the ’verse, cause from prelim investigations.” He pointed to one screen. “There are very few of you out here. Concer is playing you Earth people like you’re in quarantine or something. Only four other females are out supposedly. No male Earth humans. All...” He whispered some more. “Yeah. All were integral in bringing down the Bak-lal. Heroes. Wow.”

At last he turned his full attention on her.

“That was quick.”

“Pfft. All out there. Known. Not secret. You though are different and unknown. Pretty and different.”

The flush burned across her cheeks. “Thank you but you know I’m –”

“Yes.” He dismissed his words with a shrug. “I was just talking. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. We don’t get too many girls in here.”

“It’s okay. Anyway, I meant more...” She poked at a dent in the table surface. “How did you know I was from Earth?”

“Here,” Gears whispered. He placed a mug before her, then slipped away.

The surface bubbled. Black bubbles? She sipped, grimaced. Like salty beef extract with added thickness.

“You get used to it.” Plito rested his elbows on the table and his chin on the tops of his hands. “How did I know? When you came in, our door scanner picked up your code. Your planet of origin, full name, and other details are there along with your so-called owner. You have no warnings attached but yes, it is a slave code. I hope you know this man well. Bondmated? Then get him to remove it.”

His gaze was far too penetrating and serious for a teenager. She wondered what this boy had seen in his few years of life. Though really she wasn’t much older. Six or seven years, perhaps? The things she’d done might curl his hair, if she could remember them. She’d been altered by the Bak-lal and if anyone in this room knew that, they might be horrified. No, they
would
be horrified.

Maybe she’d jumped into this too fast? She needed to figure out if she could trust Plito with any information he uncovered. But how? How, when she didn’t even know what he might find?

“Do you understand that, Ella? It’s dangerous for you to have that slave code.”

She wrapped her fingers around the warm curve of the mug and clutched the handle. “Why?”

“It makes you property, legally. If he dies, you become part of his estate. If anyone can lay claim to his property, you would become theirs. It doesn’t matter what agreement you have with him. That’s what the law would see. A slave.”

“Oh.” She sucked on her lip, thinking. This was something she’d have to discuss with Torgeir. Which reminded her... Her backpack was on the floor at her feet. She rummaged in it and plucked out her comm. Muted and Torgeir had sent three messages. She flicked the
ok
response, praying he wasn’t fretting and sending out troops to find her.

“I also can tell you your cybernetic composition. Other things.”

He could? Fuck that door scanner. “Privacy?”

Plito looked apologetic, for all of two seconds. “Automatic.”

“What other things?”

“That your comm is sending out your location to someone, encrypted though.” That’d be Torgeir, her crazily obsessed man. “That you have military grade neurocyber and cybernetics. Nothing aggressive but it is military. They spent a lot of money on you, fixing whatever happened to you.” He sighed. “You wanted honesty? I’m not the best hacker out there. I doubt I can crack whatever your past is behind without some really hot snapp. That’s a type of security borer. I looked a little and you’re pathless, pastless, past a certain point in time.”

“I thought you needed my birthdate and all.”

“If I could get through the Concer military walls, yes. So if you want me to try, yes, you need to say.”

Funny, but she almost felt relieved that he was likely to fail. Finding out about herself was both a niggling constant in her life and a potential terror.

He pushed his wheeled chair away from the table. “Have you tried just asking them? Concer?”

“Ha-ha. Of course.” She buried her face in her hands, breathing hard, thinking, trying to sort out things. Could she trust Plito? It seemed unlikely it was going to be a problem. He wasn’t going to succeed. She drew in a calming breath. “If I just say
do it
. What will it cost me?”

“How about we keep it day by day? Just that ten units today. You say stop when you want. I’ll say stop if it seems impossible.”

Reasonable. Somehow she doubted Plito would bill her suddenly for a million for one day’s work. She felt obligated to pay him something.

“I’ll pay for today but let me think about my DOB and parents’ names and all that. Tomorrow I’ll say yes or no.”

He nodded and held out his hand. “Deal.”

Their hand shaking was interrupted by Doc swearing then saying, “What! Is that?”

Mimi sat in an eager, ears-forward lump by the door, her piggy eyes gleaming, her small nose lump twitching.

Ella leaped up. “That’s Mimi. She won’t hurt you. Probably. I think. Hope. She’s a MeMoMi from Sicar.”

“Probably?” squeaked Doc.

“I know what that is.” Gears hopped off his chair and edged forward to squat before her. “Memo-morphic metal? With variable mass? They kill prey by dropping on them?” He glanced back at Ella.

“Got it in one. She follows me. I can’t do anything about it. Sorry.” Then she recalled the incident on
Finatar
or
Zeus
or whatever she was called now. “Might be best to keep her away from corrosion. I think she likes the taste and she kind of...” Ella screwed up her face and wiggled both hands in front of her, struggling to describe what had happened. “Leaves goop on things.”

“Eh.” Doc tossed a piece of metal to the floor between Mimi and Doc, making a loud clang. “Have a snack. Better than my AI.”