Driftmetal (5 page)

There were wrinkles between Chester Wheatley’s
eyebrows. “But this… this flying machine will be the greatest
invention the City Watch has ever seen. I’ve rigged up a bluewave
communicator to send simple commands to it from a distance. Watch.”
He picked up a black plastic box that had once been an ordinary
comm. Now it had a control wheel made from a copper gear, along
with three extra buttons. When he turned the wheel, ailerons on the
wings flapped in reverse of one another. “It’s operable from as far
away as the bluewave signal will go. This button will operate the
built-in camera, after I install it. The City Watch will be able to
fly it and take pictures of the outside without ever setting foot
on the Churn. The Automaplane, I call it.”

“This technology is
new
around here?” I acted
incredulous. “Hate to break it to you, Chaz, but send me up to the
stream with a few ounces of gravstone and I’ll bring you back a
fleet of these things. I’m sure I can find someone who still has a
bunch of them lying around in their backyard.”

 Chester’s bubble was burst. “Just when I think
I’ve discovered something completely different,” he said, the
sparkle in his eyes turned to sorrow.

This guy got out of the house as seldom as I’d
hoped. His Automaplane was a blasted brilliant idea. But I had
places to go and things to steal. “Hey, don’t get so down on
yourself,” I said. “You came up with this entire contraption
without ever having known it existed before. If that isn’t the mark
of a true genius, I don’t know what is. Chaz, buddy… others around
here might not see your potential, but I do. You’re one heck of an
inventor, and if you don’t see it in yourself, you need to be
reminded.” I reached through his scaffolding and poked him in the
chest with both pointer fingers. “Your potential stretches further
than you know. There are so many unexplored avenues of technology,
the potential for finding that next big idea is right around the
corner. Matter of fact, I think I may have already found it for
you.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, perking up. “What is it?”

“I’m a techsoul,” I told him. “And I’d like to
donate my body to science.”

3

The neurological pathways that connect my body to
its augments are nothing short of miraculous. Don’t ask me why I
was born with telerium-laced bones, skin the consistency of
synthetic cloth, or bundles of polymer fibers for muscles. My veins
are like fish tank tubing, my tendons and cartilage like hard
rubber. Any given part of my body is twice as sturdy as a human’s.
Yet somehow it all works. I think and breathe and eat and crap and
sleep like a human. Only I’m not human. Not as far as humans are
concerned.

Even though I grew up the son of a mechanic, I’ve
always felt like I’ve had an intimate knowledge of machinery in my
blood. If something has moving parts, I can figure out how to fix
it with the right tools. It’s just hard to fix your own arm when
the job takes two hands. So I’d offered myself to the study of E.
Chester Wheatley not because I needed his expertise, but because I
needed his hardware and a pair of skilled hands.

Techsouls are the unluckiest people in the world;
we’re also the most plentiful, by far. I’ve undergone more
surgeries than I can count; most of the later ones I performed on
myself. I’ve tried dozens of mechanisms to change the functions of
my body and serve as convenient little diversions from having to
think about who or what I am. When your body is part machine, you
can’t ignore technology. You can’t
not
think about improving
yourself and staying relevant. You wonder if anyone would take you
seriously if you decided to say ‘
the heck with it
’ and let
yourself go, become an outdated model with rusty joints and
toothless gears. Because the best thing about being human is never
having to
literally
stretch yourself toward an ideal that
says only the newest and shiniest tech is employable, only the
latest and greatest is worth noticing. Primies are free from all
that. They can lose weight or gain it, build muscle or pile on the
fat, but that’s the extent of the decisions they have to make about
their bodies. It’s possible for them to
understand
what it’s
like to be me, but they’ll never
know
.

Vilaris and Blaylocke approached as Chaz—née E.
Chester Wheatley—was opening up my various compartments to
investigate my insides. My wounds from the fall were smarting
something awful. I could tell I’d taken at least one flecker shot
to the lower back and a laser in the butt, but I’d get those tended
to later.

“You asked before why we decided to bring you into
Pyras,” Vilaris said. “We don’t allow visitors often, but we need
help.”

I smirked. “I could’ve told you that.”

“No, I mean we need
your
help.”

“Sorry, I don’t do the ‘
helping people
’
thing.” I air-quoted the words, keeping my wrists together like I
was making a shadow puppet, while Chaz held a bundle of polymer
fibers aside and peered into my thigh.

“This is unbelievable,” Chaz was saying. “The way
the synthetic flesh and the augments are so seamlessly blended
together. I never thought I’d get such a hands-on view of a
techsoul’s body. The amalgamation of humanity and technology is
astounding. This is going to change the course of my experiments
for years to come. You have an array of neurosensors and twitch
gyroelectrolyzers that are barely above detection, which I assume
are intended for smoothing the interactions between the various
brain-body-tech circuits. How does it all wire up, I wonder? How’s
it all connected? Oops. Did that hurt? How do you feel?”

“I feel close to either falling asleep or having an
orgasm, depending on which one of those things you jab.” I also
felt weird having another guy’s face six inches away from my
crotch.

“If I tell you why we brought you here, will you at
least consider helping us?” asked Vilaris, annoying me.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Unless there’s chips in
it for me, in which case I’d be working for you, not helping
you.”

“We can probably pay you a little for your trouble,”
Vilaris said.

“Well why didn’t you say so? Or better yet, why
didn’t you just use the phrase ‘
work for us
’ instead of
‘
help us
’?”

“Because you don’t have a choice in the matter. We
know you killed those miner thugs.”

Chaz stopped fiddling with my leg. He shrank away,
and I saw him gulp. “Killed?”

“It’s not like it sounds, Chaz. They jumped me, and
I—”

“Why are you lying?” said Blaylocke. “First our
gravstone buyer ends his contract with the city. Then we hear the
Civvies’ chattering on the bluewave about so-and-so who’s wanted
for murder and attempted larceny. Then to top it all off, the
Civvies come down into the nearflow and risk having their boats
dashed to pieces to find said murderer. They were looking for you,
Muller. You told us yourself you weren’t far away from being the
most wanted outlaw in the stream.”

I gave Chaz a pleading look. “Chaz, I’m not a
lunatic. You gotta believe me, I was minding my own business
when—”

“Tell me the truth,” Chaz said, shrugging out of his
apparatus.

Why do I have to be such a bigmouth?
“Okay, I
stole something,” I said, throwing up my bound hands. That made
Chaz flinch. “I hid the haul on some floater and went to a tavern,
planning to pick it up later in my boat. Gilfoyle and his goons
found me first and said they’d kill me if I didn’t show them where
it was. I did, but Gilfoyle decided he wanted me dead anyway. They
put me on a beat-up old hovercell and sent me to the Churn to die.
If Gilfoyle isn’t buying from you anymore, you should consider
yourself lucky and find someone else to do business with. Someone
who isn’t a lying sack of crap.”

“What did you steal?” Blaylocke asked, as though he
already knew.

I hesitated. “Gravstone. A pretty big haul.”

“And where do you think that gravstone came
from?”

It hit me, and I knew where this was going. “At the
time, I thought it was from the Churn mines. It wasn’t though, was
it? It was from Pyras.”

Blaylocke shot me a look. “Do you know how we keep
this old city so sparkling new? Why we’re so wealthy even though
we’re humans? Because gravstone is our chief export. Every trade we
make, every deal we strike, has to be done in secret. That’s how we
keep Pyras under the radar. In the case of our gravstone, it’s by
only dealing with one buyer. A buyer you tried to steal from. Who,
after losing four of his men, a hovercell and a pair of
hovertrucks, says it’s too dangerous around here. He’s packing up
his operation and shipping off to friendlier nearflow, and he never
paid a single chip for that entire truckload. That was almost half
a year’s output. You just scared off the only person keeping Pyras
funded.”

I’d ruined the economy of an entire city, and they
wanted to pay me to fix it. I had to hand it to myself.

“We brought you back here because we want to give
you the chance to make it right,” Blaylocke continued. “Now that
you know how many innocent people depend on the exports from our
ore veins, you
must
feel some compulsion to help.”

If I had said I felt one iota of compulsion, I’d
have been lying.
They
were the morons basing their
livelihood on the sale of a single element. Just because it was the
most valuable element in existence didn’t make it okay to put all
their eggs in one basket. Besides, it’s not like I had known I was
screwing them over.

“So that’s what you wanted to pay me for? You were
going to throw some arbitrary number of chips at me and say ‘Make
it right’? ‘Fix what you didn’t know you broke’? What happens if I
go out and tell the whole world about you instead?”

“Good luck finding us again, first of all,” said
Vilaris, running a hand through his long oily locks.

“And second of all,” said Blaylocke, “that’s going
to be hard for you to do with the device Chester is about to
install, which is the reason we brought you down here to the
Department of Innovation.”

“I’m doing
what,
now?” Chaz was so gullible
and easygoing, I’d started to like the guy.

“Sorry for the short notice, Chester,” Vilaris
said.

“The old ‘
Do what we say, or we’ll kill you
’
routine, huh?” I said. “I expected better from you guys.” I’ve
always liked making people think I’m one step ahead of them. I also
like being a wiseacre, so… two birds with one stone, there.

“Not quite,” said Blaylocke. “We prefer to reward
rather than punish. The device lets us keep tabs on you.”

“A bluewave beacon? No thanks.”

“It’s not on the bluewave. It’s a sub-signal. We’re
the only ones who can trace it. The device will let us listen in on
everything you’re saying. If we get wind of you doing anything that
could jeopardize your task, you’ll get a shock just like the ones
from the magnetic cuffs and the cracklefields on our bikes. Keep it
up, and we’ll come find you.”

“
That’s
your idea of a reward?”

“The not-killing-you part was the reward.”

“So I have no choice in the matter. You’re forcing
me to do this.”

Blaylocke shrugged. “We were hoping it wouldn’t come
to that. We thought you’d want to help.”

“Surprise, buttholes. I’m not a humanitarian. I
don’t work for free. How do you expect me to do this, anyway? Why
don’t you just do it yourselves?”

“We
will
do it ourselves, if you fail. But
even as a wanted man, a techsoul can get around in the stream
easier than a human could. You said you’re an outlaw. Don’t outlaws
know how to sell things under the radar? When you stole all that
gravstone, did you plan on selling it?”

“Sure,” I said.

“To one person?”

I looked at him like I thought he was dumb. Wasn’t
hard, since I did. “Highly unlikely that I could’ve found one
person who could afford all that gravstone. Probably would’ve had
to find a dozen.”

“So all you have to do is pretend you have enough
gravstone to sell to a dozen people. Then find us those
people.”

“That could take months, if I’m lucky. I’d need a
boat to haul it in, and a crew to protect it.”

“As human as we may be, we do have brains,” Vilaris
said. “We’re not gonna give you the gravstone in advance. That’s
how Gilfoyle burned us. You find the customers, we ship the
goods.”

“With the kinds of people I tend to deal with,
asking them to take delivery after payment is as good as spitting
in their faces,” I said.

“There
is
one other option,” said
Blaylocke.

I waited.

“You could convince Mr. Gilfoyle to pay us
back.”

I laughed out loud. “The guy keeps a whole crew of
thugs on retainer. If you think I’m ever getting within a mile of
him by myself, you’re delusional.”

I wanted that medallion—the one I’d tried to trade
away from Gilfoyle for his own truckful of gravstone. But I wasn’t
stupid enough to go near him again.

“What if you weren’t by yourself?” Vilaris said.

“What does that mean?” I asked, leveling my gaze at
him.

“Blaylocke and I will come with you. There isn’t
time to build a streamboat, but we can charter an airship from the
city.”

Blaylocke disagreed. “This is
his
problem,
Clint. Let him figure it out.”

“A crew of humans?” I said. “Please. Spare me the
fairy tales. If anyone gets wind of me riding around with a bunch
of primies, we’ll all be dead before dinner.”

“You’re forgetting what kind of primies you’ll be
riding around with,” Vilaris said.

“The kind with
cracklefields
and
magnetic
cuffs
?” I said. “Ooh. The techsouls will be so scared, they’ll
forget to bring their skin augurs.”