Future Crimes Part 40

"My hand's in the five percent?"

"Yes sir, unfortunately, yes."

"Where's my hand?"

"Go home. Glory," he said, pausing by the gigantic exit door, punching out a code on the keyboard.

I stood there, gaping at him.

"Do they know who cribbed it?"

"I said go home."

"Has it been fenced yet?"

The door hissed open. Zander turned to me and grasped a handful of my collar and very softly, very patiently, asked me to vacate the premises.

I knew it was the last time his request would be soft or patient.

I waited two days.

Pacing the length of my place, zoned out on rest rex flexing fingers which were once attached but were now noisy ghosts, sputtering, tingling, sparking, I could feel my sanity--what was left of it--denaturing into something primal. Something black and poisonous.

I've been known to have a temper--I won't lie--but now a new kind of rage was coursing through me with each twinge of phantom pain.

I had to do something.

On the second evening, I jacked into the net, trying to scare up some of my own leads. I threw out some c.o.c.kamaimie call for bone marrow cells as bait, and started sorting through all the fences working angles on hot tissue. Process of elimination got it down to a single s.h.i.+t bird Georgie Quine was a small-time scrounger. Specialized in hot molecules copped from in die labs, research schools, and the like- He lived under a co-op down near the hover station; I decided to take a chance and pay him a visit.

By the time I got down there, the night air had turned gelid, the city a rancid melange like too many perfume counters clas.h.i.+ng. The clouds were faded black muslin, cracked and veined with yellow age and pollution" Who dat?" The blurred image of Georgie Quine was flickering on the rez-box moments after I pushed the toggle.

"It's Glory," I told him.

"Glory?" the pallid face on the screen crackled at me.

"What's the panic?"

"Got questions need answers."

"No can do, Brother. Sick as a dog."

I told him he'd better get well quick or I'd make him terminally ill.

A minute later the door seal hissed, and the little stick figure poked his wan face out the crack.

"I got the blue lung. Glory," he wheezed.

"Chrissake, I can't hardly take in a breath."

"All I want to know is who stuck the Re-Gen Center, and don't give me any noise about you not knowing anything."

The junkie sucked his sallow cheek for a moment.

Dressed in gray feather and a moleskin mask, he was a couple of years away from the incinerator, his skinny body riddled with genetic dissonance. He had one good laboratory eye left, which flashed and sputtered like a dying lightbulb as he replied.

"You didn't hear this from me, okay? All right?"

I grabbed him with my jacked-up lab-hand and slammed him hard against the jamb, hard enough to rattle his brain. Made his eye flash tilt. My phantom hand was cold now and twinging with filaments of pain, and I was losing control.

"I'm on a G.o.dd.a.m.n schedule!" I barked at him.

"Tell me who did the G.o.dd.a.m.n job and you can keep your teeth in your skull!"

"Stains, Stains did the job. Stains did it, Rupert Stains, that's the guy."

I blinked, incredulous, Rupert Stains was a major player in the biotech arena, a genetic designer with more awards than the head of Rotary.

Rupert Stains was also a boy-wonder who had made designer-in residence at Big Softie before his thirtieth birthday.

Word was. Stains had started to decline in recent years, contracting an especially virulent form of Miller's syndrome. But who the h.e.l.l needs natural tissue when you're rich, right? Word was. Stains had replaced every major organ and every square centimeter of his flesh with the finest tissue money could buy.

His delicate little physique was trimmer than ever, his handsome mug more handsome than his press pictures.

But rumors were also rampant that Stains had gone completely bug-f.u.c.k loony. Maybe it was the loss of all that feeling, or maybe it was just the natural course of a genius intellect. Regardless, it made no kind of sense that a guy like Stains would do a BE job on a re-gen lab. He had a family, according to news reports, and was not the type of guy to get caught with his pants down.

"Stains was behind the job?" I finally managed to ask, clutching at Quine's throat.

"No, no, amigo, no--Stains did the thing. Along with Hawkhurst and Black Jimmy."

"You're telling me Stains did this thing himself with a couple of second-floor men?"

Quine's eye pulsed.

"My hand to the almighty." He glanced at my stump.

"No offense intended."

"They still in the Hard City

Quine swallowed dryly.

"Cops already got two of 'em. Glory, I swear to you, they're coming down hard on everybody. n.o.body's moving a thing--" "Who's left?" I tightened my grip. It looked as though Quine's eyeball was about to pop out.

"Stains--Stains is still running--somewhere north of Blackchappel--" I started slamming the back of his head against the jamb, a thin membrane of scarlet drawing down over my vision.

"They took one of the naturals! A hand!

A right hand! Where the f.u.c.k is it?!"

The words wheezed out of Quine's turkey neck:

"--Stains has it--" I hurled the little hoodlum to the floor of the foyer, cracking his skull against the wall. His eyeball flickered and strobed.

I turned and started toward the north, the vapor lights going red and hazey1 barely heard Quine's slurred speech behind me, a sickly bird singing one last tune.

"Better hurry. Glory .. . Stains has already been to the transplant team.. .."

The words were barely audible as I began to run.

Blackchappel was a vast graveyard of decaying, oxidized quonset huts buried in hard pack like fossilized dinosaurs, their metal spines gleaming in the sodium wash. The air was hotter around here. Toxic.

Veined with static electricity. Handi-cabs wouldn't run this far, and the cops rarely bothered patrolling the place. But as I approached the east bridge on foot, breathing mask-filtered air, lenses down, heart hammering, I saw the commotion a hundred yards away, out by the ancient switchyard.

Zander and his posse--three squad cruisers in all-inching along the edge of the tracks.

My invisible fingers were fuses now, lit and crackling hotly, the pain making me crazy, and I started trotting along the shadowy footpath, staying low, moving toward the switchyard, toward those slow-moving cruisers. I was all jigged up on hate and adrenalin, and I was clenching my phantom hand, tasting hot magnesium on my tongue.

Ahead of me, the cruisers jerked to a halt, one by one, their doors springing open, the shadowy figures of Zander and his men piling out, guns raised, infra reds snapped on, search-strobes sweeping the cobalt haze in front of them. And my heart was jittering wildly in my chest as I realized, all at once, just exactly what was going on.

One of the quonset huts a quarter kilometer away was lit up inside.