Future Crimes Part 39

Off in the distance, I could see the blue names on the horizon, the Microsoft farms growing bio-circuits twenty-four hours a day. They owned everything. Even me: my skin, my organs. Either Microsoft or Dupont. They owned the patents on everything.

I started to say, "I think it's just a twitch or something--" Then it hit me.

The phantom pain could be a signal from some remote transmission. A warning. Something happening to my physical band. My own flesh and blood.

A distress call.

"I gotta go check on something," I muttered, beading for the closet.

"At this hour?" Porsche looked like an apparition, standing there in her coppery hair and re-gen silk.

"Help yourself to some coffee, whatever you want," I said, pulling on my ozone jacket, shades, and gloves. There was an advisory tonight, and I didn't want to jeopardize my preoperative site.

I walked over to the door, paused and added, "Make yourself at home, Porsche, I'll be back in a flash."

"But what about--?"

I had already shut the door in her face and was halfway to the elevator.

The handi-cab skimmed along the slotted macadam of the Hard City the sound of air circulators rattling in unison with the aging motor. I was sitting in back, my ghost-hand screaming at me, the pain constant now. I could barely see through the safe shades tonight. There were several atmospheric advisories on the RT, and the air outside the shields was the color of pewter. Every few moments the belly of the cab would thump over another magnetic terminal, clocking the distance to the Brooksfield industrial park.

A moment later I saw the flames.

A quarter mile away, the salmon-colored smoke rose in a dense curtain above the smooth gray walls of the Re-Gen Center. Panic squeezed my heart. Tendrils of lights were cutting through the haze, reflecting off mirrored windows all around me, the whine of sirens seeping through the cab's welded joints. I blinked the sting from my eyes, then I rubbed the cab's grimy side-shield as the maelstrom loomed ahead of me.

I recognized one of the squad cars pulling up behind a fire wagon.

"Program stop! Right here!" I ordered the cab over to the sidetrack.

The cab rattled to a halt, and I snicked open the door with my money-chit.

"Jesus Criminy, Glory--whaddya doing here?" The voice bellowed behind me as I climbed out of the handi-cab. I whirled around and saw the behemoth coming at me. A pituitary case named Zander, he was an old watch commander from my former precinct.

He was built like a freight barge, with half a dozen chins and beady little eyes set deep in his fleshy face like two little raisins. He wore a safe suit under his flak vest.

"How'd you know about this so fast?"

"What happened, Zanny?" I couldn't take my eyes off the burning building.

"How'd you know about this?"

"What happened here?"

"Answer my question, Glory."

I told him it was hard to explain .. . but I felt it. I felt the fire.

"You what?" The fat man was staring at me now, his eyes contracting into tiny black diamonds.

I looked at him.

"My hand's in there, Zanny, I gotta go make sure it's okay," I started walking toward the fire scene, toward the giant burning monolith. The building was as wide as a city block, as high as the clouds, with thirty-inch thick walls carved out of super-slate and artificial mortar.

Another wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, the Re-Gen Center was a place where amputated limbs and cancerous organs could be given another chance, cleansed through hyper-radiation, reconstructed through genetic engineering. My hand was in there somewhere, in its final stages of regeneration, and now the top floors were blazing bright liquid silver.

G.o.dd.a.m.n idiots had too many alkaline metals stored in the vaults again.

These magnesium fires could burn through Fort Knox. I could feel the dry heat on my face as I approached, my phantom hand tingling.

Then a steel-vice grip was on my shoulder, yanking me backward.

"Easy does it, sweetheart," Zander growled at me, spinning me around.

And there might have been a scintilla of sympathy in his tiny cinder eyes, I'm not sure. Two other plainclothes cops were approaching us, the pink glow refracting off their mirrored shades.

"Lemme go, Zanny!"

"You don't get it--" "Let go!"

I tried to wriggle free, but his grip was like a channel lock on my neck, so I just gave him a sharp nudge to the rib cage, trying to shove him off me, but it must have triggered his goons because they were on me in a blink, driving rock-hard fists into my kidney, then a few knuckle-b.a.l.l.s to my gut, their genetically enhanced hands like sledgehammers. They snapped my feet out from under me, and I just folded up like a paper doll, the ground coming up and smacking me in the side of my face.

Zander leaned down close enough for me to smell the beans on his breath.

"Bad news. Glory," he was saying.

"The fire's a diversionary thing."

"--what?--" "Whole thing's a boost job." His big meaty face was glowing magenta-pink, melting before my eyes.

I managed to utter, "What are you telling me?"

"I'm telling you the place was knocked over. Sc.u.mbags pinched a buncha organs, extremities, and whatnot."

Everything was going dark, and I got one last question out: "My hand--?"

Zander sighed.

"Sorry, sweetheart .. . they got it.

They got your paw."

I shivered suddenly, adrenaline coursing through me. I tried to stand up, tried to yell, tried to grab for Zander's sidearm. I didn't even notice the other cop coming toward me. His fist came out of nowhere.

Tagged me square across the bridge of my nose.

It was like a switch being turned off.

I woke up in a holding cell. They brought me some food, and I got my bearings. And then I started pacing, and I must have paced the length of that cell for hours, thinking.

I just couldn't figure out why some second-story man would risk life and limb to get himself a natural hand? Sure, there was a healthy black market for natural organs, but nowadays test-tube extremities were being farmed everywhere, and they worked a lot better than the originals. All you needed was a plastic scaffold that mimicked the shape of a hand--and a few cells to "seed" it with--and pretty soon the cells a.s.sembled, and the plastic degraded, and voila! You got a brand new hand, stronger and more dexterous than the original. It just didn't make any kind of sense that a local cat would try to boost one.

Funny thing was, I had no idea how close I was to the answer.

Around five o'clock that night, Zander showed up and sprang me.

"d.i.c.ks ain't exactly supposed to brief 'civvies' on law enforcement matters," Zander grumbled as he led me through a narrow corridor toward the processing bay. He was chewing a stinky cheroot, and the brown smoke swirled around his huge head as he walked.

The "civvies" reference was definitely a dig. Cops hated ex-cops. But for some reason--be it pity, amus.e.m.e.nt, or what-have-you--Zander had a soft spot for yours truly.

"I'll tell ya this much," he went on.

"We've already recovered ninety-five percent of the organs."

"Ninety-five percent?" I gave him a sidelong glance as we strode through pools of halogen.

"That's what I said. Glory."

I tried to control my emotions.

"My hand's been recovered?"

"No, sir, I didn't say that."