Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (18 page)

“I'm not an AI. I'm a replicant program. I just have a set of queries and responses.
Sounds like an AI. And if somebody gets outside my programming I can call Athelkau, which
is the station's AI, to get its help. Happens so fast you wouldn't notice.”

“So...” Tyler said. “Was that a standard response?”

“Yep,” the cab said as the door opened. It was clearly a different passageway since the
light was lower, mostly from blown light panels, and the pedestrians were... different. It
was amazing how universal a 'bad part of town' could look. Graffitti, it turned out, was
another universal. The cab slid out of the compartment smoothly then started weaving
through the pedestrian traffic. Someone threw something at it which thunked off the
plastic top and left a green, drippy stain.

“Not the best part of town,” Tyler said.

“Nope,” the cab replied. “Have to get a wash after this. You're registered on the hypernet
banking system. That's five credits.”

“Authorized?” Tyler said. “Does that work?”

“Yep,” the cab said, dilating the top. “Have a nice day. Keep your credit chips hidden.
But Kulo's is pretty safe.”

Tyler walked over to the nearest door and looked at the marquee. It was in garish letters
but he couldn't read them so he wasn't even sure if he was in the right place.

“Look confident and as if you're not a yokel,” Tyler muttered to himself. “Open?”

The door refused to budge.

“Hey,” he said, turning to ask the cab. But it was gone.

“Damnit,” he muttered. He could hear dissonant music from inside and the sound of an
occasional yell. Sounded like a bar. “Hello?” he said, rapping his nuckles on the door.
“Open sesame?”

The door dilated and a bipedal lizard even larger than Mr. Haselbauer filled it. The thing
looked like a velociraptor with a toothache.

“Sss-graka-gar!” it bellowed. It had to. The door had been soundproofed and the noise
inside was at the nuclear decibel level.

“Wathaet?” Tyler shouted, craning his neck up. The view of the thing's face wasn't much
better than the rest.

“Garagar!” the thing shouted back, gesturing inside with a thumb. It even had velociraptor
thumbs.

Tyler stepped inside and his ears immediately tried to shut down. The 'music', if it could
be called music, was a series of incredibly loud, apparently random, notes with
asyncopated pauses. Most of them were near the top of the audible range so it was possible
that there were some out of human audibility he was missing. If so, he'd pass. It was a
worse experience than the one indoor bagpipe competition he'd attended. But only
marginally.

The crowd was mostly Glatun and they seemed to be mostly using hypercom implants. They'd
have to, there was no way to hear. There were a few other species. Two large purple slugs
were drinking something green in a corner and a giant, segmented, exoskeletal, black and
red worm was chugging what looked like a gallon of something that smoked to some shouted
comments. At least Tyler assumed the Glatun were shouting. They were opening and closing
their mouths and between notes he could pick up some yells. A few more of the giant
sauroids were circulating the room but they seemed to be servers. Or security. Or both.

“T... er!” a Glatun shouted at him, clapping him on the back.

“Wathaet?” Tyler shouted back. He had to assume it was Wathaet. Racist as it might seem,
Glatun really
did
all look the same to him.

The Glatun opened and closed his mouth several more times. Tyler could only get a few
syllables. It had to be Wathaet, though.

“I can't hear you!” Tyler screamed.

“What?”

Tyler grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the door which fortunately opened.

“God almighty,” Tyler said when they were outside the cacophony. “How can you stand it in
there?”

“Stand what?” Wathaet asked.

“I couldn't hear a thing,” Tyler said. “Are all you guys deaf?”

“No,” Wathaet said. “Oh, you don't have a plantpak.”

“No, I don't have a plantpak,” Tyler said with a sigh. “Human, remember?”

“Come on,” Wathaet said, waving for Tyler to follow. “Time to fix that.”

“Uh, Wathaet,” Tyler said. “I'm not sure that a Glatun doctor would know the first thing
about human physiology.”

“I talked to Cori about it,” Wathaet said. “He said no problem.”

“Who is Cori?” Tyler asked as Wathaet took a turn down a service tunnel. A couple of
Glatun were just sort of hanging around the tunnel in a very nonchalant manner. Like a
nonchalant 'Your money or your life' manner. “Uh, Wathaet?”

“Don't worry,” Wathaet said. “Everybody knows me. Hey, guys. Buddy of mine from earth.
This is the maple syrup king.”

“Oh, wow,” one of the Glatun said, surreptitiously putting away his vibroknife. “Gosh,
it's nice to meet you. You wouldn't happen to have any...”

“Catch,” Tyler said, tossing them a sample bottle of Vermont's finest. They just made it
past the scuffle. Turned out that Glatuns had blue blood as well as skin. “Wathaet, could
we
please
get into some patrolled corridors?”

“We're here,” Wathaet said as a panel opened. “Come on in.”

Tyler had, like most kids, done a paper on the Holocaust in school. His particular paper
had focused on Nazi experiments and Dr. Joseph Mengele, the 'Angel of Death'.

The dingy room called back some
very
unpleasant memories. Same torture-rack, Sweeney-Todd barber's chair. Same 'Ve haff ways
of making you talk!' light in the face. Same sharp blade things hanging in mid-air. In
this case, literally. The only thing missing was the smell of antiseptic which, under the
circumstance, was not reassuring.

“Uh, Wathaet?” Tyler said.

“Don't let this place fool you,” Wathaet said. “Cori's the best plant thing on Glalkod
Station. Hey! Cori! Where are you?”

“In that case,” Tyler said, backing to the door. “I think I'll take my chances on finding
one on the...”

A four-foot long black scarab beetle had come bustling out of a back room. It wasn't
exactly a scarab beetle, but the resemblance was remarkable. Except scarab beetles didn't
have the big cutting mandibles. Come to think of it, Tyler had seen a few more scurrying
around in the corridors. He'd assumed they were dogs or something.

“Wathaet,” the beetle buzzed. “Is this the human I get to experiment on?”

“No!” Tyler shouted.

“Yes,” Wathaet said. “He wants a full plantpak with all the trimmings.”

“True,” Tyler said. “But I'm not so sure I want it from a beetle.”

“Racism,” the beetle buzzed. “We exoskeletals are used to it.”

“Man up,” Wathaet said. “The Ananancauimor are the best plant specialists in the western
spiral arm. And Cori is the best of all of them.”

“Modestly I must admit this is true,” the beetle said, mounting a small step-stool by the
barber's chair. “Are you going to lie down or must I get the stunner?”

“Look,” Tyler said, reasonably. “You don't know a thing about human physiology.”

“
Au contraire
,” the beetle buzzed. “I have researched everything your primitive medical profession has
discovered and I will not be going in unaccompanied. Louisa is a specialist in alien
physiology.”

“Who is Louisa?”

“I am,” a voice in the air said. “I am the medical AI. You need not fear, Mr. Vernon. We
will first do a very thorough examination of your physiology. As you have noted, we are
unfamiliar with human physiology. But we will not be after we have completed our thorough
scan of
you
. Furthermore, any first-contact procedures must be reviewed by a medical board for safety
and best practice.”

“How long is that going to take?” Tyler asked. “I'm only on the station...”

“The review will be more or less simultaneous with the examination,” Louisa said. “The
majority of it consists of discussion amongst AIs. We communicate and decide... very fast.”

“Is this an... invasive procedure?” Tyler asked.

“The examination will not be,” Louisa said. “The plant procedure? Extremely. But you won't
feel it.”

“Anti-infection protocols?” Tyler asked.

“Are you saying I don't run a clean aug parlor?” Cori buzzed angrily.

“Not at all,” Tyler said, soothingly. He managed not to glance at the scuff marks on the
walls. “Just getting a feel for the place.”

“Can we leave it at 'I know what I'm doing'?” Louisa said. “There is zero danger of
infection. I'll admit that Cori could tidy up a bit...”

“It's an atmosphere thing,” Cori said. “Make this place look like a hospital an I'll lose
half my custom! People go to hospitals to
die
!”

“We call places like that...” Tyler was going to say 'hospices'. “Good point. You're
right, Wathaet. Time to man up.”

“That's the spirit,” Louisa said. “If you could just climb in the chair and relax.”

“Climb, yes,” Tyler said. “Relax?”

“Right,” Wathaet said. “This is gonna take a while and I'm thirsty. See you back at the
bar.”

***

“So... when does the examination start?” Tyler said a few minutes later. He had to admit
the chair was more comfortable than it looked and he was even getting a bit sleepy.

“I've been examining you since you came in the door,” Louisa replied. “I'm about half way
through.”

“Oh,” Tyler said, looking around for the scanning equipment. All the icky floating stuff
was still floating where it had been. “MRI?”

“Distantly,” Louisa said. “GRI would be closer. Gravitic resonance imaging. Some magnetic.
I've completed a thorough survey of your gross physiology and anatomy and am doing a
chemical survey and interaction modeling. You're remarkably similar to the Ngongot. Not in
gross anatomical ways, but in interaction and biochemistry. Most Ngongot protocols will
work perfectly well. By the way, on the subject of sepsis I see what you mean. You guys
are sewers.”

“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Some of that seems to be evolutionarily interactive, so...”

“Oh, recognized,” Louisa said. “We won't mess with the important suites. You actually seem
to be missing some and we'll take care of the interaction problems while we're at it. The
question is approaching: What do you want done?”

“I'm not even sure what a 'full plantpak' means,” Tyler admitted.

“Hypenet connection and memory buffer mostly,” Cori buzzed. The beetle was busy behind
Tyler's head which was causing increasing paranoia. “In your case, since you didn't have
it as a kid: Immune system protocols. Geriatric stabilization. And, since you're clearly
pretty screwed up in places, ocular and aural adjustments and implants and a full rebuild
on skeletal and vascular systems.
That's
gonna cost a bit.”

“I can hear just fine,” Tyler said. “Sure, I've got a little high-frequency hearing
loss... And so I wear glasses?”

“Do you
want
to see and hear clearly?” Louisa asked.

“Yes, please,” Tyler said. “And if you could get rid of that weather knee, I'd appreciate
it.”

“No problem,” Cori said. “Four-fifty will do it. You got the stones?”

“Are we talking four hundred and fifty or four hundred and fifty
thousand
?” Tyler asked. “Four million?”

“Four hundred and fifty credits,” Cori said. “Unless you want to pay me four hundred and
fifty thousand which I'm not going to turn down.”

“Uh...” Tyler said. “What else is available? Because I can afford some upgrades.”

“Hooo,” Cori said. “Big spender. I like that. We can do a full prosthetic rebuild of your
motor system...”

“It cost an arm and a leg is a metaphor,” Tyler said, quickly. “I was thinking more along
the lines of... I dunno. What do you have? That keeps all my bits attached?”

“Well, if you really don't want the full cyborg package...” Cori said.

“I really don't want the full cyborg package,” Tyler said. “Can I get a list or something?”

“How long you got?” Cori said. “There's the athletic package. Very popular. Increased
muscular density. Faster neural twitch response. Increased oxygenation systems.
Hyper-cooling package. Balance systems, very good if you're going to be in zero-gravity as
well. No nausea, which you guys
must
get with that screwed up aural balance system. That's all nanobased so once we get past
the basic plants it's non-invasive since you're a sissy. Personal combat package is a big
seller around here...”

“I can imagine,” Tyler muttered.

“Skull hardening. Ribcage reinforcement. Micro-armor sub-integument weave...”

“You do all that with nannites or something?” Tyler asked.

“Nah, gotta do a full strip,” Cori said. “Don't have the time today.”

“And by full strip?” Tyler asked.

“Pull off all the skin and muscle and adipose tissue and do the plant,” Cori said. “Takes
a few hours.”

“Skip,” Tyler said. “Maybe next time.”

“Whatever,” Cori said. “Space-man's package...”

“I'll take the basic package plus the natural athlete package, thanks,” Tyler said. “Keep
it simple for now.”

“Customer's always right,” Cori said. “Louisa, where we at?”

“Authorizations all in place and registered,” Louisa said. “We can start any time.”

“What does start mean?” Tyler said.

“First we've got to get a mapper into your neural system,” Cori said. “You might want to
hold your head still.”

“You're going to stick a
wire
in my head?” Tyler asked, starting to turn around.

“Oh, no,” Cori said. “Already
did
that. That's why I said stay still. Right, Louisa, start the mapping.”

“If you could please think about your first memory,” the AI said, pleasantly. “And,
remember, this is for science. So be honest...”

For the next thirty minutes, Tyler was put through possibly the most unpleasant experience
of his life. 'Mapping' consisted of a long series of seemingly random questions 'Think of
the taste of blue... ', flashes of random memories, muscular twitches and occasional
strange feelings in odd parts of his body. All this culminating in...