“I need a cable,” Rydell said, and his voice sounded breathless, and 121 somehow it was not liking to hear himself sound that way that took him the rest of the way over.
“I know what you need,” the kid said, making sure Rydell heard the boredom in his voice.
“Then you know what kind of cable I need, right?” Rydell was closer to the counter now. Ragged old posters tacked up behind it, for things with names like Heavy Gear II and T’ai Fu.
“You need two.” The grin was gone now, kid trying his best to look hard. ‘One’s power: jack to any DC source or wall juice with the inbuilt transformer. Think you can manage that?”
“Maybe,” Rydell said, getting right up against the front of the counter and bracing his feet, “but tell me about this other one. Like it cables what to what exactly?”
‘Tm not paid to tell you that, am I?”
There was a skinny black tool lying on the counter. Some kind of specialist driver. “No,” Rydell said, picking up the driver and examining its tip, “but you’re going to.” He grabbed the kid’s left ear with his other hand, pinched off an inch of the driver’s shaft between thumb and forefinger, and inserted that into the kid’s right nostril. It was easy hanging on to the ear, because the kid had some kind of fat plastic spike through it.
“Uh,” the kid said.
“You got a sinus problem?”
“No.”
“You could have.” He let go of the ear. The kid stood very still. “You aren’t going to move, are you?”
“No..
Rydell removed the Ray-Bans, tossing them over his right shoulder. “I’m getting sick of people grinning at me because they know shit I don’t. Understand?”
“Okay.” “‘Okay’ what?” “Just . . . okay?”
“Okay is: where are the cables?”
“Under the counter.” 122 ‘Okay is: where did they come from?”
“Power’s standard hut lab grade: transformer, current-scrubber. The other, I can’t tell you-”
Rydell moved the tool a fraction of an inch, and the kid’s eyes widened. “Not okay,” Ryclell said.
“I don’t know1 Know we had to have it assembled to spec, in Fresno. I just work here. Nobody tells me who pays for what.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “If they did, somebody like you’d come in and make me tell, right?”
“Yeah,” Rydell said, “and that means people are liable to come in and torture your ass into telling them things you don’t even know..
“Look in my shirt pocket,” the kid said carefully. “There’s an address. Get on there, talk to whoever, maybe they’ll tell you.”
Rydell gently patted the front of the pocket, making sure there wouldn’t be any used needles or other surprises. The massive pad of
muscle behind the pocket gave him pause. He slid two fingers in and came up with a slip of cardboard torn from something larger. Rydell saw the address of a website. “The cable people?”
“Don’t know. But I don’t know why else I’d be supposed to give it to you.”
“And that’s all you know?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t move,” said Rydell. He removed the tool from the kid’s nostril. “Cables under the counter?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I want you to reach under there.”
“Wait,” said the kid, raising his hands. “I gotta tell you: there’s a ‘bot under there. It’s got your cables. It just wants to give ’em to you, but I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“A ‘bot?”
“It’s okay!”
Rydell watched as a small, highly polished steel claw appeared, looking a lot like a pair of articulated sugar tongs his mother had owned. It grasped the edge of the counter. Then the thing chinned itself, onehanded, and Rydell saw the head. It got a leg up and mounted the 123 counter, pulling a couple of heat-sealed plastic envelopes behind it. Its head was disproportionately small, with a sort of wing-like projection or antenna sticking up on one side. It was in that traditional Japanese style, the one that looked as though a skinny little shiny robot was dressed in oversized white armor, its forearms and ankles wider than its upper arms and thighs. It carried the transparent envelopes, each one containing a carefully wound cable, across the counter, put them down, and backed up. Rydell picked them up, shoved them into the pocket of his khakis, and did a pretty good imitation of the robot, backing up.