At the far end of the table were five Telefunken ear-bead transceivers with adhesive throat mikes, still sealed in individ- ual bubble packs. During the crucial phase of the defection, which Turner took to be the twenty minutes on either side of Mitchell’s amval, he, Ramirez, Sutcliffe, Webber, and Lynch would be linked, although the use of the transceivers was to be kept to an absolute minimum Behind the Telefunkens was an unmarked plastic carton that contained twenty Swedish catalytic handwarmers, smooth flat oblongs of stainless steel, each in its own drawstring bag of Christmas-red flannelette. `You’re a clever bastard,” he said to the carton. “I might have thought that one up my- self
He slept on a corrugated foam hiker’s pad on the floor of the command post, using the parka as a blanket. Conroy had been nght about the desert night, but the concrete seemed to hold the day’s heat He left his fatigues and shoes on; Webber had advised him to shake his shoes and clothing out whenever he dressed. “Scorpions,” she’d say, “they like sweat, any kind of moisture ” He removed the Smith & Wesson from the nylon holster before he lay down, carefully positioning it beside the foam pad. He left the two battery lanterns on, and closed his eyes. And slid into a shallow sea of dream, images tossing past, fragments of Mitchell’s dossier melding with bits of his own life. He and Mitchell drove a bus through a cascade of plate glass, into the lobby of a Marrakech hotel. The scientist whooped as he pressed the button that detonated the two dozen canisters of CN taped along the flanks of the vehicle, and Oakey was there, too, offenng him whiskey from a bottle, and yellow Peruvian cocaine on a round, plastic- rimmed mirror he’d last seen in Allison’s purse. He thought he saw Allison somewhere beyond the windows of the bus, choking in the clouds of gas, and he tried to tell Oakey, tried to point her out, but the glass was plastered with Mexican holograms of saints, postcards of the Virgin, and Oakey was holding up something smooth and round, a globe of pink crystal, and he saw a spider crouched at its core, a spider made of quicksilver, but Mitchell was laughing, his teeth full of blood, and extending his open palm to offer Turner the gray biosoft. Turner saw that the dossier was a brain, grayish pink and alive beneath a wet clear membrane, pulsing softly in Mitchell’s hand, and then he tumbled over some submarine ledge of dream and settled smoothly down into a night with no stars at all.
Webber woke him, her hard features framed in the square doorway, her shoulders draped in the heavy military blanket taped across the entrance. “Got your three hours The medi- cals are up, if you want to talk to `em.” She withdrew, her boots crunching gravel. Hosaka’s medics were waiting beside the self-contained neurosurgery. Under a desert dawn they looked as though they’d just stepped from some kind of matter transmitter in their fashionably rumpled Ginza casuals. One of the men was bundled in an oversized Mexican handknit, the sort of belted cardigan Turner had seen tourists wear in Mexico City. The other two wore expensive-looking insulated ski jackets against the desert cold. The men were a head shorter than the Ko- rean, a slender woman with strong, archaic features and a birdlike ruff of red-tinged hair that made Turner think of raptors. Conroy had said that the two were company men, and Turner could see it easily; only the woman had the attitude. the stance that belonged to Turner’s world, and she was an outlaw, a black medic She’d be right at home with the Dutchman, he thought. “I’m Turner,” he said. “I’m in charge here.” “You don’t need our names,” the woman said as the two Hosaka men bowed automatically. They exchanged glances, looked at Turner, then looked back to the Korean “No,” Turner said, “it isn’t necessary.” “Why are we still denied access to the patient’s medical data?” the Korean aked. “Security,” Turner said, the answer very nearly an auto- matic response. In fact, he could see no reason to prevent them from studying Mitchell’s records. The woman shrugged, turned away, her face hidden by the upturned collar of her insulated jacket. “Would you like to inspect the surgery?” the man in the bulky cardigan asked, his face polite and alert, a perfect corporate mask. “No,” Turner said. “We’ll be moving you out to the lot twenty minutes prior to his arrival. We’ll take the wheels off, level you with jacks. The sewage link will be disconnected. I want you fully operational five minutes after we set you down.” “There will be no problem,” the other man said, smiling. “Now I want you to tell me what you’re going to be doing in there, what you’ll do to him and how it might affect him.” “You don’t know?” the woman asked, sharply, turning back to face him. “I said that I wanted you to tell me,” Turner said. “We’ll conduct an immediate scan for lethal implants,” the man in the cardigan said. “Cortex charges, that sort of thing?” “I doubt,” said the other man, . `that we will encounter anything so crude, but yes, we will be scanning for the full range of lethal devices. Simultaneously, we’ll run a full blood screen. We understand that his current employers deal in extremely sophisticated biochemical systems. It would seem possible that the greatest danger would lie in that direc- tion “It’s currently quite fashionable to equip top employees with modified insulin-pump subdermals,” his partner broke in. `The subject’s system can be tricked into an artificial reliance on certain synthetic enzyme analogs. Unless the sub- dermal is recharged at regular intervals, withdrawal from the sourcethe employercan result in trauma.” “We are prepared to deal with that as well,” said the other. “Neither of you are even remotely prepared to deal with what I suspect we will encounter,” the black medic said, her voice as cold as the wind that blew out of the east now. Turner heard sand hissing across the rusted sheet of steel above them. “You,” Turner said to her, “come with me.” Then he turned, without looking back, and walked away. It was possi- ble that she might not obey his command, in which case he’d lose face with the other two, but it seemed the right move. When he was ten meters from the surgery pod, he halted. He heard her feet on the gravel. “What do you know?” he asked without turning. “Perhaps no more than you do,” she said, “perhaps more. “More than your colleagues, obviously.” “They are extremely talented men. They are also . servants.” “And you are not.” “Neither are you, mercenary. I was hired out of the finest unlicensed clinic in Chiba for this I was given a great deal of material to study in preparation for my meeting with this illustrious patient. The black clinics of Chiba are the cutting edge of medicine: not even Hosaka could know that my position in black medicine would allow me to guess what it is that your defector carries in his head. The street tries to find its own uses for things, Mr. Turner Already, several times, I’ve been hired to attempt the removal of these new implants. A certain amount of advanced Maas biocircuitry has found its way into the market. These attempts at implanting are a logical step. I suspect Maas may leak these things deliberately “Then explain it to me “I don’t think I could,” she said, and there was a strange hint of resignation in her voice. “I told you, I’ve seen it. I didn’t say that I understood it.” Fingertips suddenly brushed the skin beside his skull jack “This, compared with biochip implants, is like a wooden staff beside a myoelectric limb.” “But will it be life-threatening, in his case?” “Oh, no,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “not for him And then he heard her trudging back toward the sur- gery