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.It was an education watching Benny work Billy Boy.The way she put it the scheme didn't sound political at all.More like a convoluted scam to grab more prestige for the Dixies.She was using his eyes as a guide, saying things to keep them on her face.When the eyes drifted Benny would hint that she had backing, connections, and the eyes would track back on line.The words were like polymer chains, all woven together in an unbreakable cord.Zamina glanced at Roberta.The comer of her mouth was turned up, a little half-smile that said she was enjoying herself Deep in Billy Boy's eyes hunger blossomed, hunger for me scheme.Even the bimbettes on the margins of the room were leaning in trying to catch the gist, child faces wide open and vulnerable.Zamina could see that Benny was chaining them up with her words.Suddenly she was scared all over again.Olympus Mons WestSleep altered Old Sam's face.It softened out the rigid contours of his cheekbones and smoothed the violent lines that surrounded the eyes.His long dreadlocks were spread around his head, black at the tips, shading through grey to white towards the scalp.'Is he dreaming?' asked Blondie.Dogface shook his head and checked the illuminated LCD on the monitor.'He doesn't dream.' The bio-monitor was battered Hitachi, its leads jacked into the old-fashioned plug behind Old Sam's ear.'Something to do with the interface.'Blondie looked at the matt grey oval on his own index finger.'I still dream,' he said.'Whole other technology that,' said Dogface.'Oid Sam here, he's the old model, got himself an artificial nervous system when he signed on.Drove a lot of them crazy after the war, not dreaming.That and not having kids.''What was wrong with them?''Government had the patent on their genesets.They're functionally sterile so any kid would have to be spliced up in a lab.Government won't ever let it happen.''You can't patent a naturally occurring geneset,' said Blondie.'I looked that up.''This boy ain't natural,' said Dogface.'They did some stuff to the ubersoldaten.He's got maybe fifty per cent of the DNA he was born with, tops.'Impulsively Blondie put his hand on Old Sam's arm.The skin was smooth and cool over hard muscle.There were little ridges of keloid scar tissue on his shoulder, radiating out from a central scar crater like a sunburst.'Exit wound,' said Dogface.'I thought the Martians used sound guns.'Dogface grunted.'The Greenies used anything they could get their hands on.'It wasn't like that in the warvids.Even in the cheap exploitation pixs where you could sometimes see the join between the live action and computer-generated backgrounds.Blondie's generation had grown up on them, assimilating the soldier slang into everyday speech: Greenie, pop up, spider trap, fire mission, medevac.'The bastard's nailed Paris.''Hey,' said Dogface.'You gone off-line or what?''They always say that,' Blondie told him, 'And the wimpy one, you know the one that always gets scared on patrol, he goes berserk and does the mission and gets himself shot up and.'Dogface was staring at him.'You,' he said slowly, 'have been watching too many vids.'Lambada walked in from the crew room and stood at the foot of the bunk.'You'd better wake this one up,' she said.'Ming wants us up the Central Line doing integrity checks.''Is that where it went?' asked Blondie.'Credit Card lost the trace just before Lowell Depot and we're getting some weird returns from the instrumentation on P-95.''What kind of weird?' asked Dogface.'Weird weird or normal weird?''What can I say.Dogface?' said Lambada.'Weird weird.''What about the real world?''Those fucks at KGB won't say much but they did confirm that a classified number of passengers got greased on the outbound Central Line platforms.''Did they say why the leftovers are blue?''Refraction index,' said Lambada.'The stuff is made up of a saline solution saturated with some kind of crystals whose refraction index is blue - that's why the shit is blue.''What are the crystals made of?' asked Blondie.'Mineral salts, calcium, traces of magnesium and potassium.''People,' said Dogface.'And speaking of weird shit,' said Lambada, 'a real strange lady left a message for superman here.''White face, silver eyes?' asked Dogface.'You know her?''What's the message?''I don't know.It's in his comms buffer and you didn't answer my question.'Dogface looked back down at the Hitachi's display plate avoiding Lambada's eyes.Lambada folded her arms and glared at him.Blondie was shocked, it wasn't like Dogface to back down.'I'm not sure,' he said, 'but it sounds like the Angel Francine.'Lambada closed her eyes and went very still for a moment.'Christ in a bucket,' she said.'The fucking V Soc.Like we don't have enough troubles.''Whatever they want it's nothing to do with us.''Better hope so.'Blondie waited until Lambada had gone before he asked, 'What's the vee sock?''Veterans Society,' Dogface told him as he initiated the wake-up sequence on the old Hitachi.'You've got your triads, your Cosa Nostra and your yardies.And then you've got the V Soc.And if you get them on your ass, you truly have someone on your ass.'Dogface picked up a hypo and slotted in a lOcc adrenaline cartridge.'You watch a lot of vids don't you,' he said as he pressed the hypo against Old Sam's neck.'Ever see Frankenstein?'There was a long hiss as the drug went in.Isle of DogsEmerging into sunlight for the first time in days, Ming went straight past the line of waiting autokarts and started to walk home.Westferry Road was a broad curve round the Isle of Dogs lined with genetically engineered plane trees.Real air blew up the curve of the river from the Thames estuary, a brine-smelling wind that shook the silver leaves.Many of the trees were over a hundred years old, planted to scrub the London air, locking up the cadmium, dioxin and lead in striated layers of cellulose.A couple of protestors from the European Heritage Foundation stood between the joke palm trees in front of the old church.The EHF had leased the building as headquarters for their save the wharf appeal.A bright yellow canary with a crutch under one wing and a bandaged head stared winsomely out of a daylight hologram attached to the wall [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]