Chapter 3 #2
Skotch sits down with Sly and gives the outline of the job, all the serial numbers filed off.
If I were looking for a mouse…? Sly laughs at that.
Or rather, wags his tail and narrows his eyes to show amusement.
There were Gehirner foxes in some Grunstadt projects.
The idea was that the regular Gehirner population would need some sort of enforcement keeping them in line, and so various carnivore species were tried out, a sort of beast police.
Except the Gehirner workers just got on with things and the predators caused more trouble than they solved.
Discontinued, all but a few Strains. Meaning that Sly is getting by on cobbled-together black-market cat updates and the original dog-ware they put into him.
He’s probably only about 40 percent fox by mental weight, but on a good day it all comes together and he is every bit as cunning as the archetype.
As he and Skotch go over the details, his dogs come and go.
They bring food, most of them. They’ve been out and about in the city, panhandling.
Dogs can go to human places. A dog isn’t bound by Rule One.
They go up and down the freight elevators of the big buildings, trot out into restaurants and open-air dining areas, and do their best begging act.
Nobody’s going to throw a bone to a mangy fox with a couple of artificial legs and some bomb scars, but Sylvester keeps his kennels immaculate, the dogs handsome and groomed and cute as buttons.
Under his tutelage they’re all well-fed mutts, and they bring enough back that he’s got quite the paunch himself these days.
And, while they’re out and about, those tags are watching and listening—to the humans, and to the Gehirner that the dogs move amongst. Because Sly pays his dues to the armies and the guilds, so nobody messes with his pack.
Everyone knows he’s a nosy son of a vixen and hears far too much, but also, everyone knows he’s the fox to speak to when you want the skinny on what’s going down.
Skotch uses another chunk of Benson’s buttons to settle the account from last time.
Laps a little beer himself, even though it’s just bad water to him.
Sly has one of his dogs bring a half a cup of coffee, still sitting in its moulded cardboard tray.
Something left behind by a human too busy to finish it.
Cold, but caffeinated. Skotch will take it.
“One mouse,” Sly says, amused. “What’ll they have you hunting for next, Skotch? A roach? Some rather valuable ant someone mislaid?” Sly speaks Anglot, which is supposed to be a close cousin to the US Furze, but is just different enough to wrong-foot Skotch every ten words or so.
“I don’t get it any more than you do,” Skotch says. “Unless you do, of course.” Because he’s known Sly fifteen months—a long time in raccoon years—and the old fox has a lot of tells once you get to know him.
“You’re not the only one to be hunting mice. That’s yours for free. Crowded market right now, old mate.” Sly overdoes the Britishness sometimes. Skotch wouldn’t be surprised to find him wearing a monocle and a top hat, one of these days.
“You’re already hired?” Skotch asks him.
“Not me, but I hear enough that maybe I did some of the groundwork on the off chance.” Sly laps at the beer noisily. “As your information suggests, Skotch, it’s right in the war zone that all those arrows are converging on. And not by chance. Best place to go, if you want to shake the hunters.”
“Who else?” Skotch tries, not really expecting answers, because probably Sly has some professional confidences to keep.
The fox has thoughts, though. Everyone involved in this mouse-hunt is keeping their cards close to their chest, it seems, but a sharp player like Sylvester has been able to draw some reasonable conclusions from what his dogs have picked up.
Most of the pack are coming back by then, each with some prize held proudly in their mouth. Sylvester breaks off to reward them, trigger the automatic feeders, look over what they’ve got.
“That’s good eating, up that ways,” he remarks to Skotch. “My puppers go panhandling there most days.”
“Sounds handy,” Skotch says.
“Maybe I could send them up when they next go out,” the fox suggests, and names a price which isn’t actually that unreasonable. Another chunk out of Benson’s bounty, but Skotch knew the account was more expenses than wages. The Plangent is the real prize.
“Just narrow the field for me,” Skotch asks. “Small mouse, big patch, lots of Grays and Reds with itchy trigger fingers.”
“Rely on me, old son,” Sly promises, and worries one of the dogs fondly behind the ears. A scene of domestic bliss, the fox and his hounds.
One of the Rattenkonig families took offence, once, at Sly poking his scarred fox nose into their business.
Sent a whole team of belligerent Gehirner to teach the old vet a lesson.
Skotch heard about it after. About how those “puppers” got very, very defensive once Sly gave the word.
All bite and no bark. So nobody messes with the fox, and the fox, for his part, plays very carefully around the factions and powers of the Gehirner back-city.
Which is why it gives Skotch a chill, when he turns to go and the fox says, “You look after your skin, Skotch. Someone’s making this mouse Serious Business.
” Sly is worried. For Skotch, but also for himself.
The informational ripples that have reached the fox suggest a very big fish.
Whatever’s going on that Skotch has got himself involved in, it casts a longer, darker shadow than he can know.
While he’s waiting for Sly to come through for him, he heads back to his nook, where he now has the wherewithal to activate some facilities.
Nothing’s for free, when you’re outside the system.
Nothing’s for free and that’s the price of being free, Skotch considers.
Poetic. The nook spaces at Unterroot 93 are short of mod cons, but if you have the buttons then the world’s your oyster.
Not that Skotch can eat shellfish. Something in them interacts badly with the caffeine hack.
It was mocha or mollusc, in the end, and he made his choice.
Above the nook he sleeps in there’s a space with facilities he can hire.
Technically it’s the residence of one Ikelos of Santorini, one of those freelance Gehirner who came to Neuwien with a full shell of buttons and never seems to run out of them.
When Ikelos first arrived, he brought a lot of trouble trailing his tail.
Rumour claimed he, like Sly, was a military model, not civilian service.
Skotch had no idea what possible purpose a military-modded tortoise would serve in any sane conflict, back then, but rumour is 90 percent of what anyone says about anyone and he had no better suggestions.
Ikelos turned up old and rich and wanting out of the game, though, just about at the same time that Skotch decided he himself wanted clear of Uzco.
Skotch’s local knowledge and connections served to sever the various strings still latched onto the edge of the old tortoise’s shell, and a peculiar business relationship was formed.
Skotch has done several pieces of work for Ikelos since, and most recently a particularly big and convoluted piece of business that’s given him some privileges as regards Ikelos’ living space.
When the old shell moved in, he fit some serious doors on his nook.
Partly it’s because there’s some serious tech inside, a hotchpotch of repurposed Gehirner stuff enhanced with human components, tapping into the Gehirner’s piecemeal communications net and giving access to way more information and connection than anywhere else in this rental band.
Partly it’s that Ikelos is cold-blooded and Neuwien gets cold.
Part of the big favour Skotch does for the old chelonian is to tell people he’s hibernating.
Turn away creditors and busybodies and potential trouble, tell them to wait for late spring, early summer, whenever Ikelos might stir himself.
In return for which doormanship Skotch gets the keys to the place and access to the toys, if he pays into the rental account Ikelos set up.
He slips in. Ikelos is up on a shelf of the space he rents, doing his best paperweight routine.
A huge shell, really, and polished to a shine—another service Skotch provided for him once.
Ikelos claims that his Strain keep growing, and that he’s as old as the entire Gehirner project and then some.
That shell is certainly Galapagean in scale, bulking out one whole side of the nook.
Rumour says that anyone monkeying with it while its owner is dormant can expect quite a range of potentially fatal surprises from his wired-in countermeasures.
Ikelos has a contactless paypad set up in his quarters, and Skotch touches his Uzco tag to it, transferring over some buttons so he can access the facilities.
Ikelos keeps a terminal here, and the terminal is hacked for a wide range of access to Gehirner and human information sources.
Enough to find one mouse somewhere in the whole of Neuwien?
No. Enough to cross-reference the info Benson gave him, to know which of his contacts to tap?
Maybe. Certainly enough to get word to a few Gehirner he knows within the targeted area and prepare the ground.
He works for twenty minutes, feeling his brain fizz—not just with the Plangent hit he took that morning, but with the knowledge of the ampoules he’s got in his super.
The promise of sharp wits for weeks to come.
Suddenly Skotch is a winner, top of the world.
The fact he’s going to head into a war zone sooner rather than later can’t dent his confidence.