Chapter 18 #4
That’s what brings Skotch back to Rootspace Central 38.
Specifically to Uwe’s little data nook. Aware of eyes on him, surely, amongst the crowd of Gehirner there for coffee or alcohol or nicotine, or just for talk and company in the moments between shift and sleep.
Aware that knowledge of hot rodent property on the streets must be bleeding out into the wider community, his fellow desperados and freelancers.
Some of them will have heard his name connected to what’s going on.
A price tag attached to his pelt. Dead or alive, just like Meece.
But right now he’s keeping ahead of the tide. It’s just eyes on him, and not weapons. And probably there’s some snitch or other running hotfoot to Mother Murnau or Szerky or someone, but he just needs one favour from Uwe and then he’s gone again.
“A private line,” he tells the pigeon. “The white noise generator. Nobody knows where I connect or what I say.”
The living parts of Uwe bob and scratch.
The rest of him, the plastic and metal of his implants, gets carried along by the biology without ever really being a part of it.
Skotch knows how they feel. It’s a service Uwe provides though.
A little private time. And along with Uzco and Shojen, there’s one other point in the city that he’s got a comms address for.
Him and nobody else. A secret given to him by an old friend.
He connects, there in a booth Uwe’s thrown up, with baffles and the painful hiss of the noise generator tweaking all the high frequency receptors in his ears.
Connects and says, “Hey, you there?” and waits.
Waits, knowing that if that silence stretches out too long it means that he’s failed.
That Szerky or Tybelle or someone got in ahead of him. Or Meece walked out.
At last the voice comes, thin and cautious, “Ah, mein host. Yes, I am still here. These cramped quarters you have found for me.”
A voice that a variety of Gehirner would pay a great deal to meet the owner of. Doctor Meece, if not in the flesh then in the audio reproduction.
“Food, water,” Skotch says. “My little bolthole. Damn luxury compared to the inside of a cat. They come round to search?”
“I hear animals outside, once, twice,” Meece says, static-washed and distant. “They do not find me here.”
“Working as intended,” Skotch says.
“Yet is it unsatisfactory,” says the doctor’s sharp, precise voice. “I must finish my work.”
“About that—”
“I am aware I do not have long. Either they find me or you sell me, Amerikaner. But I must have it written down. My formula and its procedure. Have you nothing? Filmy, a device, even human paper?”
“Doc, I don’t know how much time you think you’ve got, but the game’s up now.”
“Is that so?” Meece says, quite calm, expecting as much.
“I’m going to come and get you. Or I guess you can run and take your chances.”
“And what will you do with me, when you come and get me?” asks Meece’s high, bitter voice. “Who do you sell me to, Amerikaner? Whose offer has tempted you?”
“You know the Baron of Waste Sector Three, Doc?”
“A great mind.”
“You know the Ratlab folk? Nimoy, maybe?”
“Likewise an acclaimed thinker in many fields.”
“And I know you know the Maulers.”
“Liberated minds all.”
Skotch thinks of Fischer and Wizzo and the parrots and reckons that a mind can get too liberated, especially from reality. “You got any other friends in your corner, Doc? You can assume I’m more than familiar with your enemies.”
“I had thought, perhaps, some amongst the Rattenkonige,” Meece says hesitantly.
“Yeah, well, we met their emissary when she came for you in the Alley, so not sure you’ve solved that equation right, Doc,” Skotch tells him.
Although he’s thinking now, about the chase with Tybelle.
She didn’t get her claws on him, so maybe she was just going to trot and drop Meece alive on Murnau’s doormat.
But maybe not. And in the end, Skotch just doesn’t know, and he’s aware that the sands of his own time are running out the glass.
He says, “Right, Doc, you’ve got one chance. ”
“And what is that?”
“You tell me now just what the hell it is you’ve got.
What’s the grand project? What’s the terrorist act?
What is it you need to get down, that needs the chemistry set and the lab space?
Because it’s something pretty damn explosive, and I may as well get myself killed for what I know, rather than what I don’t.
” Maria was right, he’s decided. He needs to understand.
A pause. A wretched little mouse laugh. “You don’t know.”
“I am literally out of ways to tell the world how damn ignorant of everything I am,” Skotch says, with feeling. “You going to remedy that situation, Doc?”
Meece laughs again, despairingly, and tells him.
After that, after the call is cut, Skotch sits down in Uwe’s tech shack, no matter how many eyes are on him, or how the pigeon plainly wants him to move on.
Takes a good four or five long breaths to stop his heart clutching.
Then he’s on the move. Because he’s made his call and he needs to get Meece back in hand so he can sell him to the right people.