Distress полностью

As we started making our way toward the edge of the deck, where a concertina bridge linked the two ships, Twenty called out, "Don't think you're going to walk away with stolen property."

The farmer was losing patience; she turned to me. "Do you want to empty out your pockets, and save us all some time? Your friend needs a doctor."

"I know."

Twenty approached me. She looked around the deck, meaningfully, and my blood froze. It wasn't over yet. They hoped that whatever they'd done to Mosala was irreversible by now… but they weren't certain, and they were ready to start shooting rather than turn me loose with footage which proved that the danger was real.

They knew Mosala too well. I had no idea how I'd convince her, without it; she already believed that I'd cried wolf, once.

I had no choice, though. I invoked Witness, and wiped everything. "Okay. It's done. It's erased."

"I don't believe you."

I gestured at the protruding fiber. "Plug in a notepad, do an inventory. See for yourself."

"That's no proof. You could fake that."

"Then… what do you want? Do you want to put me in a tuned microwave field, and fry all the RAM?"

She shook her head solemnly. "We don't have that kind of equipment here."

I glanced at the bridge, which was sighing with the shifting pressure as the boats bobbed and swayed in the gentle swell. "Okay. Let Kuwale go. I'll stay."

Kuwale groaned. "Don't. You can't trust—"

Twenty cut ver off. "It's the only way. And you have my word that you'll be returned to Stateless, unharmed, once this is over."

She gazed at me calmly; so far as I could tell, she was perfectly sincere. Once Mosala was dead, I'd be free.

But if she survived, and completed her TOE—proving that these people were nothing but failed homicidal conspirators? How would they feel about their chosen messenger then?

I sank to my knees. I thought, among other things: The sooner I start, the sooner it's over.

I wrapped the fiber around my hand and started hauling the memory chips out of my gut. The wound left by the optical port was too small— but the chips' capsule-shaped protective casings forced it open, and they emerged into the light one by one, like the gleaming segments of some strange cybernetic parasite which was fighting hard to stay inside its host. The farmers backed away, alarmed and confused. The louder I bellowed, the more it dulled the pain.

The processor emerged last, the buried head of the worm, trailing a fine gold cable which lead to my spinal cord, and the nerve taps in my brain. I snapped it off where it vanished into the chip, then rose to my feet, bent double, a fist pressed against the ragged hole.

I pushed the bloody offering toward Twenty with my foot. I couldn't stand up straight enough to look her in the eye.

"You can go." She sounded shaken, but unrepentant. I wondered what kind of death she'd chosen for Mosala. Clean and painless, no doubt: straight into a fairytale coma, without a speck of blood or shit or vomit.

I said, "Mail it back to me, once you're finished with it. Or you'll be hearing from my bank manager."

24

In the cramped sick bay, a scan of Kuwale's leg revealed ruptured blood vessels and broken ligaments, a trail of damage like an aircraft's crash path leading to the bullet buried at the back of vis thigh. Ve watched the screen with grim amusement, sweat dripping from vis face as the ancient software ground away at a detailed assessment; the final line read: Probable gunshot injury. "Oh, I was hit!" One of the farmers, Prasad Jwala, cleaned and dressed our wounds, and pumped us full of (off-the-shelf) drugs to limit bleeding, infection, and shock. The only strong painkillers on board were crude synthetic opiates which left me so high that I couldn't have given a coherent account of the ACs' plans to anyone if the fate of the universe had depended on it. Kuwale lost consciousness completely; I sat beside ver, fantasizing about gathering my thoughts. It was just as well that my stomach was tightly bandaged; I had a strong urge to reach through the portal I'd made and probe the machinery which remained inside me: the tight smooth coil of the intestines, the demon snake which Kuwale's magic bullet had tamed; the warm, blood-drenched liver, ten billion microscopic enzyme factories plugged straight into the circulation, a bootleg pharm dispensing whatever its chemical intuition desired. I wanted to drag every dark mysterious organ out into the daylight one by one, and arrange them all in front of me in their proper positions, until I was nothing but a shell of skin and muscle, face-to-face at last with my inner twin.

After about fifteen minutes, the same enzyme factories finally began degrading the opiates in my blood, and I clawed my way down from marshmallow heaven. I begged for a notepad; Jwala obliged, then left to help out on deck.